Given enough time to learn and absorb the large factors making up the flow of life as those factors are addressed in Scripture, we discover a main one we call moderation. It is a principle that marks a center of gravity for our thoughts and conduct. Do I have enough (not too much, not too little) of this or that? The principle applies across the range of our lives. Do I give sufficient time to my spiritual life (not too much, not too little)? – work? – play? – family? – rest? – habits? – education? The list grows long included on the tally of needs, obligations and desires relating to the benefit of self and others. I want to pray, not too much so to neglect the multiple duties and privileges of life, and not too little so as to lose the thrust of constancy and duty. I want enough prayer to create the context of praying without ceasing (prevailing attitude) so as to gain from God the attitude of accepting the desires of heart fitting to his will. I want to lean toward generosity gaining those matters that lead to improvement and to avoidance of those things which offer danger to life quality. I do not expect to be right-on, because I am not always sure what right-on may be, but I can know what the directions are. To just say, No, is sometimes derided by persons making some issues more complicated than they need to be (and they are complicated, often because we make them so). We face them straight-on. Some matters we can say, Yes, in faith for better results. It works very well for those in faith who say, Yes, to the teachings of Scripture. The affirmative to healthy thinking and objectivity turns thought toward approved conduct. Perfect is the distant objective.
In moderation is found some of the naturalness of the Christian life described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:1. In the chapter we find a normalcy in presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable unto God which is reasonable. The remainder of the chapter lists the activities we may find in our ordinary days, which become honorable in the mind of God. We find that life with not too much, not too little of anything, but living with the flow of reality. There is a balance related to affirmative spiritual experience. We are not asked to isolate ourselves for spiritual reasons, or to strive for excess in nature’s bounty, but to find the flow of life that is fitting to the necessary care of ourselves and others. Here is Christian culture in balance. We present ourselves neither withdrawn in excess veiling, nor tempting in too little. We drink and eat with the balance of nutrition, neither to be excessively too heavy or too thin. We work to provide for our needs and some of our wants, and reach out to help those who need some of the excess of our income. We engage ourselves in the use of simple life gifts to care for self and families in the mundane factors of life. When rightly engaged they offer deep satisfaction for duty well served, and love circulated to others. Our pleasures are wholesome, not suggestive of deviation from right and integrity of the persons God means for us to be. Appetites are found not in denial of passion but in management so to become this and not that. All this gains God’s approval and our own – or loses God’s approval and our own either along the way or in the ending. My own evaluation (judgment) of my life on my last day is important to me in the quality and morality of my life today. If lived in the normalcy of human life in the spiritual context as described by the Apostle in the Romans epistle it will not be unlike the evaluation God has for my life at the last judgment (evaluation). It will be afforded magnificent consequences.
Life is so full of negative temptations, of distorted longings, of weak decisions even of fears that we miss the simplicity of it. We fumble with a kind of fulfillment that seeks not the best of heaven but the largess of nature and the animal desires in us to fulfill the drives of our physical being. The flip to morality (and morality finds its source in God) causes us both to lift ourselves and others in a spiritual context, and that in a normal fulfilling life. We are called to the effort of striving for righteous normalcy. That may seem like contradiction, but is really paradox (seeming contradiction). It takes more effort and at higher cost to find a life that distracts from proper insights and spiritual life during the earthly sojourn. Further, what else is there for us than the promises of God related to our meaning? That question closes the faith of nothingness and opens for the nagging demands of life’s meaning. God’s meaning is expressed in Scripture. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020