7 minute read
What Are Your Priorities?
FROM THE EDITOR
By Eric Ollila, Communication/IT/Media Director Alberta Conference
If you're looking for a philosophy of life and how to order your priorities, look no further. It is all summarized in this one passage:“‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And He [Jesus] said to him [the lawyer], ‘“YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.” This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR AS YOURSELF.” On these two commandments depend on the whole Law and the Prophets’” (Matthew 22:36–40, NASB).
This passage has stood out lately because I have been going through a reassessment of my life priorities—an audit, you might say, of where I stand with God and man (and woman). Moreover, like any assessment or audit, one inevitably starts by asking probing and uncomfortable questions, some of which include:
1. What have been the priorities of my life?
2. Are they the best priorities I can have?
3. What does God have to say about them?
4. In what order should they be?
What kind of priorities would be best for my life? As I’m sure most of you can relate, the importance of putting God first and foremost in one’s life is pretty straightforward (see vs. 37–38). The second command here is equally clear (see v. 39).
I didn't realize that mixing up the order of the last two priorities could create dysfunction in one's life. I learned, growing up, my priorities should be in this order:
1. God
2. Others
3. Self
Put yourself last and always put others before yourself.
For the most part, that is how I’ve tried to live. The problem is it is not God’s order. Consequently, I have felt like I was frequently running behind during a considerable portion of my life. Through high school and my early college days, I always put others first in the form of work and job. I did my job. I worked late, sometimes even past the hours I had set aside to study.
Why? So I could be “responsible.” So I could put others first and myself last. After all, it was others that needed some job done. I placed my job (i.e., homework, rest or exercise, eating healthfully, spending time with family) in last place.
Others close to me would reinforce this. I would say to my family, “I need to take time to study.” “Well, yes, but you can do that after your job. You need to work, Eric.”
Or, when I worked with one close relative, I would tell him I needed to take some time from work for planning and study. He said, “Well, that’s not my problem. You do that after your shift tonight. You should be doing that at home after work ends.”
What I’ve discovered in this passage is there are two orders depicted in the two commands. The first order is what I will call the “literary order” or the passage’s “structural order.” That order goes like this:
1. Love God
2. Love others as yourself
3. Love self
However, the literary structure is not the same as what I will call the “functional structure.” The literary structure of how the passage is laid out goes 1, 2, 3, as listed above. The functional structure, the structure of how we should arrange these three priorities operationally in our lives, is 1, 3, 2. In other words:
1. Love God
2. Love yourself
3. Love others as yourself
It is simple but profound. It is subtle in the shift but radical in results. Even the airline industry has it figured out when it comes to priority ranking. The instructions they give you of what to do in case the oxygen masks deploy are:
1. Put your oxygen mask on first
2. Then help others secure theirs
In the end, the difference may not seem to be such a big one, but without having this priority order in place, the difference will be enormous. Consider the following questions that highlight the point:
1. Can you teach others something you don't understand? NOTE: What is the order that is required? You must first understand, then you can help others understand.
2. Can you save and invest money for your future if you have first spent it all to satisfy others’ claims placed upon your finances (even if you agreed to them)?
3. Can you devote time to spend with God if you have first committed all your time to meet employer, home, or social obligations or demands?
4. Can you devote time to personal growth and development if you have first committed all your time to meet others’ obligations or demands? Is it possible to learn and develop new skills if you don’t carve out time regularly to focus on and practice them?
5. Can you exercise and develop your fitness if you fill every spare moment with meeting other's demands and sitting at a desk?
The answers should be obvious: “No.” You cannot do any of those things without putting priorities in the proper order: God, yourself, others. And in marriage, this priority takes on a new meaning when you consider marriage makes a man and a woman, in essence, one.
Individuals who place their ministry, work, job, friends, associates, or other obligations ahead of God (first), their personal and marital responsibilities (second), or others (third) have the order mixed up.
Only after we have developed the consistent habit and character trait of loving God first, loving ourselves and spouses second, and then loving others as ourselves will we ever be able to fulfill God’s command to us. Then, and only then, will we be equipped to make the ultimate sacrifice, should God call us, of laying down our lives for the sake of others like Jesus did, because only then would it truly be a sacrifice.
