Memes float around the internet with pithy sayings that feel like they are Christian in nature. I am not talking about those joke memes that function like modern day comic strips. Rather I am speaking of those that usually come in one of three variations: sweet, angry, or ironic. Be it a kitten “hanging in there,” or chunky red text framing an angry animal, or Kermit drinking tea at sunset, these images flood inboxes, news feeds, and text messages. Most of these are harmless little notes of conventional wisdom passed from one person to another.
What binds these memes and sayings together is an understanding that “common sense is not so common.” These often are little notes passed from one person to another to remind or teach us how to live. Like self-help shots of wheatgrass for our minds that will help us in understanding how to live. Learning how to live It is one of the key virtues of self-help. It does not make self-help bad, but it does make self-help limited in what it can do because there is something more important to learning how to live.
That is where religion stand in contrast to self-help. Christianity, at its best, teaches us how to die more than it teaches us how to live. Christianity teaches us how to die, before we die. We cannot experience or have resurrection, new life, regeneration or new life, until we first die. Perhaps it is not a shock that self-help is more popular to pass around.
The irony of course is that only in learning how to die do we learn how to live abundantly, faithfully and eternally.
Before we go off thinking about how to live, perhaps take some time (years perhaps) to learn that which is more important.