Our priorities are the fixed points around which everything else must revolve, whereas our philosophy of life is more to do with how we are going to live. It is more about the how than the what.
For example, I don’t have a TV. This is a philosophical decision rather than a priority one, although the philosophy does flow from my priorities. I don’t think its wrong to have a TV, and as a family we get quite a bit of screen time (DVD’s watched on the computer; the BBC’s iplayer), but we have decided that our family life is better when there isn’t a TV in the house.
Our philosophy of life sums up our values – the things that give shape to what we do. In his book Traveling Light, Eugene Peterson expresses it like this:
What are our values? In the Christian way we acquire a healthy value system. We find that persons are more important than property. We learn that forgiveness is preferable to revenge. We realize that worshipping God is more central than impressing our neighbors.
When our values are denied or scorned by the people around us, will we abandon them? If we do, we will flounder. Without values we live “in vain.” If we lose touch with our values, we are at the mercy of every seduction, every inducement, every claim on our money, our energy, our time. Values infuse life with a steady sense of direction and purpose. They free us from the petty dictatorships of fashion and fad and free us to pour ourselves into large goals for high purposes. The gospel keeps us in touch with sane and healthy values.
That’s a good description.
We need to get our philosophy of life worked out so that our decision making is made easy. We are confronted with so many choices and decisions, we can easily develop options paralysis. With a clear philosophy of life in place decision making becomes more straightforward. How we spend our money, energy and time becomes the practical outworking of our philosophy rather than something we have to agonize over.
The thing about a philosophy of life is that it will be different for each of us. There should be core priorities that don’t shift (if you are a pastor and married with kids I would be surprised if your top four priorities were different from mine) but how we work those out will vary. You probably have a TV – nothing wrong with that, so long as it is consistent with a gospel grounded philosophy of life.
And the truth is that everyone does have a philosophy of life, its just that most haven’t consciously thought about it. Your actions reveal your values. For those of us who aspire to Christian leadership it won’t do to have an un-thought-through philosophy of life. We can’t do situation ethics. We need to be clear about our priorities, and then work out our philosophy. Our values need to honor Jesus and keep us spiritually and emotionally healthy.
All leaders should be philosophers!
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