Tea Bag Wisdom

This morning's hot tea started with hot water and a tea bag.  The tea company prides itself on promoting holistic living.  Each bag has a tag with a bit of eastern wisdom to inspire and motive the tea sipper.  This morning the tag read, "The purpose of life is to know yourself and love yourself and trust yourself and be yourself."   I thought, "Wow!" as the Westminister Catechism written in 1647 rushed to the front of my mind.  The Westminister Catechism is a doctrinal statement which says, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

 

The tea bag tag proclaims a world view which declares, "It is all about me!"  It surely must have been written by someone who had spent too much time looking at his navel.  This tea bag gospel creates a narrow world where there is room for no one else but the self that sits on the center of life's throne.  Surely, such a life would soon get to be so boring that the tea bag sipper would seek another source of wisdom and inspiration.  Like a lot of today's secular philosophies, the tea bag gospel is empty and contains nothing but self.  What a life!

But, living to glorify God is a whole different approach to living.  When we read the Word of God, we begin to discover that God is glorified not in our moments of self-centeredness, but in those moments when we forsake self to become the heart, the hands, the feet, and the voice of God out there in the world.  What pleases Him is our love for Him and those around us.  As we do this, He is glorified and we spend our life on something far greater than ourselves.