Having a “life verse” used to be a thing in evangelical Christian culture.

I once knew this guy who was interested in dating this girl. He was kind of a new Christian, and she wasn’t 100% sure he was sincere, because guys have been known to fake spirituality in order to get the girl. So she kept grilling him, trying to figure it out. And one question she asked him was, “What is your life verse?”

So if you thought the title of this blog post sounded like a pickup line, you weren’t entirely wrong.

I don’t actually know whether life verses have faded away as a practice, or whether they are still a thing that gets talked about, but I have just moved into denominational circles that are less silly.

Why do I say silly? Not because picking a “life verse” involves meditating intensely on a passage from the Bible. The Word of God is certainly powerful and active and worth returning to as a theme (provided we are actually responding to what the verse actually says, not just to a meaning that we project onto it). Anyone who makes a regular practice of prayerfully reading their Bible has had the experience where a verse, or a passage, seems to pop off the page and hit you between the eyes like a two-by-four. And then you spend several weeks or months revisiting that verse, turning it back and forth in your mind like a huge jewel with many facets, internalizing it, wondering why you didn’t notice it before.

No, the reason I think the idea of a “life verse” is kind of stupid, is that it’s too restrictive. You are going to limit yourself to just one two-by-four verse? Why? The Bible is full of two-by-fours just waiting to whack you. It can happen every few months, or once a year, but definitely there is a going to be a different theme verse for every season in your life.

And if we are talking about a verse that describes your particular experience of life, that might exist, but it’s hard to imagine you how you could pick it as a 20-year-old. Sounds more like the kind of thing that is awarded retroactively, maybe by your biographer.

For example, after several decades of experience, I think my life verse might just be II Corinthians 12:11: “I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it.”

I think that would look great on my tombstone. Although, the “you drove me to it” part is debatable.

Anyway. As faithful Out of Babelites are aware, I spent part of last year further educating myself on Gnostic and Hermetic philosophy. Partly as a result of this, I’ve been steeping in the book of Colossians, which is almost entirely about Hermetic and Gnostic beliefs and cults, and how they are not the Gospel once delivered to the saints. Paul was worried about Colossians, who in his absence might be confused by one of the Hermetic “teachers” who were so numerous in the Mediterranean world in the first century. If you want to know whether Gnositc/Hermetic teaching is really the same as what Jesus taught, just in different words, please read Colossians.

So, one of my two-by-four verses this year is this:

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Colossians 2:23

Especially in my youth, I was easily impressed by ascetic and mystical claims and practices. How could these things be bad? They have an appearance of wisdom. “Such regulations” could be found in yoga, Mormonism, Islam, legalistic/Hebrew-roots sects of Christianity, or modern environmental Gnosticism where we save ourselves by education, sensitivity training and clean living.

Now I know: such regulations lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. They do not give people power to resist sin. That explains why every ascetic cult seems to generate its own sex scandals. It explains why we can expect such scandals from such quarters, even when they have not yet come to light.

So anyway, that’s my life verse for now. Patiently waiting to be clocked by the next two-by-four.