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A concept that I have run into many times in surprisingly different works of wisdom is the idea that there are first things and second things. In its simplest form, it means that some things must happen first and are of greater importance than other things. C.S. Lewis is the only person I have read who uses the phrase “first things and second things,” but similar concepts are present in many different writings and wisdom traditions.
This kind of thinking seems to have originated in Greek Philosophy, but in many ways, it is all over the Old Testament. Aristotle said in Nicomachean Ethics that some ends are subordinate to others. We see the concept show up again in Augustine’s writing on rightly ordered love. He said that a good life requires loving things in the right order, with God as the highest good, and that moral disorder comes from loving lesser goods more than greater ones. Bonhoeffer talks about this again in a different way in his writing on the ultimate and the penultimate. Over and over again, we see great thinkers and spiritual leaders bringing us back to this idea that there are some things that are of a higher importance or order than other things. Even though their perspective differed, the recognition that there is an important order of things shows up in both Western and Eastern thought traditions. You might be saying right now, of course, some things are first, and others are second, but just because we recognize the validity of the concept does not mean it properly shapes how we think and live.
JohnWalt.com
