What is the difference between fundamental and essential?
We often confuse what is fundamental with what is essential. And this is very dangerous for the progress of our spiritual life, as we end up losing focus.
There are things that need to be in our essence, like the air we breathe, and others that are important to give us a base and a path to them. That’s what I want to talk to you about today, the difference between what’s fundamental and what’s essential.
Fundamental
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life”.
The dictionary brings as “Fundamental” something that forming a necessary base or core, of central importance. A central or primary rule or principle on which something is based. Basic, indispensable.
Giving an example about this term linked to the Gospel: Reading the Bible is fundamental.
Our goal is not to know the Bible for the sake of knowing it. She is not the end. Many people read the Bible and study it without actually knowing God and having their lives transformed by it. Our goal is to know the Living Word, Christ, through a knowledge of the Scriptures. The Bible is a fundamental medium that makes possible our arrival at something much greater. She helps us to put down roots and strengthen ourselves in what the Father has to pour out for us. But Christ is the end! Discovering through it the One who is Perfect Love and being sanctified by Him is what really matters. The salvation and love that the Word produces is what is really essential for our Christian life.
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”.
2 Timothy 3:14-16
Essential
Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like”.
James 1:21-24
Essential means, in the dictionary, something absolutely necessary, extremely important. The central to the nature of something or someone. That is indispensable.
I am trained in Nutrition Technician and in the classes we learn different details about nutrients. There are nutrients that carry the name “Essentials”, but we do not produce them ourselves. We need to eat certain foods to have them in the body to nourish us. Food, in this case, would be fundamental to achieve what is essential: nutrition.
The Word is our fundamental food and needs to produce in us what is essential: faith, salvation and the character of Christ.
We can confuse many other things that are fundamental in the Gospel and think they are essential. We can fast and pray too as if they themselves were the end and what is essential, but again they are paths and tools to take us to what is really essential.
Path and goal
“Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell“.
Psalm 43:3
We need to seek the essence, and it has to do with who Christ is. Just like oxygen, if we remove it from the environment, there is no life left, as it is the essence of the place.
If we do not aim at the life of Christ in us, the Bible ceases to be His pure Word and becomes just a book of stories. The capsule of a medicine is not the medicine itself, we need to open it and then we will see the essentials for healing inside it. But this capsule is fundamental for what is inside it to arrive correctly at its destination. It makes it possible for the body to take the medicine with care so that the body can make the best use of it.
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Rapha Abreu is a journalist and cultural producer, and part of the marketing, writing and content production team at Mr. Rocco.
