I just threw away my copy of My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.
It was given to us as a wedding gift in 1989 by the pastor of my Mom’s church where I grew up.
I remember reading it on and off for years.
As my interest in other forms of spirituality and even my own faith continued to deepen, I began to question many of the phrases and concepts. I also learned that the author himself was a dickhead, especially to his wife.
I work hard to give people the benefit of the doubt especially when I know nothing of his story. It’s possible he saw his father beat his mother every day of his childhood and so not beating his wife but just being cold, cruel and verbally abusive was a step up. I can try and give him that.
The reality though is, many people throughout time encountered the teachings of Christ, and it transformed them, their behavior and actions, into being a better person, for themselves and especially to those around them and to society.
It meant they were kinder and more tolerant of others. They didn’t lash out. They learned to control their temper. They started to care more about nature and our relationship to it and it’s inhabitants.
They didn’t stay living in the land of ideas and ideals and theologies. They didn’t parse phrases and concepts of suffering, God’s love and the Kingdom of Man. They were people more concerned with orthopraxy and less about theology
Saints are concerned with being good. Mystics are concerned with love.
- Richard Rohr
Our book group recently read a book by Soren Kierkegaard, that famous Danish philosopher and theologian. It is the same approach, this modern Western approach to thinking and being.
But honestly, mostly thinking.
What kind of spirituality doesn’t take into account your body and soul, yourself? Your identity? A system promoted for the elevation of teachers and leaders and the rest try and follow.
No wonder people feel disconnected from themselves, depressed, unable to navigate the complexities of modern life. We have been trained to believe there is some magic pathway, some series of behaviors. that will lead to something good, something I don’t think is even defined.
Are we striving to be close to God? Be model citizens? To love ourselves? To love others better? What is actually to end game of Christianity?
Is it literally just, you’re not going to hell? Is that it??
The famous saying, “Not making a plan is making a plan,” and variations on this, essentially saying, what is the point and if you don’t have one, that’s the new point, essentially, other things will fill in the gaps and the vacuums and that will be your direction.
So what comes out of a belief system based on just escaping hell?