Skip to main content

Excess

I wrote this in response to an article online. I notice now that the response may be too formulaic, but I thought I would share it.

[Insert author here], thank you for your thoughts. I would like to address an issue that can come up for new believers or for those who may misunderstand how to experience real change in their lives and add something that may help those who are struggling to be more like their Savior.

I fear that some of the vulnerable will hear from this article, taken alone, the message "Try harder, and you will become more spiritual." For those who are not given to excess, diving deeply into God's word and into other spiritual practices can be sound advice, but those for whom excess is their most conscious failing may fall prey to substituting one form of excess with another. I believe that pursuing the pleasure of spirituality (what I see as practicing the spiritual disciplines in order to feel or appear spiritual) can be just as dangerous, and spirituality just as much an idol, as pursuing pleasure in other forms. We can spend hours poring over scripture, thinking we are searching for God, when in fact we are shoring up our own feelings of righteousness.

I am convinced that true change comes in coupling the spiritual disciplines--in the context of other believers--with obedience: James 2:26 says, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." When we search for God through the disciplines (prayer, Scripture, confession, fellowship, and more) and also begin to obey him by following his commands, we begin to see God's hand more visibly in our lives, and he becomes personal to us. I believe it is then that we find our desire for other things begin to shift to a desire for God through holiness.

Thank you for considering my words, and for your effort to help those who have been enslaved to excess, people like me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heroes

Although we have several examples of heroes in our day, one of the best known is of a woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (“Gonja Bojaju”), who devoted her life to sustaining the “poor, sick, orphaned, and dying.” Her venue was Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher until she began to take notice of the poverty there. Seeking to do something about it, she began an organization that consisted of just thirteen members at its inception. Called the “Missionaries of Charity,” the organization would eventually burgeon into well over 5,000 members worldwide, running approximately 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries; and caring for the orphaned, blind, aged, disabled, and poor. As her personal work expanded, she traveled to countries like Lebanon, where she rescued 37 children from a hospital by pressing for peace between Israel and Palestine; to Ethiopia, where she traveled to help the hungry; to Chernobyl, Russia, to assist victims of the nuclear meltdown there; and to ...
2 comments
Read more

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Comparative Medical Care

One thing I'd like to understand is why there is such a difference between medical costs here and those in Haiti. At the time the book Mountains Beyond Mountains was written, in 2003, it often cost $15,000 to $20,000 annually to treat a patient with tuberculosis, while it cost one one-hundredth of that-- $150 to $200-- to treat a patient for the disease in Haiti. Even if the figures aren't completely accurate, the sheer difference would still be there. Indeed, the United States pays more per capita for medical care than any other country on Earth. My first guess for why the disparity exists is that there is a market willing and able to pay more for medical treatment, so suppliers see the demand and respond with higher prices. According to at least one doctor (go to http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/what_is_the_cause_of_excess_co.php), part of the reason is administrative prices here. People here have a higher standard of living, and so the cost of care is shifted to ...
2 comments
Read more