The Enemy of the Best

[Brad Fox]

Almost one hundred years ago, Oswald Chambers, a theologian, evangelist, educator and artist, was telling people about the struggle of life.  As a Christian, he realized that one of the greatest struggles that a human can have is dealing with one's own selfishness.  He said a person's struggles are based on giving up a right to oneself, of giving up personal independence and self-assertiveness.  These are hard, almost imperceptible words for post-modern Americans.  Our society is all about individual rights.  Activists try to drown each other out with their assertions of educational rights, sexual rights, rights to bear arms, rights to choose abortion and so forth.  But Oswald puts forth the idea that "things that are right and noble and good from a purely secular, humanistic point of view are precisely those things that keep us from the best things that God has for our lives.  In fact, he says that our natural tendencies to assert our rights are precisely those things that keep us from experiencing a living, vital relationship with God.  He says that realizing that controlling our own life separates us from God causes us to confront the "greatest battle of our life."

He adds "very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate what is good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ." 

It's true.  People don't generally seem to spend much time debating about what's evil or broken in our society.  Perhaps it's too depressing or too stressful to argue with others about the brokenness of the world.  We do, however, spend exhorbitant amounts of time asserting that we know what's best for society.  Oswald is speaking to our tendency of control.  The more we exert control of our lives, truly the more we risk going through life subject to our own shortcomings.  One has only to look at a small child insisting that their way is "right" to observe the consequences of the selfish life. 

Oswald quotes Jesus as saying "If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself," i.e., his right to himself, and a that a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it.  Literally, Oswald says we need to crucify, or put to death, this selfish independence, this insistence on personal freedom and inalienable rights.

He writes a particularly disturbing thought:  "Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence."  Wow!  A powerful metaphor for what we intentionally need to commit to and practice every day.

The natural life is not spiritual, and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying about it, but of doing it.