disappear

The blog-train's coming to a halt. The reason is that I'm rejoicing in self-denial (or at least rejoicing in the wanting to do so...) and having a website to invite your comments my thoughts strikes me as counterproductive right now (since I'm trying to get out of the habit of putting myself at the center of attention). For further blog-reading goodness, I'll refer you to these guys, who I recently discovered, and who find to be rather cool.

For those with further curiousity about my motives, I'll attach a recent e-mail to a friend, in small print of course.

Happy trails.
-Scott


What I didn't share tonight, because I needed to go but also because I wasn't sure how to share it, was that the message of self-denial, of choosing God's will over our own (as commented on by ______, and described in the "handout"), seems increasingly to me to be ...dare I say... the most essential part of the whole gospel message! Well....at least for me, and probably for many others nowadays. Previously I've always found this subject to be the most odious, hardest, most..."damning" for me as a magnificently self-centered individual, but I'm starting to see it as a key (or perhaps a door) to discipleship....perhaps as Jesus did! ;-) This week I'd been musing that "Christianity is a religion of the will" (instead of the mind or the heart or the body), and while that's perhaps an easily argued-against statement which I care not to defend, it fits in with what we'd been talking about: Willard emphasizes that we need to understand the origin of the "radical evil" in our souls, namely our trying to get our own way, and he says it's essential that we understand this before we can proceed in spiritual formation.... Thus the first message we bring to people might not be "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" but "The reason you're experiencing such frustration and futility in your life is that you're trying to do what you want rather than what God wants..... repent!" If Jesus said no one could be his disciple unless he deny himself, i.e. if self-denial is really THAT *foundational* to authentic Christian experience and growth, then (a) it is a wonderful thing and should be popularized as a means of grace, and (b) it should be popularized as a normative aspect of Christian growth. (....I can think back such that the only times of spiritual growth in my life have been times when I have SUBMITTED to God in some way.) I've generally regarded the self-denial stuff as a part of a subset of some of the gospel and which I can really get along in life ignoring, as long as I believe the right set of beliefs about God... ;-) I think we don't talk about self-denial much because we see it as a bad thing. But not only is the alternative (our own will) much worse (much more destructive), but it is in submission --- I suppose because I don't practice this, yet --- that we begin to experience the grace-ful transformation God wants to work in us, which is a good thing...

(As an aside: Doesn't the word "Islam" carry with it the idea of submission to God? Clearly then, submission alone is not the "most essential part of the whole [Christian] gospel" because presumably there's something that needs to be said about Jesus! ;-) )