Highlights - Ep. 37 | Mere Christianity | Part 16 | The Road Less Traveled
I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. (God in the Dock)
Christ says, “Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy…Every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk, (but) no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son… the goal towards which he is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal…No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded..is beyond what he is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life, but he means to get us as far as possible before death. That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time.
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house…You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.
God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.
If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions - if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before - then I think we must suspect that his “conversion” was largely imaginary…Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in “religion” mean nothing unless they make our behavior better.
Life on the Road Less Traveled:
1. A bias for difficulty
2. A counter-cultural mindset
3. Shaped by Scripture
4. Spiritual life not compartmentalized from other areas of life
5. The law of love is the standard for evaluating character and actions
6. Spiritual companions
7. Look deeper than outward behavior. It’s what we do AND who we are on the inside.
8. Wary of comparisons with others - If we compare ourselves with others, we’ll always find a
reason to either gloat proudly in our superiority or wallow hopelessly in self-recrimination.
9. See their own faults more clearly - When a man is getting better he understands more and
more clearly the evil that is still in him.
10. Will not think often about themselves - He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at all
In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest.…The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead…to remain ourselves and keep personal happiness our great aim in life…That is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do.
Your real, new self…will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him…look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in. If we let him, he will…make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine…a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly his own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful but that is what we are in for - and nothing less.
Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep
Transformation, Pete Scazzero