Choose Life – The Way Of Spiritual Progress

I’ve often been either criticised or commended for an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach to life of full commitment or no commitment at all. I find it bizarre that this very trait is a theological reality of life. We’re given the opportunity of either fully following the ways of God i.e. to be totally committed, or we can reject his divine offer of salvation and go the ‘no commitment’ path.

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Yet, the reality is -- even if we choose God -- we all skate between both extremes of commitment as we travel through life. We struggle to maintain the consistency of our love and devotion to God. It waxes and wanes through our somewhat broken time here on earth.

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Now, this is where the ancient commands of Yahweh through Moses are a great reminder. (True fear of God is never really forgetting.) Having set before Israel the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience -- to God’s holy law -- Moses reminds the holy nation to ‘choose life,’ so they and their children might live, so as to love God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.[1] He stresses that this is not too hard for them:

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“This commandment that I’m commanding you today isn’t too much for you, it's not out of your reach. It's not on a high mountain -- you don't have to get mountaineers to climb the peak and bring it down to your level and explain it before you can live it. And it’s not across the ocean -- you don't have to send sailors out to get it, bring it back, and then explain it before you can live it. No. The word is right here and now -- as near as the tongue in your mouth, as near as the heart in your chest. Just do it!”

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-Deuteronomy 30:11-14 (Msg)

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And it isn’t too hard for us either. But it does require faith, prayer, and most of all surrender. We can’t possibly hope to do it ‘easily’ without resting on the power of God to assist us. Yet, if we’re trained (i.e. we discipline ourselves) to pray and surrender, daily, within the solid bounds of good faith, we can routinely live in a way that speaks of the blessings of ‘choosing life.’

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Not that it is the perfect life we have. Grace fills the gap that we cannot hope to fill -- the gap of our imperfection. Spiritual progress is what I believe Moses is essentially talking about. The term ‘spiritual perfection’ -- as an end -- is an oxymoron. There can be no such thing until God determines it.

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Just because we’ll never attain perfection this side of eternity doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it. “Just do it,” is Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase for this very thought. This is the matter of ‘choosing life.’ Striving for perfection, yet acknowledging and accepting we’ll never achieve it i.e. holding perfection in tension with fallibility, is the essence of a resilient commitment to ‘hold fast with God’ to achieve spiritual progress.

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Spiritual perfection, and there is such a state, is this: “To rob God of nothing; to refuse Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection.”[2]

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Copyright © 2008, S.J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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ENDNOTES:
[1] See Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV).
[2] Fenelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe & Guyon, Madame Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe, Spiritual Progress, available at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/fenelon/progress.vii.html