God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development.
Many Christians misinterpret Jesus’ promise of the “abundant life” to mean perfect health, a comfortable lifestyle, constant happiness, full realization of your dreams, and instant relief from problems through faith and prayer. In a word, they expect the Christian life to be easy. They expect heaven on earth.
…if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality.
Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well-adjusted lives.
In day 22, Warren says we are here to become more like Christ. This means “grow[ing] up spiritually” and “transforming your character.” In day 23, Warren describes “how we grow” to become more Christlike.
Take all the religious dogma out of Warren’s words above and the truth contained therein becomes apparent – pursuing a life of creature comforts and expecting life to accord with our ego-ideals is a fast-track to misery and bitterness or an endless, fevered pursuit of ever more elusive pleasure. I’ve been caught in this trap, thinking “I’ll just be happy when…” Except, even when I got what I wanted, I wasn’t happy – my mind immediately turned to the next achievement that would secure my happiness.
The only times I’ve ever really been happy are those times when I’ve been able to put the future (and past) out of my mind and just be present in the moment. Eckhart Tolle says that the ego and time are inextricably linked, that the ego can only exist in the past and in the future, so that the only way to evade the ego’s tyranny is to be intensely present-moment focused. It is in the present moment that we are able to access our internal guidance system. As I touched on briefly here, this is what Christ did – followed the dictates of his soul, his internal guidance system. This is what it means to me to become Christlike – to set aside the dictates of the ego for the dictates of the soul. And, yes, I do find truth in this calling to allow our souls to guide our lives. It is the only way to find peace and joy in our lives – the “kingdom of heaven within.” To follow the tyrannical dictates of the ego is to lead a split life and literally create your own hell on earth. I’ve done this to myself, I’ve watched friends do this to themselves, and the saddest part is our failure recognize our culpability in our own misery.
There’s nothing terribly unusual in Warren’s words on how we grow – basically, you have to want it and you have to do it. This is pretty basic psychology. However, Warren also adds that God has a part to play in our growth, quoting the bible: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” But, we have to do our part first: “God waits for you to act first. Don’t wait to feel powerful or confident. Move ahead in your weakness, doing the right thing in spite of your fears and feelings.”
In the parlance I’ve been using throughout this blog, I “let God transform” me when I follow my internal guidance system. Most of the time, this guidance is easy to follow. Rarely have I felt guided to take actions that upheave my world. In those instances when I did feel moved to make dramatic changes in my life – as I described here and here – it was incredibly scary, as Warren observes. I didn’t feel powerful or confident, I felt vulnerable and scared. Yet, I also felt supremely convicted that the move in question was the right one, and that gave me the strength to trust that even though I didn’t know what was going to happen next, I was going to be fine.
As I wrote before in this post on letting go, I’ve never been sorry for following my internal guidance system, no matter how scary it was to do so.
TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.
