Wednesday: There Is No Dilemma
WEEK 39
WEDNESDAY
THERE IS NO DILEMMA
Acts 18:14-17
We come now to a modern answer to the dilemma, “What should we do?” The modern answer says, “Go to church.” This answer is good; but if it stops there, it is not good enough. It may result in a spiritual stalemate, a secondhandedness in religion, with the feeling that there is something between. It leaves one walking in a fog of dimness and uncertainty and a feeling of being just this side of. Unreality is the climate. Half lights, half realizations, half salvations, half assurances—these are the things that leave half satisfactions.
In the Acts going to church was not the means of salvation; it was the result of salvation. They just couldn’t stay away, for Christ was there! To stay away was to miss him. There is another modern answer to the dilemma, “What should we do?” It is the answer of pagan psychiatry: “There is no dilemma. Religion has created a false sense of guilt. Forget the guilt by forgetting the religion. Live free. Don’t suppress your desires; for if you do, a complex is set up.” This appeals to many, for many modern people are more afraid of a complex than we used to be afraid of hell. This answer may help people who have a false sense of guilt and a false sense of religion. But other than that corrective, it is false advice and leads to greater conflict and confusion. I have never seen anybody helped by that advice. On the contrary, I have seen the opposite. The moral law is a fact; and you can’t wave it out by technical terms, however learned they may sound. It just doesn’t budge. Moreover, I not only have not found one single person helped by that advice; I have not seen one psychiatrist who gave that advice who wasn’t also in conflict, a problem dealing with problems. One person who had gone through a long course of analysis on a pagan basis said at the end, “I was abnormally maladjusted; now I’m normally maladjusted.” With God left out you’re just that—abnormally maladjusted or normally maladjusted—but you’re maladjusted! For God is the center of all adjustments.
O God, our Lord, adjusted to you, I’m adjusted to everything; out of adjustment to you, I’m out of adjustment with everything. I bring all into adjustment with you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I do not ignore or deny the moral law; I obey it by the power of redeeming love.