Week 37—Friday Philippians 2:12-13
Philippians 2:12-13
CHURCHES FILLED WITH UNCERTAIN BELIEVERS
We said yesterday that the reversal from Teacher and Lord to Lord and Teacher would result in nothing less than a world-shaking upheaval in religion. It would turn our religious world upside down—and rightly, for it is wrong side up. It has broken with Christ and has made Christianity into the Word become word, instead of the Word become flesh. You are a Christian if you can repeat the catechisms, say the creeds, and promise to be loyal to the church. That has filled the churches with uncertain believers living on question marks, the spiritually noncontagious. And it is filling the pulpits with preachers who are strong on assertions and weak on assurance. It is proving sterile in religion.
And in psychiatry. Psychiatry has had as its working basis—insight. Give a patient “insight” and it will automatically cure the person. That has about run its course—it is proving to be near bankruptcy. Our mental institutions are filled with people who have “insight” into what is the matter with them, and yet they remain in the institutions uncured, year after year. Why? Because “insight,” knowledge about themselves, won’t cure them. Can’t. For the disease is not lack of insight, it is something else. It is the lack of giving love and receiving love. Until the patient is willing to give and receive love no amount of insight will bring a cure. Someone asked the head of a mental institution why they didn’t have more guards in the institution—weren’t they afraid of an uprising? “No,” replied the other, “there is no danger of an uprising for the insane never organize.” Why? Each is wrapped up in himself or herself, cares little or nothing about others. If they began to care about others, that moment they would be on the road to health. It is self-centered preoccupation that is the disease. No amount of “insight” will cure that unless the insight is accompanied by a self-surrender to God and an outgoingness to others.
O Jesus our Savior, save us from turning from the Savior to cisterns that can hold no water. We want the Living Springs. You are that Spring fresh from the heart of the Eternal. Evermore give us this Water. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Nothing automatically cures me without my response and obedience.