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This past summer I re-read Gordon MacDonald's popular book, "Ordering Your Private World" (Nashville: Nelson, 1984). As the title suggests, it's a book that encourages Christians to take care of their inner lives. I had found it a help when I first read it in the early 1990's while in Brisbane, and, wanting something to stimulate thinking and self-scrutiny in the area of personal life during my summer break from teaching, I turned to it again.
This time I found the book a mixed blessing. On the one hand I was excited by its challenge to read more, spend quality time with God, and practice the Sabbath-rest principle in a busy life. But on the other hand, I found myself repeatedly discouraged and even depressed by what I was reading. I was being promised the possibility of a life of vastly greater usefulness to God if I became more disciplined and ordered in my private world.
And that discouraged me and left me feeling uneasy. I am no stranger to self-discipline, but at the same time, I am intensely distrustful of any promise of personal progress that rests upon my feeble willpower. Jesus told his disciples that the spirit may be willing, but the body is weak (Matt. 26:41). I know that's true of me. If making progress in life depends on the strength of my will, then I don't hold much hope for the future. I am very willing, but at the same time very weak!
But there was something else that disturbed me even more. As I read I found myself asking again and again, "Where is Christ in all of this?" I knew that MacDonald was assuming the indwelling presence of the Lord in his people in all that was saying (pp. 8,9). Yet, when it came down to the practicalities of such things as becoming a more disciplined reader and thinker, I just couldn't see where he fitted in. If Christ lives in me, I reasoned, and I live by faith in him (Gal. 2:20), then every part of my daily life must have its roots in him - in his past work for me and his present enabling in me. Anything less than that is surely less than gospel Christianity.
These are things that I see more clearly now than I once did. Like Gordon MacDonald, I have a passion for practical Christianity. I love to help my fellow-Christians work out the implications of their faith in daily life - to help them develop patterns of Bible reading and prayer, of meditation and witness, of writing and fellowship and so on. But I have come to see how easy it is to focus on the "how-to" of specific activities to the point where contact is lost with Christ. More attention is paid to our efforts than to his work for us and in us. And when that happens, we end up with Christ-less morality rather than gospel life. Our disciplined lifestyle becomes a hollow caricature of what true life in Christ is all about.
While I don't want to say that Gordon MacDonald falls into this trap, it is the direction in which I found his book pushing me. That may have been because of a quirk in my personality rather than any deficiency in his writing. Whatever the case, I believe that there is great value in us reflecting on a number of MacDonald's practical suggestions and ideas from a distinctly Christ-centred and gospel-motivated point of view over these coming weeks. With the Lord's blessing it will result in deeper insight and a new measure of joy, freedom and spiritual progress for us all.