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This week we are going to interact with Gordon MacDonald's prescription for strengthening inner life. We needn't be reluctant to do this, even though it may appear critical. MacDonald himself invites interaction with his ideas. "I would be delighted," he writes in the closing words of the Preface to Ordering Your Private World, "if some of these thoughts, which come from my heart and are borrowed from other thinkers and writers, begin a dialogue among a few curious people" (p. 11). Let's dare to be among those "few curious people" who enter into dialogue with the thoughts Gordon MacDonald has shared.
First, we must agree with him that one of the reasons we neglect our inner worlds is our unfamiliarity with them. That's especially true of those who are inclined by temperament and circumstances to outward activity. Busy people often don't know where to start when it comes to bringing order to their inner, spiritual world. Even the more reflective among us aren't much better. That's because we always find it easier to deal with what we can see than with what we can't. It is entirely natural, then, that we should tend to neglect the inner realm. We simply don't know it well enough.
Secondly it is also true that our inward world can be more or less ordered - or shall we say, disciplined, or controlled. Lack of inner control is what gives sin opportunity to run riot in our lives (Eph. 2:3). Self-control, on the other hand, is an evidence of a Spirit-filled life (Eph. 2:3; Gal. 5:23). From that point of view, MacDonald is surely right in saying that a robust and healthy inner life is one in which there will be order.
He is also right to identify different aspects of the inner life. It is helpful to recognize that our inner being expresses itself in such things as thoughts and motives and the way we use time. It may not be best to speak of these things, as MacDonald does, as "sectors" of the inner life, but they are clearly components or aspects of it. And recognizing them does give definiteness to what otherwise tends to be vague.
However, having said that, we must seriously question Gordon MacDonald's approach to bringing order to this inner realm. His strategy of dividing the inner world up into sectors that can be defined and ordered by means of - as we shall see in coming studies - planned activity, is one that seems to me to have more in common with modern management and scientific practice than it does with gospel sanctification.
Perhaps it is premature to pre-judge his approach like this, given that we haven't looked as yet at his suggestions for bringing order to these various sectors. Yet, the very act of dividing the inner life up into sectors - much like a number of different fields that can be cultivated and developed individually - should set some alarm bells ringing in our minds. That's the way a CEO would analyze a company, and a scientist begin to examine a frog, but it is not the way the Bible approaches the process of inner renewal.
According to the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is the one who brings order and health to the inner man (Eph. 3:16). He does so by affecting our thoughts and desires, producing godly motives, a concern to use time well, and a hunger to feed our minds. All the qualities that Gordon MacDonald recognizes as belonging to an ordered inner world are the fruit of the Spirit at work in the heart. This doesn't rule out - as we shall see - the need for effort and discipline on our part. But it does mean that self-effort is not the way to inner health.