Friday, 25 April 2008

humility in the wrong place

"What we suffer from ... is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason."

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, Doubleday and Company, 1959, orig. 1924), p31 quoted in John Piper, Future Grace, (IVP: 1995) p88

worship for sanity's sake?

If worship involves the (re-) orientating of the worshipper around objective cosmic realities (such as the throne of God), and if this is indeed the truest "frame of reference", then is worship a necessary component of mental health?

""It has been generally agreed upon that true and full living is based on three components like the legs of a tripod: intrapersonal dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and a frame of reference." By "frame of reference" Powell means what others call "mindset," "worldview," vision of reality." *


* John Joseph Powell, Fully Human, Fully Alive: A New Life through a New Vision (Niles, Illinois; Argus Communications, 1976), p10, quoted in Darrell W. Johnson, Discipleship on the Edge, (Vancouver, Canada: Regent College Publishing, 2004), p129