Something stood out that you wrote. You talked about Christianity today as being a lot of Self Help. I must agree and I think it’s way off base from what Jesus taught and what the Bible is prescribing for our lives.

Following Christ is not about us it’s about Him. But it’s also about faith and faith is not something you can shove down anyones throat, explain or be understood for following.

I appreciate your comments.

Can’t the “ought” itself be either self-centered or God-centered? It is what the ought is for that is significant.

How can one have a “robust simple life” when the official guide for that life spans dozens of books, thousands of pages, and two very different languages of thousands of years ago? It is no wonder people toil over whether they are what they ought to be. The “robust simple life” must be found in The East, not The West.

My observation has been that people must first take care of themselves before they are even able to center their lives around anything else. In my experience, it has been those who don’t take action to care for themselves who most obsess about what they can do to take care of themselves. Helping yourself — as in personal development, not necessarily the acquisition of material goods — is not something to be deserved, but rather is something that is necessary to focus on anything else.

And, ironically, that is similar to the conclusion Oswald came up with, that people must indulge in themselves before they can grow out of themselves. If there is no surprise about ourselves, doesn’t that mean that we have finally developed ourselves well enough? Doesn’t that mean we must overcome ourselves? How Existentialist!

That is the thing that is interesting to me about Christian self-help stuff. I find that I agree often with the point, but rarely with the philosophy behind it. Or that the philosophy is co-opted from more modern developments, and projected onto the writing of the past.

Bryan, that phrase “letting His ways be about us” can be taken in so many ways. Does that not indicate that we should look on the world, and ask ourselves, “What is the significance of what is happening to me?” So, we move ourselves away from being the object of an action (God did this to me), to being the subject of an observation (God did this for me). Perhaps that is what is meant by being less self-centered. The meaning is still for us in the way that we seek, just not on us in the way that we seek.

That is why my method of prayer is to observe. You can think of it as observing God’s plan and joining the action.