First priority: My access and consent to God's will

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The goal of the soul is complete attachment to the will of God.

One of my favorite hymns is “My Goal is God Himself.” The words are provoking and unsettling. Hymns sometimes force me to sing aloud words that I am not equal to, and this particular hymn holds my feet to the fire. A phrase such as, “At any cost, dear Lord, by any road,” causes me to leap within and also recoil a bit.

History’s great spiritual coaches often bring me to this fine line where I am warned against making my actual pursuit of spirituality more important than my knowing God. There is a distinction made between the exercise of piety and the attachment of one’s whole of life solely to the will of God, or “divine action,” as Father C calls it.

As much as I react against what I consider an American brand of spirituality, and decry its superficiality, its partial truths, its false fullness, its cheap commitments (see? I could go on and on), a true spiritual life is not made up of a reaction against something or against someone who is at enmity with God. Because I am against my culture’s injurious nurturing of an inferior quality of faith I am at that point merely anti-cultural.

As a spiritual man, I may become a social reactionary or even revolutionary, but not in order to become more spiritual. My spiritual origin and source must come first, and this is found in my access and consent to God’s will as it percolates through every moment of my life. So I am still bound to grace, as it is God’s gracious work to show me and to help me see.

The key point, really, is that I can either become someone who looks critically at my culture and complains, or I can be someone who sets his eyes on God alone and obeys.

_{“Nothing in truth is really good for me but the action which agrees with god’s design.” (Page 14)}

The words of Jesus to the Jews after his healing of the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda point out this union of wills between the Son and the Father, and the example for all future disciples to follow:

“In all truth I tell you, by himself the Son can do nothing; he can do only what he sees the Father doing; and whatever the Father does the Son does too . . . By myself I can do nothing; I can judge only as I am told to judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 5:19, 30) Also see 6:38, 8:26-29 and 12:49-50.