The Offense of the Natural

The terrain on this journey got rocky rather quickly. Give up your rights. Deny yourself. Crucify the flesh. Duty. Sacrifice. And -- "it is going to cost you everything." On first reading, I found a complete contradiction of everything I wrote yesterday. The last line, in particular, distressed me: "It is not a question of praying, but of performing." Great. The ongoing question of my life -- being vs. doing -- unavoidably in my face on day 3 of this journey with Oswald apparently coming down on the side of doing. I didn't, however, stop with a first reading, and I'm not done yet. I don't have any answers this morning, just ponderings and questions.

• Today's verse -- Galatians 5:24 -- follows a recitation of the fruits of the Spirit and the sentence: "Against such things there is no law." What bearing does context have on the call to crucify the flesh? My assignment: read the whole chapter and check Matthew Henry's commentary.
  
• I hear in this entry the echoes of conversations past -- Catholic vs. Protestant, faith vs. works, Mary vs. Martha. Oswald was a Protestant (sometimes referred to as "an evangelical mystic"), but I'm sure he would not have been a proponent of easy believism. Can I trust Oswald's words to stand alone here? Have meanings changed? Again, am I missing the larger context? My assignment: research Oswald's denominational background and theological leanings.
  
• What does Oswald mean by the natural? He writes, "The natural life is not sinful," but also, "The higher up you get in the scale of natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ," and "The natural life is not spiritual." The NIV translation of Galatians 5:24 uses "sinful nature" in place of "flesh." My assignment: research definitions of "flesh," "nature" or "natural," and "sin."
  

After several readings, here's where I ended up: Maybe my ideal self is the natural -- the things that are right and noble and good that need to be sacrificed for what is best. When Oswald writes, "To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle," maybe my soul's greatest battle centers on whether I choose God or the ideal Barbara. Perhaps if I insist upon clinging to her, I will miss the relationship with him I seek.

Barbara