World: No Love For You!

I’ve been grappling with a book written in by a 16th century Christian (Henry Scougal) entitled, “The Life of God in the Soul of Man.” A hundred years after the contents were penned, they were passed along to George Whitefield by his friend, Charles Wesley. It was instrumental in Whitefield’s conversion and played a major role in the Methodist Revival of Britain and the Great Awakening in America. Good stuff. Hard to unpack, though, both because of the 16th century language and because of the depth of the words.

This morning Scougal was encouraging us to “put ourselves out of love with the world.” He’s not just talking about doing away with the things that are clearly unhealthy or sinful, but the things that are simply the enjoyments and pleasures of this world in addition to those things.

Here’s where I don’t agree (forgive the language… it’s kind of like reading Shakespeare - you get used to it the more you read):

Our next essay must be, to wean our affections from created things, and all the delights and entertainments of the lower life, which sink and depress the souls of men, and retard their motions toward God and heaven; and this we must do by possessing our minds with a deep persuasion of the vanity and emptiness of worldly enjoyments.

At first I was really taken back by that statement. I actually wrote “Don’t agree…” and then the quote in my Moleskine - the first time I think I’ve done that. The further that I got into the text, though, the more I began to understand what he was saying. Here’s more…

This is an ordinary theme, and everybody can make declamations upon it; but alas - how few understand and believe what they say? These notions float in our brains, and come sliding off our tongues, but we have no deep impressions of them on our spirits; we feel not the truth which we pretend to believe. We can tell that all the glory and splendour, all the pleasures and enjoyments of the world are vanity and nothing; and yet these nothings take up all our thoughts, and engross all our affections, they stifle the better inclinations of our soul, and inveigle us into many a sin.

The soul of man is of a vigorous and active nature, and hath in it a raging and unextinguishable thirst, an immaterial kind of fire, always catching at some object, or other, in conjunction wherewith it thinks to be happy; and were it once rent from the world, and all the bewitching enjoyments under the sun, it would quickly search after some higher and more excellent object, to satisfy its ardent and importunate cravings; and being no longer dazzled with glittering vanities, would fix on that supreme and all-sufficient Good, where it would discover such beauty and sweetness as would charm and overpower all its affections.

The Cliff Notes version? Our souls, created by God, are longing for something they cannot satisfy. They easily cling to the things around us, of this world, and seem to be happy for a time. When we learn to let go of the love of this world, though, we release our souls to be able to not find rest in the things of this world, and ultimately to find their true connection and satisfaction in God alone.

He goes on to say that are enjoyments of this world are like a rainbow - glorious at a distance, but nothing by emptiness and vapour up close.

I get that. But I have to admit that I struggle with the notion as well. I know the futility of seeking enjoyment in the temporal things around me. But I also feel that God has given us this world to enjoy as well. Wasn’t it only one tree in the garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat - and to take in and enjoy all the rest?

What are your thoughts? Where do we draw the line between enjoying life and pursuing God?

Posted 09.05.2008

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