SELF-VINDICATION v. TRUST

Today, two sentences in (Oswald) Chambers’s meditation strike me with exceptional strength: first, “No [person] ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test over it.” If my spiritual journey is anything to go by, I can testify to that from both firsthand experience and — well, I’m not sure how ‘secondhand’ it might be, since I’ve seen both my late first wife and my current wife tested that way. In any case, I’ve been so tested myself and have seen both my wives so tested.
The second sentence is, “The Spirit of God unearths the spirit of self-vindication; he makes us sensitive to things we never thought of before.”
Ye who deride the sensitivities of others (usually while nursing remarkably snowflaky sensitivities of your own!), beware of this; know ye have chastising judgment in store for you! It is to you I say, if you’re trained to be obedient, here is One to Whom you must be obedient above all, and if Jesus renders us sensitive to things of which we never thought before, maybe an expansion of your snowflake sensitivities toward others who don’t necessarily look or speak or worship as you do is in order! Maybe even an extension of your sensitivities towards other creatures as well!
I have a stern word or two also for those who are prepared to have their sensitivities so expanded or who have had them expanded already: I think this is a time for compassion, not for triumphant mockery. Believe me when I say I know how sorely tempting such mockery is now; I confess I’m not immune to that temptation by any means except Deo Gratias. It is you who seem to better understand what Chambers means in the next and final paragraph: “When Jesus brings a thing home by His word, don’t shirk it. If you do, you will become a religious humbug. Watch the things over which you shrug your shoulders, and you will know why you do not go on spiritually.”
Oh, how tempting it is to gloat over those words! Am I not right about that?
This is why standing at least 90 degrees from some things in the culture with which we grew up is so important. It is important because we all need to draw a line between our culture and God’s commands: it is far too easy, as we see today, to conclude that “The code of [fill in the blank] holds everywhere!” to borrow a phrase from an old TV show. It’s also too easy to conclude that God wants us to take out some anxiety (usually involving worries about masculinity) on the rest of the world. Expansion of feelings for other breathing creatures, I suggest, especially those who are less ‘like us’, is an important key to whether it is God or his rebel working on us in this and other ways. That is also an important way that our faith and trust in God expands. Think about it.