Never Was Heard and the Skies Are Cloudy All Day
Couldn’t help myself… Today’s reading has Thomas à Kempis imagining a conversation between Christ and a disciple.
I shall teach you those things which are right and pleasing to Me. Consider your sins with great displeasure and sorrow, and never think yourself to be someone because of your good works. You are truly a sinner. You are subject to many passions and entangled in them. Of yourself you always tend to nothing. You fall quickly, are quickly overcome, quickly troubled, and quickly undone. You have nothing in which you can glory, but you have many things for which you should think yourself vile, for you are much weaker than you can comprehend. 1
And so on, etc., etc., etc. I am determined to get to the end of this book, but this is pretty depressing stuff. I question how helpful it is to engage in extended self scrutiny and abasement. This is essentially omphaloskepsis in search of sanctification.
- Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1996), 101-102. ↩
Tags: Life
Have you read Eknath Easwaran’s commentary of Kempis? I think he frames it in a more helpful manner.
I have not read Easwaran and confess that I am not being too helpful. You are being gracious to put it that way. I actually like books that explore the mystical, certainly more than the overly rational, but am reacting to the ever penetrating inward gaze when the world is outside and I’m needing to balance introspection with engagement, especially in light of following the way of Jesus. He obviously was concerned with both. I am sure there is much to gain from Kempis and will read it to the end. Thanks for the tip.