The Book that Came Handy for an Important Decision

I have been reading a book called “Spiritual Combat,” which has awakened different reflections in the last week or so. In trying to make a decision on what I really want to do next in my career, I encountered provoking statements about comfort, affliction, and our will. All these play an important role as we try to find unity with God and that internal peace and happiness we are all searching for.

It was kind of enlightening to learn that the struggle of the flesh and the spirit goes way beyond what is material and physical (and hence bad) and what is immaterial and unworldly (and then good). Both of these extremes are totalitarian and incomplete. In the middle of these two is our will that somehow is “worthy of blame because it neither delights in the disgrace of sin nor agrees to the hardship of virtue.” “It is anxious to pursue future blessings in such a way as not to lose present ones.” And this is why it is so important for us to learn and understand our will, which is knowing ourselves, so that we can see what our inclinations, habits and fears are. By this way, when we find ourselves between flesh and spirit we will know what to choose.

What was even more powerful is to understand that if we don’t afflict ourselves (or somehow put ourselves into challenging situations or just make a choice), God will do it for us so that we can change and grow spiritually because it is in nothingness that we find unity with God. Comfort, then, or the idea of keeping things safe, as they are, as it pleases us, becomes the great obstacle to spiritual health. Hence, our main battle is against the self that is constantly trying to either keeps us attached to the known or afraid of the unknown.

The good news is that everything goes back to knowledge of our selves and the understanding of the role of faith within it. “The light is the knowledge faith gives us, and we have seen that our understanding of who we are, of how we are to behave, and of our destiny comes from the revelation of God.” Thus, the effort to accept the truth determines how we behave, making faith such a personal matter. We do not make our circumstances, but we do decide how we use them.

Source: "Spiritual Combat Revisited" by Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory