9 years ago: Oswald alone

August 21, 2004, on this blog: Oswald alone

And but so anyway my question here is how is it possible that George W. Bush has been reading this book every day for three years? Three years! I understand that he likes the book, but shouldn’t it have inspired him, by now, to move on to something with a little more “meat.”

It’s possible, of course, that Bush does not actually read this book every day. It’s possible that some shrewd adviser told him, back in 2000, that talking about Oswald Chambers was a good and safe answer to questions about his personal spirituality and that years later he is still offering this same answer without thinking there’s anything strange about that.

But let’s stick to the more charitable view and take Bush at his word.

“I have fed you with milk, and not with meat,” St. Paul told the Christians at Corinth. Chambers, to his credit, would I think have said the same thing to readers of My Utmost for His Highest.

“I gave you milk, not solid food,” Paul wrote, “for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”

Milk is fine, and so is the spiritual enfamil of My Utmost, but one is supposed to grow from this — to move on to solid food and meat. Indeed, if one is really getting nourished, one must move on. As Calvin wrote, “If they never grow up so as to be able to bear at least some gentle food, it is certain that they have never been reared on milk.”

I think Chambers would likely have been horrified at the prospect of a reader settling in and giving such preeminence to My Utmost for three years in a row.