Oswald alone

"He's been baptized, sanctified, redeemed by the blood,
But his daily devotions are stuck in the mud …"

— Amy Grant, "Fat Baby" (Millikan/Robinson)

On May 4 of this year, President Bush spoke about his daily devotional reading:

Bush said he is reading Oswald Chambers, a Scottish-born devotional writer and author of "My Utmost for His Highest," who died in 1917. "If you've read Oswald Chambers, you'll understand that Oswald Chambers is a pretty good gauge to test your walk," he said.

This is the same devotional book that Bush spoke of during the 2000 campaign. The president must really like this book — he's been reading it every day for more than three years.

I find that … odd.

My Utmost isn't bad but, well, there's not much there there. He has some thoughtful things to say about loving God above all else, but even at his best Chambers is a kind of Bonhoeffer lite. And My Utmost does not include 365 cases of Chambers at his best. Its entries for many days are about as insightful and spiritually enriching as a newspaper horoscope.

Don't take my word for it — you can read the president's favorite devotional online here or here.

The enduring popularity of the book is hard to explain. My guess is that it has more to do with the informal-but-forceful system of evangelical imprimatur. The book is regarded as acceptable and therefore is widely accepted.

I've read the book, but I've never managed to stick with Chambers' daily readings for an entire year. (Confession: I've never been good at the whole evangelical pseudo-discipline of "daily devotions." I suppose I'm more of a spiritual binge-drinker/bulimic.)

My Utmost's arbitrary and fragmentary choice of Scripture texts is frustrating and not always respectful of context. After reading a couple of months worth of such entries, one realizes that the actual texts matter little as Chambers quickly leaves them behind to offer some hortatory fortune cookie. These little pep talks start to blur together after a while and I start to think that maybe my time would be better spent with Thomas a Kempis or John Woolman.

Take for example today's reading, which is allegedly based on Matthew 5:3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, [for theirs is the kingdom of heaven]." Chambers isn't working his way through the Beatitudes, mind you, he just decided that August 21 was a good day for this particular Beatitude. (He discusses all of them, sort of, on July 25, and deals with another on March 26. This ad hoc approach may arise from his wife's literal cutting and pasting when she assembled this book from his writings 10 years after his death.)

The mini-homily Chambers spins out of this text includes statements like these:

"The true character of the loveliness that speaks for God is always unnoticed by the one possessing that quality."

"We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring."

Well, OK. I guess. If you work hard enough to make sense of today's reading, you might decide that Chambers is approaching the idea that poverty of the spirit is something like the "being present" that Annie Dillard described as "Living like weasels." Or maybe not.

Passages like this may explain why we never hear Bush quoting or referring to something he read in Chambers' book. Chambers isn't exactly quotable. And even when he's basically recycling platitudes and proverbs, he tends to do so in a way that takes all the oomph out of them.

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. Consider this anecdote, related by J.I. Packer:

Chambers' word to a man who read only the Bible and books about it, and who felt stuck and inarticulate, was: "The trouble is you have allowed part of your brain to stagnate for want of use." The man later wrote, "There and then, [Chambers] gave me a list of over 50 books, philosophical, psychological, theological, covering almost every phase of modern thought," leading to "a revolution which can only be described as a mental new birth" — just as Chambers had hoped.

If that story is true then Chambers would likely join me in encouraging Bush to move along to some new devotional literature.

One might also consider that the past several years haven't gone so well for George W. Bush. He's gotten his country entangled in a deadly, monumentally costly and possibly insoluble quagmire in Iraq. And domestically he's bankrupted the national treasury while becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net loss of jobs.

A change might be a good thing.

So let me suggest some new devotional reading for the president.

We know Bush is a big fan of books that are fragmented into daily "readings." John Baillie's A Diary of Private Prayer is a profound, challenging and beautiful example of such a book. It may, however, be too much in keeping with Bush's dad's Episcopalian tastes for the current president's liking.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon is unassailably evangelical and a compassionate conservative to boot. His book Morning and Evening is organized in much the same way as Chambers, but it's got more kick to it. Bush might find plenty in Spurgeon that would "test his walk," but I think he'd also find the book a source of encouragement.

And that may be important, since I'm hoping that Bush is going to find himself rather discouraged on November 2 and thereafter.

At least, that's what I'm praying for during my sort-of-daily devotions.