GROWTH: AN ACT OF THE WILL?
Does spiritual development depend on my effort? A reflection on the interplay of God's will and ours.
Eugene H. Peterson
October 1, 1988
The people with whom I grew up talked a lot about "breaking the will." The task of every devout parent was to "break the will" of the child. I don't remember ever hearing it used by adults on one another, but that may be a more or less willful defect in my memory. The assumption underlying this linchpin in the program for Christian development in our church was, apparently, that the will, especially a child's will, is contrary to God's will. A broken will left one open to the free play of God's will. Fifty years later, I recall my now-grown-up friends who were enrolled in this school of childhood spirituality and along with me got their wills broken with regularity. By my observations, we all seem to have passed through the decades every bit as pigheaded and stiff-necked as any of our uncircumcised Philistine chums who never went to church, or at least not to churches that specialized in breaking the wills of little kids. Apparently a broken will mends the same way a broken arm or leg does-stronger at the line of fracture. At the same time, I also recall a lot of emphasis in our church on "making a decision for the Lord" and exercising my willpower in saying no to the temptations that surrounded me in school and neighborhood. I had many occasions to do that, making repeated decisions for Christ as evangelists and pastors took turns sowing doubts about the validity of my last decision and urging me to do it again. My schoolmates provided daily practice in exercising my nay-saying willpower as they offered up the attractions of world, flesh, and devil. Hung on the wall of my room at home was a framed picture of a three-masted ship with wind-filled sails on a blue background. Under the picture was a verse: Ships sail East, and ships ...
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