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The 4 Absolutes and God's Will

  • Aug. 29th, 2008 at 2:09 AM
Me
I often used to struggle with God's will (or whatever's will.  It doesn't really matter what you call it.)  But I started applying the four absolutes to my life, and I got better with it.  I somehow let that go recently, and I've started to consciously reapply it.

For those that have never heard of the 4 absolutes, they are a way of testing your thoughts against God's will.  They come from the Oxford Group, a ecumenical Christian fellowship from early in the twentieth century.  While I don't identify with their aims (making all nations Christian.  How boringingly Victorian, and after they changed their names to Moral Rearmament, they got really bad), I do agree with some of their ideas.  The 4 absolutes are one of the ideas I agree with the most.  
 
So here they are:

 
Absolute Honesty
Absolute Unselfishness
Absolute Love
Absolute Purity

Whoa, now that's a tall order, and no one could live up to it.  But here's how I use it.  When I get an idea in my head, and I want to know that it meets "the test" for God's will, I compare the idea against these fear ideals.  If I do this, or if I say this, am I being absolutely loving, absolutely unselfish, absolutely honest, and are my intentions pure.  Of course, I can kid myself about that.  But in the end, the 4 absolutes have done me more good than harm.  I have been able to, for example, hold my tongue from saying something Honest that doesn't need to be said, because saying it would not be absolutely loving.  (Note that it seems that two of the principles are at conflict here, but they're not.  In order to pass the test, it has to pass all four, not just one or two.  If one fails, the others are meaningless.)  

I don't apply it all the time, and when I don't, I tend to suffer for it. 

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