This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “The Uncritical Temper”, promises that believers can cultivate an “uncritical temper” through spiritual discipline, with the Holy Spirit uniquely able to correct “without causing pain,” and God providing “spiritual spring-cleaning” that eliminates pride and judgment.
Here’s what actually happened:
“The Holy Spirit alone can correct without wounding,” Pastor Thompson assured the leadership team. “Once God gives you spiritual spring-cleaning, you’ll lose all desire to judge others.”
David took this seriously. After all, Jesus had commanded “do not judge.” Surely spiritual maturity meant eliminating critical thoughts about other church members entirely. He prayed daily for the promised uncritical spirit, waiting for God to cleanse his judgmental tendencies.
Months passed. David still noticed the worship leader’s consistently flat notes. He couldn’t ignore the treasurer’s chaotic financial reports. He felt frustrated when the same members strolled in twenty minutes late every Sunday.
Where was the divine transformation? The guilt began crushing him. Every critical observation felt like spiritual failure. The harder he suppressed these thoughts, the louder they became. He begged God for the promised spring-cleaning that would finally make him the non-judgmental disciple Jesus demanded.
God’s response? Deafening silence.
His wife Sarah watched this internal war with growing concern. She’d taken a different path—studying communication and conflict resolution instead of praying for personality transformation. Sarah learned that critical observations often contained valuable information about real problems.
When the church’s financial audit revealed serious irregularities, David was paralyzed. His critical thoughts about the treasurer had been accurate, but wasn’t questioning her character exactly what Jesus forbade? He waited desperately for divine guidance about whether investigating constituted sinful judgment.
Again, silence.
Sarah saw the situation clearly: financial accountability wasn’t character assassination—it was organizational responsibility. She helped David understand that stewardship required critical thinking, not spiritual passivity.
“Maybe your critical thoughts aren’t sin,” Sarah suggested. “Maybe they’re your brain working properly.”
The breakthrough came when David realized he’d been waiting years for a divine personality transplant that was never coming. No Holy Spirit intervention was cleansing his capacity for judgment. No spiritual spring-cleaning was transforming his critical nature.
Sarah’s approach—treating criticism as information rather than spiritual failure—proved infinitely more practical. She could address problems directly without the paralyzing guilt that made David useless in actual conflicts.
The real spring-cleaning happened when David stopped expecting supernatural character transformation and started learning human skills for expressing concerns constructively. His critical thinking wasn’t a bug to be spiritually debugged—it was a feature to be properly calibrated.
The silence from heaven wasn’t divine disappointment in his judgmental nature. It was the absence of a deity who was never there to transform him in the first place.
Reflection Question: When has learning to express critical observations constructively been more helpful than trying to eliminate critical thinking entirely?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 