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 Spiritual Society”, promises that believers can “reach unity in the faith” and realize Jesus Christ in their shared church life, claiming that focusing on relationship with Christ naturally builds up the “body of Christ” and creates unified spiritual community.
Here’s what seeking unity through shared spiritual focus actually delivered:
“We’re here to realize Jesus Christ in our shared life,” Pastor David proclaimed confidently. “Focus on your relationship with Christ, and you’ll naturally build up the body. Our goal is God himself, not personal benefits. This spiritual focus will create the unified community Christ intends.”
His congregation embraced this vision of spiritual society enthusiastically. Members committed to prioritizing their relationship with Jesus above personal preferences and organizational concerns. They established prayer groups, accountability partnerships, worship experiences designed to foster unity through shared spiritual focus.
But the promised spiritual society was a community-destroying delusion.
Despite intense focus on Christ-centered relationships, the church remained bitterly divided over worship styles, budget priorities, leadership decisions. Members who claimed to prioritize God above personal desires still lobbied aggressively for their preferred programs and approaches. The unity that was supposed to emerge from shared faith never materialized.
Meanwhile, the Unitarian congregation across town approached community building with zero expectation of spiritual unity through religious focus. They worked systematically to create inclusive, functional community through clear communication processes, conflict resolution procedures, and decision-making structures that honored diverse perspectives.
The Unitarians didn’t claim to realize Christ in their shared life but focused on practical values like justice, compassion, mutual respect. Their community building involved extensive listening sessions, demographic analysis, intentional efforts to include marginalized voices in leadership.
When Pastor David’s church split over the worship leader’s contemporary music preferences, he felt devastated. How could people focused on their relationship with Christ become so divided over practical matters? The spiritual society he’d envisioned had fractured despite everyone’s commitment to putting God first.
Where was the unity in faith that shared spiritual focus was supposed to create? Where was the body of Christ that would emerge from prioritizing relationship with Jesus?
The Unitarian congregation had successfully navigated multiple challenging decisions through their systematic approach to community building. Their unity wasn’t based on shared spiritual focus but on agreed-upon processes for working through differences respectfully.
David’s breakthrough came when he realized that effective community required practical skills—communication, compromise, project management, conflict resolution—not just spiritual commitment. The unity that actually worked came through human effort and organizational competence, not through shared religious devotion.
The silence where spiritual society was supposed to emerge revealed the truth: there was no divine unity waiting to be realized through faith. Only human community-building skills that actually worked when consistently applied to real organizational challenges.
Reflection Question: When has practical community-building been more effective than expecting spiritual unity to emerge from shared religious focus?
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? 