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 Way to Knowledge,” promises that spiritual understanding comes through obedience rather than intellect, claiming that “anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out” and that believers receive messages from God that instantly put them to the test, with obedience leading to spiritual progress and divine insight.
Here’s what trusting that obedience to perceived divine messages leads to spiritual understanding actually delivered:
“The key to spiritual understanding isn’t intellect; it’s obedience,” Pastor Davidson taught with unwavering conviction. “If Jesus’ teachings seem dark to you, there’s something you’re refusing to obey. When God brings something home to you, don’t shrug it off. Obey what God tells you to do, even if others call you fanatical, and you will gain the understanding you seek.”
Rachel had been feeling increasingly convicted about her elderly parents’ spiritual condition. The promise that obedience to divine promptings would lead to spiritual insight and understanding seemed to confirm what she believed God was telling her: she needed to cut off contact with her unbelieving parents until they accepted Christ.
Rachel desperately wanted to believe that following these spiritual convictions would bring divine understanding. Instead of examining whether her feelings might reflect family dysfunction, religious manipulation, or psychological projection, she interpreted her growing urge to separate from her parents as a divine message requiring obedience for spiritual progress.
For months, Rachel ignored her parents’ calls and refused family gatherings, believing that obeying this spiritual conviction would reveal deeper truths about God’s will. When concerned friends suggested that healthy family boundaries didn’t require complete abandonment, she dismissed their advice, convinced that her willingness to be “fanatical” in obedience demonstrated spiritual maturity that others lacked.
But the promised spiritual understanding through obedience to divine messages was relational destruction disguised as spiritual insight.
Rachel’s attempts to gain spiritual knowledge through radical obedience created devastating family rupture on top of religious confusion. The divine understanding that was supposed to come from following God’s promptings remained absent while her parents’ health declined and family relationships shattered. The spiritual progress that obedience was supposed to produce never materialized when she needed wisdom most.
Meanwhile, Rachel’s sister Amy approached their parents’ non-religious worldview with zero expectation that spiritual obedience would provide family guidance. When Amy struggled with her parents’ dismissive attitude toward her faith, she sought family therapy, established healthy boundaries through communication, and focused entirely on maintaining loving relationships while respecting different beliefs.
Amy didn’t search for divine messages about family dynamics but treated relationship challenges as interpersonal issues requiring emotional intelligence and professional guidance. Her family harmony came through evidence-based communication strategies, boundary-setting workshops, and gradually building mutual respect through sustained relational work rather than spiritual separation.
When Rachel finally sought similar family counseling, she discovered that healthy relationship navigation required understanding psychological dynamics and communication patterns rather than trusting that obedience to spiritual convictions would bring divine insight into family situations.
Where was the spiritual understanding that obedience to divine messages was supposed to guarantee? Where was God revealing deeper truths through her willingness to follow spiritual convictions regardless of social consequences?
The wisdom that actually helped came through accepting the complexity of family psychology and focusing on evidence-based relationship skills, not through believing that obedience to perceived divine promptings would unlock spiritual knowledge. The silence where divine understanding was supposed to manifest revealed the truth: there was no God sending messages that required obedient response for spiritual insight.
Only human psychological patterns and family dynamics that required professional understanding and communication skills to navigate successfully.
Reflection Question: When has understanding family psychology and communication skills been more effective than obeying perceived divine messages about relationships?
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? 