Behavior - Chambers, Oswald

1 Thessalonians 2:10

The fundamental resources of personality

Behaviour means in its widest application every possible kind of reaction to the circumstances into which you may be brought. There are resources of personality known only to god. Psalm 139 is the prayer of a man asking god to explore him where he cannot go, and to garrison him. In 1 thessalonians 2:10, paul is alluding to the working out of what god works in. The majority of us keep taking in and forget altogether that somehow we must work out what we take in: we cannot elude our destiny, which is practical. The profound nature of each one of us is created by god, but our perception of god depends entirely upon our own determined effort to understand what we come in contact with, and that perception is always coloured by the ruling disposition. If my ruling disposition is self-interest, i perceive that everything that happens to me is always for or against my self-interest; if, on the other hand, my ruling disposition is obedience to god, i perceive him to be at work for my perfecting in everything that happens to me. When my thought has been stirred by the spirit of god and i understand what god wants me to be and experience the thrill that comes through the vision, i have to use my body to work out the vision. The first great psychological law to be grasped is that the brain and the body are pure mechanisms, there is nothing spiritual about them; they are the machines we use to express our personality. We are meant to use our brains to express our thought in words, and then to behave according to the way we have thought. A mans spirit only expresses itself as soul by means of words; the brain does not deal with pure thought. No thought is ours until it can be expressed in words. Immediately a thought is expressed in words, it returns to the brain as an idea upon which we can work. The type of life called the intellectual life is apt to deal only with these ideas, consequently there is a divorce from the practical life. The tyranny of intellect is that we see everything in the light of one principle, and when there is a gap, as there is in the moral development of man, the intellect has to ignore it and say these things are mere upsets. The bible supplies the facts for the gap which the intellect will not accept. The intellect simply works on a process of logic along one line. Life is never a process of logic, life is the most illogical thing we know. The facts of life are illogical, they cannot be traced easily. Intellect is secondary, not primary. An intellectualist never pushes an issue of will. We are not meant to spend our lives in the domain of intellectual thinking. A christians thinking ought never to be in reflection, but in activities. The philosopher says, i must isolate myself and think things out; he is like a spider who spins his web and only catches flies. We come to right discernment in activities; thinking is meant to regulate the doing. Our destiny as spiritual men and women is the same as our destiny as natural men and women, viz. , practical, from which destiny there is no escape. Memory is a quality of personality; it does not exist in the brain but in the heart. The brain recalls more or less clearly what the heart remembers, and whether we can recall readily depends upon the state of our physical health.

We take in through the words of others conceptions that are not ours as yet, we take them in through our ears and eyes and they disappear into the unconscious mind and become incorporated into our thinking. We say that the things we hear and read slip away from memory; they do not really, they pass into the unconscious mind. We may say at the time: i dont agree with that; but if what we hear is of the nature of reality we will agree with it sooner or later. A truth may be of no use to us just now, but when the circumstances arise in which that truth is needed, the holy spirit will bring it back to our remembrance. This accounts for the curious way in which the statements of jesus emerge; we say: i wonder where that word came from? It came from the unconscious mind; the point is, are we going to obey it? The matter of behaviour is ours, not gods. God does not make our character; character is formed by the reaction of our inner disposition to outer things through our nervous system. God does what we can- not do: he alters the mainspring and plants in us a totally new disposition; then begins our work, we must work out what god works in. The practising is ours, not gods. We have to bring the mechanism of body and brain into line by habit and make it a strong ally of the grace of god. We all know that it is never the grace of god that fails in a crisis; it is we who fail because we have not been practising. To refuse to form mental habits is a crime against the way we are made. It is no use praying, o lord, give me mental habits. God wont; he has made us so that we can make our own mental habits, if we will. When we are regenerated god does not give us another body, we have the same body, and we have to get the bodily mechanism into working order according to his teaching. Think of the time we waste in talking to God and in longing to be what he has already made us instead of doing what he has told us to do! Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

The expression of the mind comes through the mecha- nism of the brain, and the marvellous emancipation that comes slowly and surely is that we have the power to do what god wants us to do. There is noth- ing that a man or woman energised by the spirit of god cannot do. All the commandments of god are enablings. If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments, said jesus (rv ); that is the practical simple test. Our lord did not say, if a man obeys me, he will keep my commandments; but, if ye love me, ye will keep my commandments. In the early stages of christian experience we are inclined to hunt with an overplus of zeal for commands of our lord to obey; but as we mature in the life of god conscious obedi- ence becomes so assimilated into our make-up that we begin to obey the commands of god unconsciously, until in the maturest stage of all we are simply chil- dren of god through whom god does his will for the most part unconsciously. Many of us are on the borders of consciousnessconsciously serving, consciously devoted to god; all that is immature, it is not the life yet. The first stages of spiritual life are passed in conscientious carefulness; the mature life is lived in unconscious consecration. The term obey would be better expressed by the word use. For instance, a scientist, strictly speaking, uses the laws of nature; that is, he more than obeys them, he causes them to fulfil their destiny in his work. That is exactly what happens in the saints life, he uses the commands of the lord and they fulfil gods destiny in his life. The fundamental resources of personality will always stand true to god and to the way god has made us.

The facile receptivity of personality

There are endless powers of reception in the deeper realms of personality where we cannot go, and it is these realms that god guards and garrisons. Personality is built to receive, it simply absorbs and absorbs; and education gives us the facility of expressing what we have received. We are designed with a great capacity for god, and the nature of personality is that it always wants more and more. Education is the drawing out of what is in for the purpose of expression, and we have to fit ourselves by acquired habits of conduct to express what we have received. What is the difference between an educated and an uneducated person? An educated person is one whose memory is so stored with abstract conceptions that whenever he is put into new circumstances, his memory instantly comes to his aid and he knows how to conduct himself. An uneducated person is nonplussed in new circumstances because he has nothing to come to his aid; whereas an educated person is able to extricate himself by means of examples with which his memory is stored and by the abstract conceptions he has formed of circum- stances in which he has never been placed. Apply it spiritually: supposing you are asked to speak in the open airoh, i cant! ; to take a sunday school classoh, i cant! ; to write an essayoh, i cant! ; to expound a particular passage oh, i cant! What is the matter? We have not been educated on the right line. Some of us do not know what to do in certain circumstances spiritually because we have never stored our memory with the counsels of god, never watched the way gods servants conduct themselves. If we have been storing our minds with the word of god, we are never taken unawares in new circumstances because the holy spirit brings back these things to our remembrance and we know what we should do; but the holy spirit cannot bring back to our minds what we have never troubled to put there. My people doth not consider, god says; they live on spooned meat15 spiritually, go to church on sunday and expect to live in the strength of it all the week without doing anything. We should be so in the habit of obeying the holy spirit as he interprets the word of god to us that wherever we are placed, we extricate ourselves in a holy and just and unblameable manner. These things will always come to the rescue in the nick of time to the educated mindthe memory of how we have seen others act in the same circum- stances, and the conceptions we form as we study gods word. We do not become educated all at once, nor do we form habits all at once; it is done bit by bit, and we have to take ourselves strongly in hand. The one thing that keeps us back from forming habits is laziness. The lazy person in the natural world is always captious, and the lazy person spiritually is captious with god, i havent had a decent chance. Never let the limitation of natural ability come in. We must get to the place where we are not afraid to face our life before god, and then begin to work out deliberately what god has worked in. That is the way the habits which will show themselves in holy and just and unblameable behaviour are formed.

The fit reactions of personality there is no reception without a reaction, and no impression without a corresponding expression. The great law regarding impressions and emotions is that if an emotion is not carried out on its own level, it will react on a lower level. The only test as to whether to allow an impression or emotion is to ask, what will this emotion lead to if i let it have its way? Push it to its logical conclusion, and if the outcome is something god would condemn, grip it on the threshold of your mind as in a vice and allow it no more way. But if it is an emotion kindled by the spirit of god, at the peril of your soul you refuse to act it out, because if you do not let that emotion have its right issue in your life, it will react on a lower level; whereas if you act an emotion out on its right level, you lift your whole life on to gods platform. Paul mentions gross immorality in close connection with sanctification because every devotional emotion not worked out on its own level will react on an immoral level secretly. This accounts for the fact that men and women whose private life is exceedingly wrong often show an amazing liking for devotional literature, for the writings of the saints, for the stirring of abstruse emotions. That is the way sentimentalists are made. Every emotion must express itself, and if it is not expressed on the right level, it will react on a lower level; and the higher the emotion, the more degraded the level on which it will react. A saint is a bundle of specially qualified reactions. For every possible circumstance in life there is a line of behaviour marked out in advance for us; it is not stated in black and white, we have to be so familiar with gods book that when we come to a crisis the spirit of god brings back to our memory the things we had read but never understood, and we see what we should do. God is making characters, not mechanisms. We have to get our bodily mechanism into line with what god has worked in. The mighty work of god is done by his sovereign grace, then we have to work it out in our behaviour. Ye are witnesses, and god also, how holily and righteously and unblameably we behaved ourselves toward you that believe (1 thessalonians 2:10 rv ). Unblameable does not mean faultless, it means a blameless disposition, undeserving of censure: that is, undeserving of censure in the sight of god who sees everything. Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy ( jude 24 rv ).