Evelyn Underhill’s fourth question and response revolved around the relationship between spirituality and psychology, particularly in relation to psychology’s call for full self-expression and spirituality’s call for absolute self-surrender.
Like the other questions she deals with at the end of her book, this one continues to be part of our way of life. Whether fueled by psychology or something else, we face a daily steady-stream of messages that say, “Express yourself, affirm yourself, satisfy yourself, exalt yourself, promote yourself,” etc.
Underhill’s response is simple and straightforward, “the real life of the Spirit has little to do with emotional enjoyments, even of the loftiest kind. Indeed, it offers few attractions to the natural man; nor does it set out to satisfy his personal desires. The career to which [the spiritual life] calls him is one that he would seldom have chosen for himself.” (p. 130).
In other words, the Christian spiritual life is counterintuitive to egotism. Christian spirituality is healthy in that it does not call for the cancellation of the self (as some wrongly interpret the phrase “deny yourself”), but it does call for the consecration of the self. It does not call for the annihilation of the self, but it does call for the abandonment of the self. And this is precisely what the “false self” (egotism) refuses to do.
E. Stanley Jones put it this way, “Your self in your own hands is a problem and a pain. Your self in God’s hands is a power and a potential.” Underhill, along with Jones and so many others, recognized that it’s not ‘who’ you are, but ‘whose’ you are that ultimately makes the difference.
Oboedire 