Today, I am posting to alert readers that I have now republished a Second Revised Edition of Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love. Frankly, I did not like the numerous typographical errors in the book and also wanted to slightly revise some of the wording. In the Preface to Second Edition I note that it is four years since I finished the first edition. In the interim, some of the situations that pushed me to write the book have come to completion and new challenges and problems have arisen. The book is often a part of my early morning routine and a companion during times of stress and difficulty. What fascinates and encourages me is the utility of the book in working out problems, and especially problems that find their source in people and their conflicts. I believe the book continues to prove its utility, at least in my life and work.
As I anticipated, there have been people who feel that the work is not sufficiently Christian. For those folks I can only say that I never read the book without an eye to places where I might have strayed from orthodox Christian faith. While it is true that “where words are many trespasses will not be lacking” (Proverbs 10:19). I am satisfied that the work embodies an orthodox, Trinitarian theology. In any case, it is my intention that everything I write be such that the founders of the Christian faith and of the tradition of which I am a part would find the work faithfully Christian.
The second complaint has been I did not expound the doctrine of Grace sufficiently. This is true; however, if one reads carefully, one will see that grace is fundamental to the “Tao of Christ”—as Chapters 62 and 63 make clear.
For those who prefer a specifically Christian working out of the implications of a wisdom approach to Christian faith and life, my book Path of Life attempts to confront the problems of contemporary society and its rejection of Christian faith and morals in one long sustained argument for the reality of Christian faith, morals, and wisdom. I would not have spent the time I spent writing the book if I did not think it made an important point for how contemporary Christians can best serve our culture.
Those who know me well know that I believe that it is important for the future of the church, of our society, of our families, and of our world that people, and especially those who have the ability and opportunity to influence others begin to recover the ancient wisdom of the Christian faith and some of the ancient wisdoms of the world. In the Preface, I state my belief that Christ is the Ultimate Truth, and when a person has come to that Truth, one is free to see and adapt truth wherever one finds it. I put it this way, “When we have confidence in the truth of Christian faith, we are free to accept and value all truth. As the great Methodist missiologist E. Stanley Jones put it, ‘I was free, free to explore, to appropriate any good, any truth found elsewhere, for I belonged to the Truth, to Jesus Christ.'”[1]
[1] E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1968), 92.
Copyright 2014, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved.