Ashley Smith- Life Saved By Being A Servant?

No doubt everyone’s familiar with Ashley Smith’s story of bravery in a hostage situation with escaped murder suspect Brian Nichols. More liberal venues like salon.com (which I read) seem to be focusing more on Ashley’s negative past, but most are all abuzz about the fact that she read to Nichols from a book called Purpose Driven Life which focuses on being a servant and finding your purpose in life. This was already a very popular book among Christians. It was this year’s Secrets of the Vine, which swept Christian culture several years ago. I was even familiar with the book and have family members who’ve hosted Bible studies with the book.

I don’t want to speculate, as so many are (whole discussion on CNN the other day), whether or not Ashley Smith is a hero. I don’t even want to try to think about whether or not I’d recommend this book to someone (especially considering I’ve never read it and probably never will). I am, however, allowing myself to have a few days of taking the chance on dwelling in Conservo-land, which anyone who knows me would fit over, so that I can think some things out. Things like, shouldn’t we want to give up some of our feelings of self-empowerment and autonomy in order to serve others? Sure worked for Ashley.