Diversity of the Spiritual Body

The sacrifice of the selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages. Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality. -- C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven; August 20; p.212

Unbelief

Unbelief is as much of a choice as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.
--Frederick Buechner   Listening to Your Life: August 19; p. 218

The Difference Between Law and Gospel

The law points to sin; the gospel remedies it.
The law condemns; the gospel redeems.
The law is a word of wrath; the gospel is a word of grace.
The law fills us with despair; the gospel comforts.
The law says, "Pay the debt!" The gospel says "Christ paid it."
The law says, "You are a sinner!" The gospel says, "Your sins are forgiven."
The law says, "Make amends!" The gospel says, "Christ has made amends for you."
The law says, "God is angry with you!" The gospel says, "God loves you."
-- Patrick Hamiltion: Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

Near to the Heart of God;  August 18

Lewis in the Purpose of the Secular Community

The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude. To be happy at home, said  Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.
The Business of Heaven: August 16, p. 208

The Origin of Evil

Yesterday's reading from Near to the Heart of God had some good things to say about the concept of evil.
All qualities that are in God are good. If they are in God they are infinitely perfect. It is absolutely impossible that they could have any evil defect.
Good things can be used in an evil way. There is only one explanation for the existence of evil, guilt, and deformity in the natural and moral world. These things have been separated from God.
Don't blame God for evil. It would make more sense to blame the sun for darkness! We have free will. We make choices between right and wrong. Every quality is equally good. It becomes an evil when we, of our own free will, separate it from God. The same thing can be both evil and good depending upon whether it is used by a devil or an angel. -- William Law: Mystical Writings

R.I.P. John Stott

I'm still processing the death of John Stott, one of my favorite theologians.  What an amazing guy and a true inspiration.  Sunday's section from Through the Bible: Through the Year P. 402 ends with the following.


Without love everything is nothing.

The Painter of Lite™

 I happened upon an old card from Square Halo books.  Upon exploring the site a bit I found this article about Thomas Kinkade and sentimentality by Gregory Wolfe.  I'm mainly quoting the end of the article but thought it was interesting. -- drs

The word sentimentality is now a term of opprobrium, but it is notoriously hard to define. Of course, that hasn’t prevented it from being the source of a few witty epigrams. The Zen scholar R. H. Blyth once noted: “We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it.” That’s good, but as usual Oscar Wilde hits closer to the mark: “a sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.”

There are times when criticizing sentimentality seems like overkill. But it would be wrong simply to dismiss the phenomenon— and the specific instance I’ve been discussing, religious kitsch—as nothing more than examples of harmless mediocrity. The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

Perhaps, at its best, sentimentality strives for something approximating the theological virtues of hope and love. But in refusing to see the world as it is, sentimentality reduces hope to nostalgia. And in seeking to escape ambiguity and the consequences of the Fall, it denies the heart of love, which is compassion. Unless compassion means the act of suffering with the other in their otherness, it becomes meaningless. Well-intentioned as the purveyors and consumers of sentiment may be, they still want the luxury of an emotion without having to pay the price for it.