I really like how C.S. Lewis describes what's going on when we pray...
An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is
trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows
that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside
him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through
Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping
him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the
thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also
the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is
also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So
that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually
going on in that ordinary little bed- room where an ordinary man is
saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of
life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.
From Mere Christianity
Friday, November 7, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
All get what they want; they do not always like it.
This reading from The Magician's Nephew ends with an interesting take on the concept of hell... wow.
“Son of Adam,” said Aslan, “you have sown well. And you, Narnians, let it be your first care to guard this Tree, for it is your Shield. The Witch of whom I told you has fled far away into the North of the world; she will live on there, growing stronger in dark Magic. But while that tree flourishes she will never come down into Narnia. She dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her.”
. . . Aslan suddenly swung round his head . . . and fixed his large eyes on the children. “What is it, children?” he said, for he caught them in the very act of whispering and nudging one another.
“Oh—Aslan, sir,” said Digory, turning red, “I forgot to tell you. The Witch has already eaten one of those apples, one of the same kind that Tree grew from.” He hadn’t really said all he was thinking, but Polly at once said it for him. (Digory was always much more afraid than she of looking a fool.)
“So we thought, Aslan,” she said, “that there must be some mistake, and she can’t really mind the smell of those apples.”
“Why do you think that, Daughter of Eve?” asked the Lion.
“Well, she ate one.”
“Child,” he replied, “that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”
“Oh, I see,” said Polly. “And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won’t work for her. I mean it won’t make her always young and all that?”
“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work ac- cording to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
From The Magician's Nephew
Compiled in A Year with Aslan
“Son of Adam,” said Aslan, “you have sown well. And you, Narnians, let it be your first care to guard this Tree, for it is your Shield. The Witch of whom I told you has fled far away into the North of the world; she will live on there, growing stronger in dark Magic. But while that tree flourishes she will never come down into Narnia. She dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her.”
. . . Aslan suddenly swung round his head . . . and fixed his large eyes on the children. “What is it, children?” he said, for he caught them in the very act of whispering and nudging one another.
“Oh—Aslan, sir,” said Digory, turning red, “I forgot to tell you. The Witch has already eaten one of those apples, one of the same kind that Tree grew from.” He hadn’t really said all he was thinking, but Polly at once said it for him. (Digory was always much more afraid than she of looking a fool.)
“So we thought, Aslan,” she said, “that there must be some mistake, and she can’t really mind the smell of those apples.”
“Why do you think that, Daughter of Eve?” asked the Lion.
“Well, she ate one.”
“Child,” he replied, “that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”
“Oh, I see,” said Polly. “And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won’t work for her. I mean it won’t make her always young and all that?”
“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work ac- cording to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
From The Magician's Nephew
Compiled in A Year with Aslan
Friday, October 24, 2014
Neurotics - Buechner
As I read this I can't help but think of Isaac who is one of these very special children of God. -- drs
A minister began to preach by saying, "To start with, I'm just as neurotic as everybody else," and there was an audible sigh of relief from the entire congregation. Anxiety, depression, hypochondria, psychosomatic aches and pains, fear of things like heights and crowds — there's almost nobody who can't lay claim to at least a few of them. They involve an utterly fruitless expenditure of energy. They result in an appalling waste of time. Yet maybe there's something to be said for them anyhow.
Neurotics don't lose their sense of reality like people who think they're a poached egg or that somebody's going to blow poison gas under the door while they're asleep. You might even say that they have a heightened sense of reality. They sense everything that's really there and then some. They don't understand why the peculiar things that are going on inside their heads are going on, but at least they're more or less in touch with what's going on inside their heads and realize not only that they're peculiar themselves, but that so are lots of other people. That's probably why neurotics are apt to be more sympathetic than most and, unless their particular neurosis happens to be nonstop talking or antisocial behavior, why they make such good listeners.
You wouldn't want one of them operating on your brain or flying you across the Andes in a jet or in charge of things when there's a red alert, but when it comes to writing poems and novels or painting pictures or even preaching sermons, it's hard to beat them. Their overactive imaginations, which are a curse elsewhere, are a blessing there. Personally speaking, their oversensitivity may be their undoing, but professionally it's one of their strongest cards. They may see and hear and feel more than is good for them, but there's no question that, with the exception of their immediate families, it's good for everybody else.
"A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated," Saint Paul wrote to his friends (2 Corinthians 12:7). Nobody knows just what the problem was that he was referring to, but you don't have to read many of his Letters to suspect that he would have been among those who sighed with relief at the minister's opening confession. His violent swings of mood from deep depression to exaltation. His passionate likes and dislikes. His boasting. His dark sense of guilt. Almost certainly it was some sort of neurosis that was bugging him. Three times he prayed to God to get rid of it for him, he said, but God never did. Maybe it's not so hard to guess why.
A psychological cure would no doubt have greatly enriched Paul's own life at the time but would have greatly impoverished generations of his readers' lives ever since. "Through his wounds we are healed" are words to be reserved only for the most grievous Wound, the holiest Healing (Isaiah 53:5). But maybe in some small measure they can be applied to people like Paul too. Their very hang-ups and crotchets and phobias and general quirkiness give their kind — and, through them, give us — insights into the human heart that few can match. It's a high price for them to pay for our comfort and edification, but where they come closest to a kind of oddball holiness of their own is the feeling they give you sometimes that even if they could get out of paying it, they wouldn't.
- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
A minister began to preach by saying, "To start with, I'm just as neurotic as everybody else," and there was an audible sigh of relief from the entire congregation. Anxiety, depression, hypochondria, psychosomatic aches and pains, fear of things like heights and crowds — there's almost nobody who can't lay claim to at least a few of them. They involve an utterly fruitless expenditure of energy. They result in an appalling waste of time. Yet maybe there's something to be said for them anyhow.
Neurotics don't lose their sense of reality like people who think they're a poached egg or that somebody's going to blow poison gas under the door while they're asleep. You might even say that they have a heightened sense of reality. They sense everything that's really there and then some. They don't understand why the peculiar things that are going on inside their heads are going on, but at least they're more or less in touch with what's going on inside their heads and realize not only that they're peculiar themselves, but that so are lots of other people. That's probably why neurotics are apt to be more sympathetic than most and, unless their particular neurosis happens to be nonstop talking or antisocial behavior, why they make such good listeners.
You wouldn't want one of them operating on your brain or flying you across the Andes in a jet or in charge of things when there's a red alert, but when it comes to writing poems and novels or painting pictures or even preaching sermons, it's hard to beat them. Their overactive imaginations, which are a curse elsewhere, are a blessing there. Personally speaking, their oversensitivity may be their undoing, but professionally it's one of their strongest cards. They may see and hear and feel more than is good for them, but there's no question that, with the exception of their immediate families, it's good for everybody else.
"A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated," Saint Paul wrote to his friends (2 Corinthians 12:7). Nobody knows just what the problem was that he was referring to, but you don't have to read many of his Letters to suspect that he would have been among those who sighed with relief at the minister's opening confession. His violent swings of mood from deep depression to exaltation. His passionate likes and dislikes. His boasting. His dark sense of guilt. Almost certainly it was some sort of neurosis that was bugging him. Three times he prayed to God to get rid of it for him, he said, but God never did. Maybe it's not so hard to guess why.
A psychological cure would no doubt have greatly enriched Paul's own life at the time but would have greatly impoverished generations of his readers' lives ever since. "Through his wounds we are healed" are words to be reserved only for the most grievous Wound, the holiest Healing (Isaiah 53:5). But maybe in some small measure they can be applied to people like Paul too. Their very hang-ups and crotchets and phobias and general quirkiness give their kind — and, through them, give us — insights into the human heart that few can match. It's a high price for them to pay for our comfort and edification, but where they come closest to a kind of oddball holiness of their own is the feeling they give you sometimes that even if they could get out of paying it, they wouldn't.
- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
Monday, September 29, 2014
Self-Awareness and growth
C.S. Lewis really nails this one.... kind of fits with the earlier Buechner quote... this also explains a lot of the "spirit" of many internet atheists.
Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
From Mere Christianity
Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
From Mere Christianity
Sunday, September 28, 2014
God - Buechner
Buechner on the existence of God... here he's almost C.S. Lewisish...
There
must be a God because (a) since the beginning of history, the most
variegated majority of people have intermittently believed there was;
(b) it is hard to consider the vast and complex structure of the
universe in general and of the human mind in particular without
considering the possibility that they issued from some ultimate source,
itself vast, complex, and somehow mindful; (c) built into the very being
of even the most primitive human there seems to be a profound
psychophysical need or hunger for something like truth, goodness, love,
and — under one alias or another — for God; and (d) every age and
culture has produced mystics who have experienced a Reality beyond
reality and have come back using different words and images but
obviously and without collusion describing with awed adoration the same
Indescribability.
Statements of this
sort and others like them have been advanced for several thousand years
as proofs of the existence of God. A twelve-year-old child can see that
no one of them is watertight. And even all of them taken together won't
convince any of us unless our predisposition to be convinced outweighs
our predisposition not to be.
It is as impossible to
prove or disprove that God exists beyond the various and conflicting
ideas people have dreamed up about God as it is to prove or disprove
that goodness exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people
have dreamed up about what is good.
It is as impossible
for us to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even
Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
All-wise.
All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore to death both God and
ourselves with our chatter. God cannot be expressed, only experienced.
- Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words
Funny that the next thing I read was the following verse in my verse a day email:
1 Corinthians 2:14
14
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from
the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand
them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
Monday, September 22, 2014
C.S. Lewis on "God"
On God
As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”
I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam or putting Him in your debt.
Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.” Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins.
From Mere Christianity
Friday, September 5, 2014
Buechner on Evil
Succinct, clear and helpful....
• God is all-powerful.
• God is all-good.
• Terrible things happen.
You can reconcile any two of these propositions with each other, but you can't reconcile all three. The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith.
There have been numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself, they are none of them worth much. When a child is raped and murdered, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation (better than most) that since God wants us to love him, we must be free to love or not to love and thus free to rape and murder a child if we take a notion to. Christian Science solves the problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of mortal mind. Buddhism solves it in terms of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds she committed in another life.
Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene — not even this — but that God can turn it to good.
- Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words
• God is all-powerful.
• God is all-good.
• Terrible things happen.
You can reconcile any two of these propositions with each other, but you can't reconcile all three. The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith.
There have been numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself, they are none of them worth much. When a child is raped and murdered, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation (better than most) that since God wants us to love him, we must be free to love or not to love and thus free to rape and murder a child if we take a notion to. Christian Science solves the problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of mortal mind. Buddhism solves it in terms of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds she committed in another life.
Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene — not even this — but that God can turn it to good.
- Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words
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