Two Kinds of People in the End

This is one of those brief Lewis quotes that has profoundly affected how I view the issue of Hell.  Kind of interesting in light of the current controversy surrounding Rob Bell.... -- DRS

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there would be no Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened.

The Business of Heaven  May 31, p. 142

Sorry for not posting as much as I'd like to have lately. I've been really busy with family and end of year activities. My computer was down for a few days as well...I'm going to put out a few 'make up' posts probably tomorrow.  -- DRS

A Vital Principle

We do a great disservice to the church when we refer to the pastorate as "the ministry." The use of the definite article implies that we think the ordained pastorate is the only ministry there is. But diakonai is the generic word for service; it lacks specificity until a descriptive adjective is added -- pastoral, social, political, medical, educational, and many others.  We need to recover this vision of the wide diversity of ministries to which God calls his people.
Through the Bible: Through the Year;  p. 320

Benaiah, congratulations on your graduation and blessings on your recital today. -- love Dad 

Boar's Head Tavern Quote I found amusing

N.T. Wright comments on Stephen Hawking’s latest diss on heaven.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death — first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection — he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it — most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.

Life is not a river but a tree

C.S. Lewis is kind of on a roll here.  These are some of his thoughts from The Business of Heaven that I have always appreciated.  -- drs

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree.  It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection.  Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good. -- May 20, p. 133

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists of being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. -- May 21, p.134

The Final Judgement

This one's for you guys K.C. and J.E. 

It will be infallible judgement. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fiber of our appalled or delighted being that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realize that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along.  We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all.
The Business of Heaven, May 19, p.132

the Questions...

The other day Buechner discussed the important questions being in the Bible raises... I thought I'd just share his questions and the scriptures they are derived from.  Just more to think about.  -- drs

* What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)
* Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9)
* If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)
* What is truth? (John 18:38)
* What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:3)
* Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29)
* What shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25)

Questions

On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, “What is the answer?” Then, after a long silence, “What is the question?” Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start listening for the questions it asks.

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow – the immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at work – but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going. There is perhaps no stronger reason for reading the Bible than that somewhere among all those India-paper pages there awaits each reader whoever he is the one question which though for years he may have been pretending not to hear it, is the central question of his own life.

Listening to Your Life, May 17, p.124