The Alcoholic

For the temperate man an occasional glass of wine is a treat...But to the alcoholic, whose palate and digestion have long since been destroyed, no liquor gives any pleasure except that of relief from an unbearable craving. So far as he can still discern tastes at all, he rather dislikes it; but it is better than the misery of remaining sober.

- C. S. Lewis

The Inevitable and the Avoidable

Pain is inevitable. Misery is a choice.

- David Briner

Thank God

Thank God, we are nowise bound to accept any man's explanation of God's ways and God's doings, however good the man may be, if it do not commend itself to our conscience.

- George MacDonald

The Magic Apple

I have the deepest respect for Pagan myths, still more for myths in Holy Scripture.

- C. S. Lewis

Working on the Car

The Working on the Car analogy to which Erin refers is something that I now can't remember if I read somewhere and altered, or something that just came to me. If I am indeed plagarising it, I confess myself of it at this point, and offer my apologies to the true author. For the sake of fairness, let's say that this is someone else's analogy, and I am merely echoing it:

Liken your relationship with God to the image of a father and his son. They find themselves one Saturday afternoon out in the driveway. The father's torso tucked under the hood of a car, the son standing by at the ready. The father is doing all the work. He knows what job is necessary to complete the needed repairs. The son waits in anxious anticipation for any instructions from his father on how he might assist in the process. The father is doing it all. Then, to the son's delight, the father calls for the son, and asks that he bring a particular tool. The son jumps at the opportunity to lend a hand. He identifies the tool his father requested, and delivers it with glee. His glee is pure, and stems from the chance to simply play a small role in assisting his father. The father could have gotten the tool himself, could have ignored the eager child waiting by his side, but instead, he was pleased by the child's eagerness, and wanted him to be a part of his work. Once the tool is handed from the son to the father, the father surprises the boy. He asks his son to come closer, and watch what he intends to do with the tool. The father demonstrates the use of the tool for the particular job he has in mind. He walks the son through the repair work to be done. Then, the father hands the son the tool and says, "You do it. I'm right here, and will help when you need it, but do it just like I showed you." The son trembles with excitement and fear. He wants nothing more than to please his father, and show him that he's a good son. The boy tries, but fails miserably at reproducing the manuever he had just watched his father perform. The child sulks, and feels great regret and shame for the way he believes he's just disappointed his father. But the father is far from disappointed. The father is overwhelmed with pleasure, beaming with joy because he knows how much his son wants to please him. He tells his son, "It's alright, try again, you're doing fine. You're learning. This is how I meant to teach you. Someday you will be able to do this on your own. One day, after practice and guidance, you will be an expert at this."

In one way or another, that story, or analogy, or illustration was inspiring to someone I shared it with. So, I bring it here for the millions (not) of readers of this blog to see.

I now approach the morning where I go to visit my earthly father in the hospital. He's been admitted due to suffereing through life threatening withdrawal symptoms after a day without alcohol. I go to see him in hopes of encouraging him to stay for the prescribed time to detox with medical supervision. I pray to the Father of us both that his pride will be broken, that his will will fail, and he will finally rely on others for his steps to freedom. Wish us luck.

Help Me Believe

Maybe I'd see much better by closing my eyes.

- Nichole Nordeman

Everything is Under Control?

I don’t hate God because I don’t believe God is fully in control of this world yet. Heck, God is not fully in control of me yet, even when I want Him to be, so how could I possibly believe that God is making it all happen out there in the street?

- Bart Campolo

Lifting Weights

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.

- George MacDonald

Friends

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.

- C.S. Lewis

We shall not be condemned, but...

Friends, our cross may be heavy, and the via dolorosa rough; but we have claims on God, yea the right to cry to him for help. He has spent, and is spending himself to give us our birthright, which is righteousness. Though we shall not be condemned for our sins, we cannot be saved but by leaving them; though we shall not be condemned for the sins that are past, we shall be condemned if we love the darkness rather than the light, and refuse to come to him that we may have life. God is offering us the one thing we cannot live without--his own self: we must make room for him; we must cleanse our hearts that he may come in; we must do as the Master tells us, who knew all about the Father and the way to him--we must deny ourselves, and take up our cross daily, and follow him.

- George MacDonald

Getting to Know God

When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one.

...the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, His glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope.

C. S. Lewis

Infinite Relief

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity — as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him; wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble — delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.

- C. S. Lewis

A Complicated Attempt to Avoid the Obvious?

If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? ...for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling "whatever you say, and however clever your arguments are, isn't it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren't all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?" But then that threw me back into another difficulty.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet.

Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.

Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense.

Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...

- C. S. Lewis

Wickedness Examined

...wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way.

- C. S. Lewis

What is Sin?

...every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us - an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof "God did it" and "I did it" are both true descriptions.

- C. S. Lewis

Fear of God: A Preliminary, Natural, Necessary Phase

Naturally the first emotion of man towards the being he calls God, but of whom he knows so little, is fear ...

Until love, which is the truth towards God, is able to cast out fear, it is well that fear should hold; it is a bond, however poor, between that which is and that which creates - a bond that must be broken, but a bond that can be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond. Verily, God must be terrible to those that are far from him; for they fear He will do, yea, He is doing with them what they do not, cannot desire, and can ill endure. Such as many men are, such as all without God would become, they must prefer a devil, because of his supreme selfishness, to a God who will die for His creatures, and insists upon giving Himself to them, insists upon their being unselfish and blessed like Himself. That which is the power and worth of life they must be, or die; and the vague consciousness of this makes them afraid. They love their poor existence as it is; God loves it as it must be - and they fear Him.

- George MacDonald

Christianity: A Derivative of Morality

Men say 'How are we to act, what are we to teach our children, now that we are no longer Christians?'...I would answer...You are deceived in thinking that the morality of your father was based on Christianity. On the contrary, Christianity presupposed it.

- C. S. Lewis

Metallic Norm

Sometimes it is the sound of iron sharpening iron, and no other, that wakes us from our slumber.

Artwork

We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.

- C. S. Lewis

Drop me to my knees as many times as it takes to extract the character you desire from me. Break my heart as many times as is necessary to bring it to real life. Free me to find my way down the dead end paths that lead to nothing but misery, that the misery might drive me back to your arms. Once and for all, remove the attraction of what's false, so that I will chase after and ultimately latch on to the real: the unending nourishment and fulfillment for which I was made.
Amen.

Why I Oughtta

If I cannot feel as I ought, then let me at least act as I ought.

Christianity's Target Audience

It is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law. It offers forgiveness for having broken, and supernatural help towards keeping, that law, and by so doing, re-affirms it.

- C. S. Lewis

Faith

The principal part of faith is patience.

- George MacDonald

Ideas About Reality

I "let Jesus into my heart" when I was four years old. I believed then as I do now that He is a real person, alive, and working in my heart in ways that are not possible, at least not for me, without His influence. Then, as now, I don't know how it works. I have heard theories/ideas on how it works from the minds of people smarter than me. I've also heard, from people smarter than me, that the idea of God is all a fiction. In the end though, they are only ideas. Ideas are only our minds' forms of things that are either real or not. The things themselves exist, or not, regardless of the ideas we have about them. I believed He was real then, I believe He is real now. An odd thing to me is that there has never been a time since my youthful "conversion" (perhaps even before then) that I didn't believe He is real, is alive, is God. Even during the seasons (yes, that's plural) of my life where I turned my back on Him, I still believed in Him.

Jesus was real to me as a 4 year old and throughout my life in very different ways than he is now. He is also very much the same in other ways. As a 4 year old, I held the image in my mind of a door on the outside of my heart that swung open to the knocks of a tiny Jesus. This image, when taken literally, is pure nonsense. But the image was just an idea: the abstract form of a true or untrue thing made as best as my young mind was capable of at the time. The idea was given to me in many forms by my upbringing in church, by some people who didn't believe it and some people who did, and by the illustrated children's Bible that we had in our house as kids. More than likely that image of Christ knocking at the door was from a drawing of Jesus knocking at the door of one of his friend's house, mixed with the image that formed in my mind from hearing Sunday school teachers, pastors, and various other people talk about "asking Jesus into your heart". Back then I believed that I was letting someone who loved me into my life, into myself. The image that formed in my mind had no bearing on whether or not the thing imagined was actually true. The amalgamation of ideas presented visually and audibly through religious channels, was useful in that it helped me understand then what I still believe is the reality. The childlike imagery is gone now, but if what the image/idea was about is true, no ideas either for or against it will change that. I believe that the truth will win out. However sound or nonsensical our ideas about the truth are, it will win, independent of them. Everything I've experienced to this point in my relatively short life has confirmed this on many fronts.

My wife, who (or whom, I never know when I get that right) I love more than even I know, and our children, who mean more to me than my own life, I encourage and will continue to encourage to seek honesty, whatever path it takes them down. The Person I asked into my heart at age 4 is the same Person I see and feel in the hearts of my wife and children (among others). It is the same Person that I saw in Stacy's heart even before I decided that I wanted her for my wife.

There is one path that will lead to that Person, and it is honesty. Once you catch the scent of honesty, or rather, once it catches you, you will follow it to the end. We were made for it. We demand justice and truth because it is fused in our bones. We get angry because truth matters to us. In my estimation, the scent has gotten ahold of my wife, now more than ever. I see it, and the more I think about it, the more I feel secure in the merit of her search, and know that hearing about her journey will only grow me. One of the reasons I know this is because there is pain with growth.

I believe He is there, leading us to Him, to our ultimate truths that He has made for us at the end of our spatio-temporal road. Regardless of the degree of the truth or falsehood of the ideas that come our way, I believe He is at the end of it all, calling our names: calling our true selves back to Him. Follow truth, wherever it takes you, because truth, in the end will win out. If you are a lover of truth from the outset, you will not be disappointed in the end. You will be confirmed in your quest, and ultimately validated throughout your entire being: you were made for it. Keep Truth and Honesty as your master, because you will meet Him at the end of the road: He and they are one in the same. When that happens we will all finally know (not believe or disbelieve, but know) what I hope is true: that our ideas of truth and honesty are to the reality as a marble is to the sun. Then we will see for the first time fully and completely, and we will be in awe of and love the Truth.

He Who Loses His Life Shall Find It

You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind...If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in the 'High Countries'.

- C. S. Lewis

Lenten Sunday

This is what you signed up for: a life of radical inconvenience.

- Rev. Don Lee

Reversal

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A 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 can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good.

- C. S. Lewis

Enticement

There is a certain illusionary quality of the reality we're limited to by our senses. I think the enemy uses this fact to his advantage with great success. What seems to us good and perfect, sweet and innocent, nourishing and renewing, can in reality be the road to death. We can be enchanted, persuaded, and ultimately deceived that wrong is right; that a little is alright, so long as it does not turn into a lot. A minor indulgence here, and the pain will be salved. All the wrong in our world, we are so shrewdly and passively convinced, could be changed to right with the addition or subtraction of one little thing, or one particular person, or one elusive time and place. The coercion is applied by our enemy as a sweet longing. We begin to tell ourselves that the wrong we yearn to call right is innocent. Horrifically, we begin to believe that it is somehow made pure by the assertion that we deserve it. We didn't get it - what we expected - how, when, and where we expected it, or enough of it, so we swallow whole the lie that in this unlawful context in which it is presented, the righteous thing to do is take it: a trivial indulgence. Wrong will never turn into right, no matter the circumstance. This existence, this reality and its illusionary tendencies, would fool and shipwreck even this fool, were it not for beacons of light blazing brightly from the shore.

Proverbs XVI:32

It is better to be patient than powerful; it is better to have self-control than to conquer a city.

It's the Thought that Counts

For all our offerings, whether of music or martyrdom, are like the intrinsically worthless present of a child, which a father values indeed, but values only for the intention.

- C. S. Lewis

The Judge of All Hearts

Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices...Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends.

- C. S. Lewis

Men of God

There is no one without faults, not even men of God. They are men of God not because they are faultless, but because they know their own faults, they strive against them, they do not hide them, and are ever ready to correct themselves.

- Mohandas Gandhi

Captivating

An evil man is held captive by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self-control; he will be lost because of his incredible folly.

- Proverbs 5: 22-23

Flame

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.

- George MacDonald

Our Journey Home

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God witholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and [place] an obstacle [against] our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasent inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

- C. S. Lewis

Dear Conscience and Will,

There is a thing wonderful and admirable in the parables, not readily grasped, but specially indicated by the Lord himself--their unintelligibility to the mere intellect. They are addressed to the conscience and not to the intellect, to the will and not to the imagination. They are strong and direct but not definite. They are not meant to explain anything, but to rouse a man to the feeling, 'I am not what I ought to be, I do not the thing I ought to do!' Many maundering interpretations may be given by the wise, with plentiful loss of labour, while the child who uses them for the necessity of walking in the one path will constantly receive light from them. The greatest obscuration of the words of the Lord, as of all true teachers, comes from those who give themselves to interpret rather than do them. Theologians have done more to hide the gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries. It was not for our understandings, but our will, that Christ came. He who does that which he sees, shall understand; he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness.

- George MacDonald

Lewis and MacDonald Part V: Those Who Seek Find

Moved by a desire to change the subject, I asked why
the Solid People, since they were full of love, did not go
down into Hell to rescue the Ghosts. Why were they
content simply to meet them on the plain? One would
have expected a more militant charity.

'Ye will understand that better, perhaps before ye go,'
said he. 'In the meantime, I must tell ye they have come
further for the sake of the Ghosts than ye can understand.
Every one of us lives only to journey further and further
into the mountains. Every one of us has interrupted that
journey and retracted immeasurable distances to come
down today on the mere chance of saving some Ghost.
Of course it is also a joy to do so, but ye cannot blame us
for that! And it would be no use to come further even if it
were possible. The sane would do no good if they made
themselves mad to help madmen.'

'But what of the poor Ghosts who never get into the
omnibus at all?'

'Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are
only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to
God, "Thy will be done," and to those whom God says,
in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose
it. Without that self-choice there could 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.'

Lewis and MacDonald Part IV: The Subtlest of All the Snares

He was silent for a few minutes, and then began again.

'Ye'll understand, there are innumerable forms of this
choice. Sometimes forms that one hardly thought of at all
on Earth. There was a creature that came here not long ago
and went back - Sir Archibald they called him. In his
earthly life he'd been interested in nothing but Survival [i.e., Life After Death].
He'd written a whole shelf-full of books about it. He
began by being philosophical, but in the end he took up
Psychical Research. It grew to be his only occupation -
experimenting, lecturing, running a magazine. And trav-
elling too: digging out queer stories among Tibetan
lamas and being initiated into brotherhoods in Central
Africa. Proofs - and more proofs - and then more proofs
again - were what he wanted. It drove him mad if ever he
saw anyone taking an interest in anything else. He got
into trouble during one of your wars for running up and
down the country telling them not to fight because it
wasted a lot of money that ought to be spent on Research.
Well, in good time, the poor creature died and came here:
and there was no power in the universe would have pre-
vented him staying and going on to the mountains. But do
ye think that did him any good? This country was no use
to him at all. Everyone here had "survived" already.
Nobody took the least interest in the question. There was
nothing more to prove. His occupation was clean gone.
Of course if he would only have admitted that he'd mis-
taken the means for the end and had a good laugh at him-
self he could have begun all over again like a little child
and entered into joy. But he would not do that. He cared
nothing about joy. In the end he went away.'

'How fantastic!' said I.

'Do ye think so?' said the Teacher with a piercing
glance. 'It is nearer to such as you than ye think.
There have been men before now who got so interested in prov-
ing the existence of God that they came to care nothing
for God Himself...as if the good Lord had nothing to do
but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in
spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to
Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never
know a lover of books that with all his first editions and
signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an
organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It
is the subtlest of all the snares.'

Lewis and MacDonald Part III: Heaven and Hell Are Only States of Mind?

'Is that not very hard, Sir?'

'I mean, that is the real sense of what they will say. In
the actual language of the Lost, the words will be differ-
ent, no doubt. One will say he has always served his
country right or wrong; and another that he has sacrificed
everything to his Art; and some that they've never been
taken in, and some that, thank God, they've always
looked after Number One, and nearly all, that, at least
they've been true to themselves.'

'And the Saved?'

'Ah, the Saved...what happens to them is best
described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when
they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they
look back, to have been a well; and where present experi-
ence saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records
that the pools were full of water.'

'Then those people are right to say that Heaven and
Hell are only states of mind?'

'Hush,' he said sternly. 'Do not blaspheme. Hell is a
state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every
state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the crea-
ture within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end,
Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is real-
ity itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can
be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable
remains.'

'But there is a real choice after death? My Roman
Catholic friends would be surprised, for to them the souls in
Purgatory are already saved. And my Protestant friends
would like it no better, for they'd say that the tree lies as it falls.'

'They're both right, maybe. Do not fash yourself with
such questions. Ye cannot fully understand the relations
of choice and Time till you are beyond both. And ye were
not brought here to study such curiosities. What concerns
you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch
them making.'

'Well, Sir,' I said, 'That also needs explaining. What do
they choose, these souls who go back (I have yet seen no
others)? And how can they choose it?'

'Milton was right,' said my Teacher. 'The choice of
every lost soul can be expressed in the words "Better to
reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." There is always
something they insist on keeping even at the price of mis-
ery. There is always something they prefer to joy - that is,
to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that
would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was
sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life
it has a hundred fine names - Achilles' wrath and Corio-
lanus' grandeur, Revenge and Injured Merit and Self-
Respect and Tragic Greatness and Proper Pride.'

'Then is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir?
Through mere sensuality?'

'Some are, no doubt. The sensualist, I'll allow ye,
begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one.
His sin is the less. But the time comes on when, though
the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer
and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come
that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unap-
peasable lust and would not have it taken from him. He'd
fight to death to keep it. He'd like well to be able to
scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he'd rather
itch than not.'

Lewis and MacDonald Part II: Heaven and Hell Work Backwards

'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they
leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To
any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had bet-
ter not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye
understand.' (Here he smiled at me.) 'Ye can call it the
Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay
here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can
call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the
Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will
have been Hell even from the beginning.'

I suppose he saw that I looked puzzled, for presently
he spoke again.

'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand
eternity: when Anodos looked through the door of the
Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some
likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they
are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley
but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those
who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all
their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to
have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They
say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make
up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will
work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.
And some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this
and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how
damnation will spread back and back into their past and
contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin
even before death. The good man's past begins to change so
that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the
quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to
his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is
why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the
twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say
"We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the
Lost, "We are always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'

Lewis and MacDonald Part I: An Imagined Meeting

What follows is the first post in a series of excerpts from C. S. Lewis' novel The Great Divorce. These excerpts represent my favorite part of the book. The body of excerpts is a fictional account of Lewis meeting his "Master" "Teacher" for the first time. In reality, Lewis never met MacDonald during his natural life. If I remember right, MacDonald died before Lewis was born.

One thing that's so entertaining to me about this part of the story is that this meeting must have been something that Lewis desperately longed for in vain. When faced with the impossibility of a real meeting, Lewis made use of his vivid imagination, sharp intellect, unique scope of theology, and avid reverence of MacDonald and the quality of his writings to conjure up his idea of what a meeting between the two might be like. The other, more significant, part of this excerpt that makes it my favorite is the treatment of the topic that the two characters are discussing: Heaven and Hell. Those two places, after all, are what the book is primarily about.

The following dialogue takes place after Lewis, who's character began the story by riding a bus out of Hell (a.k.a. the grey town) and onto the plains of Heaven, begins to feel the effects of the ultimate reality of Heaven on his shadowy Ghostly form. Lewis' character clumsily and sometimes painfully stumbles around the plain for some time before coming face to face with the guide assigned to him to aid in the journey to the mountains of "Deep Heaven", George MacDonald. Without further delay, here is excerpt I:

'I don't know you, Sir,' said I, taking my seat beside
him.

'My name is George,' he answered. 'George Mac-
Donald.'

'Oh!' I cried. 'Then you can tell me! You at least will
not deceive me.' Then, supposing that these expressions
of confidence needed some explanation, I tried, trembling
to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I
tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead
Station when I first bought a copy of Phantastes (being
then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the
first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the
New Life. I started to confess how long that Life had
delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly
and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom
had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard
I had tried not to see that the true name of the quality
which first met me in his books is Holiness. He laid his
hand on mine and stopped me.

'Son,' he said, 'Your love - all love - is of inexpressible
value to me. But it may save precious time' (here he sud-
denly looked very Scotch) 'if I inform ye that I am already
well acquianted with these biographical details. In fact, I
have noticed that your memory misleads you in one or
two particulars.'

'Oh!' said I, and became still.
'Ye had started,' said my Teacher, 'to talk of something
more profitable.'

'Sir,' said I, 'I had almost forgotten it, and I have no
anxiety about the answer now, though I have still a
curiosity. It is about these Ghosts. Do any of them stay?
Can they stay? Is any real choice offered them? How
do they come to be here?'

'Did ye never hear of the Refrigerium? A man with
your advantages might have read of it in Prudentius, not
to mention Jeremy Taylor.'

'The name is familiar, Sir, but I'm afraid I've forgotten
what it means.'

'It means that the damned have holidays - excursions,
ye understand.'

'Excursions to this country?'

'For those that will take them. Of course most of the
silly creatures don't. They prefer taking trips back to
Earth. They go and play tricks on the poor daft women ye
call mediums. They go and try to assert their ownership
of some house that once belonged to them: and then ye
get what's called a Haunting. Or they go to spy on their
children. Or literary ghosts hang about public libraries to
see if anyone's still reading their books.'

'But if they come here they can really stay?'

'Aye. Ye'll have heard that the emperor Trajan did.'

'But I don't understand. Is judgement not final? Is
there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?'

The Classical, Ancient, Unoriginal Ethic of Christ

A Christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus uttered no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese texts. We have long recognized that truth with rejoicing. Our faith is not pinned on a crank.

- C. S. Lewis

Gratitude

Double major crazy mad props to the lady of the house for the will and skill to meld the best of two templates together and make this blog the best that it can be: Respect.

There is no Business Parallel

It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not; it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts grievous wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not.

- George MacDonald

Self Defense

When men speak ill of you, live so as nobody may believe them.

- Plato

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

...to try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good - remembering well the [plank] and the [speck]; that the time for speaking comes rarely, [that] the time for being [good] never departs.

- George MacDonald

Born on the Wild (hill-)Side

But the rejoicing in heaven is greatest over the sheep that has wandered the farthest - perhaps was born on the wild hill-side, and not in the fold at all. For such a prodigal, the elder brother in heaven prays thus - "Lord, think about my poor brother more than about me, for I know thee, and am at rest in thee. I am with thee always."

- George MacDonald

It Is Better to Forget About Yourself Altogether

How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. Any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good--above all, that we are better than someone else--I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

- C. S. Lewis

The Untuned Tuner

Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business - namely, his own character and conduct. Were it possible - an absurd supposition - that the world should thus be righted from the outside, it would yet be impossible for the man who had contributed to the work, remaining what he was, ever to enjoy the perfection of the result; himself not in tune with the organ he had tuned, he must imagine it still a distracted, jarring instrument.

- George MacDonald

Not Feeling Fond of Him

...something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head.

It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible...we must try to feel about [our] enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.

- C. S. Lewis

Lover of Truth

Do you so love truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself - an exposure that may redound the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble?...Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?

- George MacDonald

Like an Illness

The great thing with unhappy times is to take them bit by bit, hour by hour, like an illness. It is seldom the present, the exact present, that is unbearable.

- C. S. Lewis

Tenfold Consciousness of Being

For, when we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear, -- a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them. The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with tenfold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life the men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first are they fully themselves. The avaricious, weary, selfish, suspicious old man shall have passed away. The young, ever young self, will remain. That which they thought themselves shall have vanished: that which they felt themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain -- remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.

- George MacDonald

Let Go

The fear of loss is a path to the dark side...Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

- Yoda

The Only Way

If thou art not willing that God should have his way with thee, then, in the name of God, be miserable--till thy misery drive thee to the arms of the Father.... If God has a way, then that is the only way. Every little thing in which you would have your own way, has a mission for your redemption; and he will treat you as a naughty child until you take your Father's way for yours.

- George MacDonald

"Bad" Pleasures

But aren't there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them "bad pleasures" I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean "pleasures snatched by unlwaful acts." It is the stealing of the apple that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. That does not palliate the stealing. It makes it worse. There is sacrilege in theft. We have abused a holy thing.

- C. S. Lewis

Flagship

I am re-posting this, the first post ever added to this blog, as a reminder to myself. It was entitled "Creeping Christians":

We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments...Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self.

- George MacDonald

This post is the namesake of this blog, the flagship post, if you will. The quote is from a C. S. Lewis book where the author compiled different sayings and excerpts from one of his most favorite Christian authors, George MacDonald. This quote seems to me to be talking about how Christians look at others to determine how well they are doing in their attempt to follow Christ. It reminds me of the passage in Scripture where Jesus instructs us to take the plank out of our own eye before trying to help our brother get the speck out of his.

The term "creeping christian" hung in my mind for a while after reading this quote for the first time. When no matches came back during the blog naming process, I ran with it. The term makes me think that if we were better at looking to Christ instead of our circumstances (by the way, I don't really know how to do that, although I do believe it's possible), instead of wallowing in the fact that we sinned instead of repenting it and making the necessary amends as best we can , we would grow spiritually at a faster rate than we are right now. Many people because they judge what they see their brother doing against what they have done end up only creeping along, because they are most often judging their own life against another frail human, instead of THE example, what MacDonald calls "the footprint of the Master." I think Christians are too critical of others. Too often we criticize those walking closest to us, not realizing that we are defacing the image of God in ourselves, and calling the standard that we judge our neighbors by "God's example" when in reality it is just what we mistakenly think to be His example.

A Difficult Reminder

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

- Matthew 5:43-48

*****************

But the question must be put to each man by himself, "Is my neighbour indeed my enemy, or am I my neighbour's enemy, and so take him to be mine?--awful thought! Or, if he be mine, am not I his? Am I not refusing to acknowledge the child of the kingdom within his bosom, so killing the child of the kingdom within my own?" Let us claim for ourselves no more indulgence than we give to him. Such honesty will end in severity at home and clemency abroad. For we are accountable for the ill in ourselves, and have to kill it; for the good in our neighbour, and have to cherish it. He only, in the name and power of God, can kill the bad in him; we can cherish the good in him by being good to it across all the evil fog that comes between our love and his good.

Nor ought it to be forgotten that this fog is often the result of misapprehension and mistake, giving rise to all kinds of indignations, resentments, and regrets. Scarce anything about us is just as it seems, but at the core there is truth enough to dispel all falsehood and reveal life as unspeakably divine. O brother, sister, across this weary fog, dim-lighted by the faint torches of our truth-seeking, I call to the divine in thee, which is mine, not to rebuke thee, not to rouse thee, not to say "Why hatest thou me?" but to say "I love thee; in God's name I love thee." And I will wait until the true self looks out of thine eyes, and knows the true self in me.

But in the working of the Divine Love upon the race, my enemy is doomed to cease to be my enemy, and to become my friend. One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once; one hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing His yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating.

- George MacDonald

Master Plan

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

- C. S. Lewis