The Crowd and Originality

Society always moves as a unit. Each generation views itself as original and well thought.

Each generation is original but it has no understanding of itself. C.S. Lewis spoke of the need of reading old books.

It is not that there are no errors in old books, but the errors of that day are different than our day.

The church almost always has a simplistic critic of its age. There are the hot button issues which occur in society which the church faces but only touch the surface.

But the reality of today is the most important issues the church should face are those in the church. Where is the concern for the poor in the church and were the concern for the oppressed?

Many people fled from conservative churches to find the teachings of social justice that Jesus expounds in the liberal church. But here the gospel of life and death which is of even greater importance is lost.

Error in the church is always like this it is a simplification of scripture. Scripture is always more complex then error.

All the early heresies were oversimplifications of the reality. Almost all errors are either a conscious or unconscious redaction of the truth.

The reality is the truth is more complex, more deep, more real, and more satisfying that the error.

The bible starts with in the beginning “God.” God is here and he has a word for us.

It ends with a warning to add nothing or take nothing away. In the midst of the two bookmarks is a richness which is deeper than any of us can understand.

The truth is beautiful and error in the church almost always an oversimplification of the truth.

The church isn’t impoverished because we have too much to say. We have not too much to say but too little.

If we said all that could be said we would not have the issues we have.

Post on Lewis and Human Progress

Humor as a Part of Theology

Laughter in the bible is portrayed equally as positive and negative. The role is based on context.

God is one who laughs at the folly of men. Jesus promises to bring the oppressed laughter.

There is laughter which is linked to unbelief and thus put into a negative context. But you see that laughter in and of it is good.

Its connection to the fall at times has turned it into an ugly thing, but in its nature there is nothing wrong with laughter.

There are those in the church which seem to have lost the idea of a joke as having an appropriate context. The bible does not follow this viewpoint.

Ultimately the Christian life is about joy. It is about real joy though. Not some canned joy that the world provides that is here today and gone tomorrow.

God wants us to be happy, but not some fleeting happiness mixed with misery and pain. The problem often is that as C.S. Lewis says that "we are far too easily satisfied."

Paul counted all things as loss for the surpassing glory to come. Why? Because to see correctly is to see that real joy and real happiness is found in relation to Jesus.

The bible is concerned with the happiness of men. But it is concerned about eternal happiness and not in a quick fix here and now immediate happiness.

Importance of Silence in Life

There is a great importance of silence in the Christian life. There really isn't much spiritual growth possible without silence.

The great danger in life today above all other dangers is business. We are filling our lives with activity. We have no time to think about anything.

The refrain of our lives is tomorrow I will do that thing of which is of great importance. Do we really intend to do the good which we have not done? Or are we making an excuse to put off the God.

I will consider the claims of Jesus tomorrow. Tomorrow I will look into doing they good which I have left undone.

Really these phrases become meaningless as the years drift by. We all have the inner tendency to excuse our failures indefinitely.

If God is knocking at the door will we answer today, because he may not be knocking tomorrow. Tomorrow is always the worst time to schedule the good which needs to be done.

C.S. Lewis in the Screw Tape letters hints that the path to hell is often filled not with great sinfulness in life, but rather simply it is so bland, one just lives ones life with indifference each and every day never making those choices which are important.

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity quote

A bit from Mere Christianity:
“as St Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain Children in intelligence: on the contrary.  He told us to be not only ‘as harmless as doves’, but also ‘as wise as serpents’.  He wants a child’s hear, but a grown-up’s head.  He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim… God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.  If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.  But, fortunately, it works the other way round.  Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.  That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.” – C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis on Human Progress

C.S. Lewis about the claim that humans are making moral progress:

“For example, one man said to me, ‘three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death.  Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.  If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather – surely we would agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did?  There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact.  It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there.  You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetrap if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”

Hell

Another interesting (and truly scary bit) from John Piper:

Mark 9:47-49: "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.' Everyone will be salted with fire."

People often respond that fire is just a metaphor.

But why do we use metaphors?

Because we lack adequate language to describe the reality.

Thus hell is at least as bad if not more so than fire for all of eternity.

And then Piper quoted C.S. Lewis which I will paraphrase as follows: "It is more important that one man be saved than that all the classics ever written were saved from destruction."

And you know Lewis has a much higher view of the classics than most anyone. :)