Posts Tagged: C.S. Lewis
“The Magic of Bothness”
A friend of mine said the following in an email to me this morning:
“Tonight there was this speaker at the event talking about, basically what we always talk about- love, connection, non-self, etc., and he talked about this Native American saying, ‘I am a pitiful relative.’ Meaning, I am beautiful and good and surely loved by HP, and yet… I am a pitiful relative to this world around me, because we all are at some time or another. He said they say it with joy and humility, not with shame or punishment. I think that’s really beautiful. I’m a pitiful relative. I’m also a really good relative. The bothness is where the magic happens.”
People are good, except when we’re not. The recognition of these two facts and holding them in a continual creative tension strikes me as being one of the most important human truths and tasks. If we simply emphasize the goodness, we will not take seriously the very real evil in even very good humans. If, on the other hand, we only focus on the evil in human beings, we will almost certainly become cynical. We may even become completely hopeless about human nature and human beings.
“Simul Justus et Peccator,” said Martin Luther. We are “saints and sinners at the same time.” And what is this magic that happens in the bothness of our goodness and our evil? It is the magic—or better, the miracle—of God’s grace and love. God forgives us of our evil and grows our goodness into maturity.
This is indeed “deep magic from before the dawn of time,” as C.S. Lewis called it. And this magic of bothness is the magic of accepting God’s grace and love daily and also passing it along to others.
May you and I live in and live out this magic every day!
“Doing What I Ought and What I like?”
The following quote is from C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters, a fictional collection of letters between a senior tempter (Screwtape) and his student/understudy (Wormwood). While fictional, I suspect that the book is filled with truth. Their “patient” is a Christian man who is dimly aware that his spiritual state is not what it ought to be, but he doesn’t want to face that reality. Here, Screwtape is giving advice to the junior tempter.
As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”
Lewis’ unspoken thesis is that, ultimately what a person truly, deeply likes is also what he ought to be doing. As exhibit A, I would bring forth my wife. She truly and deeply likes many things. I am one of those things, but just one. She also likes the following, most of which also benefits me greatly:
- Cooking and baking.
- Getting nice, thoughtful gifts for others.
- Working with ladies who are pregnant and in need of some help.
- Growing beautiful flowers.
This is only a partial list, but it gives you some insight into why I love her more every day. Even if (God forbid!) she should suddenly cease to be able to do all or any of these things, I would cherish the memory of her doing them. I believe that God would remember them and cherish them infinitely more.
Exhibit B: My Ph. D. advisor, Dr. David Firth. I connected with him at the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Denver this week, and I asked me how he had accomplished so much as a scholar. I can scarcely think of an Old Testament book that he hasn’t reviewed. The first thing that he said was something to the effect that a Bible scholar and teacher is something that he is, not simply something that he does. God has called him to be and to do this work. He enjoys his work for the most part, and he puts in from 50-55 hours a week in his studies and teaching.
All of us have something that God has called us to be and to do. It will probably be what we like to do, at least most of the time. Originally, the title of this post was “Doing What We Like or What We Ought.” But ul timately, in a well-lived life, what we are is what we will do, and we will do what we like.
“God’s Ultimate Rulership and Our Freedom”
Today’s post is adapted from an email I wrote to a former student. He was struggling with Calvinism and its approach to the Christian faith. I have changed my student’s name in order to protect his privacy.
My Dear David,
It is good to hear from you. You always ask really good questions that are not easy to answer. You may remember from our brief time in class at CCU (may it rest in peace), that I said, “I can answer any question that you ask, but my answer may consist of only three words: ‘I don’t know.’”
I have also struggled with Calvinism all my life. There have been times when I thought to myself, “I think the Calvinists are right.” And I still think so! At least I think they are partly right.
I believe it was Pascal who said, “Men are rarely wrong in what they affirm, but they are often mistaken in what they deny.” (I could not find the quote in Pascal, but I did find it attributed to H. Richard Niebuhr! So much for my memory. But no matter who wrote it, I believe that it is true.)
Here is the thing, David. I think that we all like simple truths, but the simple truth is that the simple truth is never simple. Truth always comes in twos—in couples, if you will. Since I assume that you are still moving toward your wedding this summer, I also assume that you can identify with the importance of the concept of couples!
Here is an analogy: in a navigable river, you will see marker buoys on both sides of the river. They mark out the channel where the ships can safely travel. Imagine a ship’s captain who decided that he must decide which buoy he should pay attention to. He would come as close to that buoy as he could. I suspect that, before long, he would likely run aground.
Calvinism, quite properly, emphasizes God’s sovereignty—the fact that, ultimately, God is in control. I also believe that this is so. If there is a God who created the universe, I suspect that such a God would have a difficult time not being in control, ultimately.
However, the word “ultimately” is crucial in what I just wrote. A God who is ultimately sovereign could still give his creatures free will. Such free will would be real, but exercised within the limits of God’s sovereignty, and such free will (and those who wield it) would ultimately be answerable to God.
The example is sometimes given of parents who want their teenage young people to clean their bedrooms. This is the will of the parents. However, the teenager can pit his/her own will against the parents’ will. And the teenager probably will.
But ultimately, since the parent is paying the mortgage on the house, there will be consequences to the teenager’s decisions. The car may not be available for a date, or the internet may not be available until the room is cleaned up a bit.
Of course, there are passages from the Bible that, when read in isolation, support either God’s ultimate sovereignty or human free will. However, my question is this: Should the Bible ever be read in isolation? You may remember that I taught you a saying which I didn’t come up with, but which I liked a lot. “Context Is Everything!” This is true of individual biblical passages, but it is also true of the Bible as a whole.
To choose either God’s sovereignty or human free will as our mantra is to take a couple who belong together and to forcibly divorce them. Very intelligent people have done such things, but this is never the way of wisdom.
I close this rather long response to your brief email with a long quote from C.S. Lewis. Lewis himself wrestled with the very question that is troubling you. I sometimes think that Lewis struggled with everything!
God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
. . . If God thinks this state of war in the universe [i.e., the war between good and evil, D.D.] a price worth paying for free will—that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings—then we may take it is worth paying. (Mere Christianity, pp. 52-53)
I hope that this rather long response actually gets at what you are asking.
“Learning in War Time”
What follows is an email that I just sent to my students. I think it may help you with whatever you need to do today, whether it is a Zoom business conference or running the vacuum cleaner. It has very few of my own words, and a lot of good thoughts from C. S. Lewis.
“Dear Fellow Students of God’s Word,
Old Testament Interpretation class starts today. Again I say, welcome!
I know that this is a difficult time to focus on anything other than news (or opinions about the news). I must admit that I struggle with this as well.
However, as important as what is going on in our country is right now (and it is important) it is also important to focus on other things, at least part of the time.
I had to turn NPR off in order to reread a sermon by C.S. Lewis title, “Learning in War Time.” I was thinking that there might be something in that might speak to our current situation. I was not disappointed. (Ladies, I am sorry, but Lewis refers to “men” several times in his sermon. I suspect that if he had lived longer, he might have begun to see the error of his ways in this regard.)
“Learning in War Time” was a sermon preached on October 22, 1939. The United Kingdom had declared war on Nazi Germany on September 1 of that year. Even some university faculty were raising the question as to whether or not it was even right to go ahead with university teaching and learning.
Lewis argued that it was more than appropriate to get on with the business of teaching and learning. Here are some quotes from Lewis’ sermon:
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. . . . If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life’. Life has never been normal.”
“A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”
“If our parents have sent us to Oxford [or Southeastern University, D.D.], if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life.”
“The learned life then is, for some, a duty. At the moment it looks as if it were your duty.”
“The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorourable. Favourable conditions never come.”
One final quote:
Lewis writes that we must practice “. . . leaving futurity in God’s hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord’. It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”
So, lets all of us get on with our work, with our loving of our families, with our ministries, our studies! Your instructor is, of course, talking to himself.”
“Intention Deficit Disorder”
” In the second place, many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Lewis is especially discussing the determination to live a sexually pure life, but his words may be applied to many other human endeavors as well.)
I have been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder. I wonder if I also have Intention Deficit Disorder.
You’ve never heard of Intention Deficit Disorder, you say? Me too neither.
I am reading a very old book by William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. He says many good, helpful things. I suspect that the book could be boiled down to one succinct statement: Intend to honor God in all areas of your life, and you will.
He makes an important point. Intention does matter. What we truly, deeply, consistently intend to do, we most likely will do.
On the other hand, there is a difference between intention, and I-was-aiming-to-ism. There is an expression which is especially common in the hills where I grew up: “I was aimin’ to.”
“I was aimin’ to do this,” and “I was aimin’ to do that,” and so on. The expression is generally followed by something that we did not, in fact, do. Years ago, a friend of mine got tired of her husband saying that he had aimed to do something. She said, “When are you going to pull the trigger?!” They are divorced now. Apparently, he never pulled the trigger.
Have I pulled the trigger when it comes to loving and serving God? The question answers itself. No, I take William Law’s point about the great importance of intention, but I don’t do anything with Law’s point. Who will save me from this deficit of intentionality?!?
A Catholic friend of mine said to me, many years ago, “Sometimes I think you Protestants make too much of intentionality. There are times when you have to simply do things. And they work because you do them.”
Yes! In my twelve-step meetings, we always conclude with the words, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it, and give a lot of love.” True that!
So, how do I do something about my tendency to intend, coupled with my tendency to do nothing? This morning before Vigils, as I was thinking about what Law wrote, and about my Intention Deficit Disorder, I was having half-a-cup of coffee in the dining room. I noticed a verse of Scripture on the table in front of me. It was 1 John 4:10: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The following verses go on to speak of our need to love one another, and that is very important. But for the moment, I’m going to cling to verse 10. The fact is that I don’t always (often?) have a pure intention to love and serve God. But love is, first and foremost, about God’s love for me and for us. It is not about my love or our love first. We can only risk loving (and love is a risk), when we know that we are already loved. Love was God’s intention. And God has pulled the trigger.
Grace: God’s Middle Name
Or is “Grace” God’s first, middle, and last name? Perhaps God is Grace from beginning to end?
A friend (who is also my twelve-step sponsor) sent me the following link: https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/opinion/grace-jesus-christmas-christianity.amp.html.
I am not sure whether or not my sponsor realized how much I’ve been struggling with depression the past few days. Specifically, I’ve been wondering if God’s grace is truly enough for me. I’m probably the only person in the world who wonders that, right?
If you ever struggle with depression at this or any time of year, if you ever feel like an outsider, you need use the link (pasted above) to connect with the article by Peter Wehner.
Who knows? Maybe God is gracious after all. Maybe this link will help to link you to this Gracious God.
“Balancing What I Need to Do and What I Enjoy Doing”
Have you ever said or written something, and then wondered what you meant by that? I had that experience just now. I was writing my daily e mail report and affirmation to send them to my sponsor. Here is my affirmation for today:
“Today, by God’s grace, I am balancing doing what I enjoy doing and what I need to do. When I do this by God’s grace, I am discovering that what I enjoy doing and what I need to do are the same thing.”
There are things I need to do—lots of them. They range from cleaning the bathroom, to taking care of the dog, to preparing for a class I’m teaching tomorrow at the university, to helping my wife lead our community group this evening.
And there are things I would enjoy doing. They range from taking a ride on the Little Miami Bike Trail to taking a nap this afternoon. (I will try not to do both of these things at the same time.)
In this context, it was the second sentence of my affirmation that struck me, and that I am trying to understand. Can those two things—what I need to do and what I enjoy doing—really be one?
I think that the short answer is, Yes! However, as with most short answers, this “Yes!” needs to be unpacked.
Can necessity and enjoyment be one? Yes, but the word “can” is crucial here. The unity of “need-to” and “enjoyment of” is possible, but not inevitable. We all know people (and some of us have been those people) who never enjoy anything—even things they enjoy! If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is. But we’ve probably all experienced that, either with other people or with our own selves.
In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has one of his characters (who is in hell) say, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” I do believe that there is hell. I don’t know if people are that honest and aware in hell. But sometimes, I do suspect that some of us occasionally visit the suburbs of hell. Any time when we don’t do what we need to do or what we enjoy doing, we are probably flirting with hell. And rest assured that hell will always flirt back.
And perhaps, on the other side of the equation, one aspect of Heaven is that those who are there have discovered a way to make necessity and enjoyment one. Perhaps the last stanza of Robert Frost’s poem, “Two Tamps in Mud Time” strikes the right balance, which is Unity. Frost pictures a man (himself?) splitting wood when two unemployed lumberjacks walk by. One of them stands to watch, and the man splitting wood knows only too well that the lumberjack is silently asking for work to make some money. And the necessity of one man trumps the enjoyment of another man.
But Frost ends with the following observation:
“But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.”
So, today, by God’s grace—and only by God’s grace can I do this—I will balance and unify what I need to do and what I enjoy doing. Writing this blog post is a first step.
DOWN TO EARTH BELIEVER
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- “The Process in Miracles and the Miracle of Process” March 11, 2024“2 Kings 5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. 2 Now the Syrians on one of their raids […]
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- “Delighting in Being Told What to Do?!?” February 23, 2024“Psa. 112:1 Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments! 2 His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. 3 Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures […]
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- “The Year of Becoming Un-Planked” January 1, 2024Each year, I try to come up with one word or a short phrase for what I intend to work on in the upcoming year. 2024 is “The Year of Becoming Un-Planked”. What?!! What does that even mean? So glad that you asked! Jesus said to his disciples, “Why do you look at the speck […]
- “Searching for the Noble One” December 26, 2023My wife and I were reading Luke, chapter 2 on Christmas Day. Luke 2 talks about the shepherds being told to look for this very special child—in fact, this King—in a stable. I prefer the word “barn”. I grew up on a farm. I know what a barn is. A stable is entirely too biblical […]
- “That Don’t Impress God Much” December 14, 2023DTEB, “That Don’t Impress God Much” “That Don’t Impress Me Much” (Song by Robert John Lange and Shania Twain) Micah 6:8 (MSG) “But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be […]
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