As I am reading C.S. Lewis "MERE CHRISTIANITY", I have been profoundly impacted by the truths that are so often glossed over. A few thoughts that I have run across:
Final Curtain Call:
"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. That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. ..... All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to good digestion, will fall off some of use; all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises."
PRIDE
"According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind... it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began...For Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense....The first step is to realise that one is proud.... At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. It you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."
One more...
ONE BODY, MANY PARTS: Satan's Skew
"Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different from one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike: my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share a common life.... If you forget that (someone) belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, you will want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. A Christian must not be either..."
"(We have a tendency to point out to each other) - which of these errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled."
I am so glad that I have taken the time to read this book as I see it becoming a foundational book from which to draw deeper into the knowledge and love of Christ. I highly recommend it if you have not read it. I have almost the whole book underlined and highlighted. :)
You might find that you, too, could be a spiritual slug, moving about so slowly in your spiritual growth and depending on your good upbringing and good "heredity" that we do not work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We take on everyone else's faith and don't ever go beyond what is specifically fed to us by a trusted pastor, a parent, a good friend who attends church or mate that reads the Sunday School lesson before church.
This should not be.
There will be surprises. Of this, I am sure.
Oh Lord, please come quickly.
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3 comments:
While your Christianity may be a legacy of your upbringing (mine, too!)- in an all positive way - it is becoming more clear to me as I travel, visit other area churches on occasion, and talk with friends around Houston and the nation, that most evangelical churches (the kind of church I am most familiar with, of course) have become more "milquetoast" in nature with a much lesser focus on our historical God: one to fear, with horrific wrath, desiring a relationship with us, who will allow human recovery only with complete capitulation. Instead we continue to get taught a Trinity of love (true), given to material granting (not true), forgiving of all actions (not true, unless "complete capitulation" is subsequently involved, but this is almost never mentioned anywhere anymore), performing explicit miracles on demand (even to delivering parking spaces at the mall)(not true), and willing to provide anything asked for with little mention of the condition of the heart (not true). So the God of our parents and, probably more true, their parents, is not the God we hear of today, although that historical, Old Testament God is still here and alive and very well. Unfortunately, the majority of current churches focus on their version of Jesus, not complete, and certainly without a focus on His Father, which is another large piece of faith. It seems to me we have shifted from one polarized perspective with a centuries-old history to a very recent one that is equally polarized in another way. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle (although in this case Truth is absolute, but with a number of faces). In no way does any of this make God a milquetoast; we just seem to want to make Him that to better fit our society's desires. Our spiritual needs, however, have not and will not change, and the Trinity meets that in spades.
The theology that I grew up on as contrasted with the theology I have been enjoying to over the last several years has been exposed as "milquetoast" (ohhhhh, is this the correct spelling, Daron? Who knew?? I should edit.) to say the least. I had someone say to me one time that church history is of no concern of the church today. To me, it is of no less importance than say US history is to the current state of the union which is to say that it is of MOST importance. Those who do not learn from their mistakes are bound to repeat them. Why do we think that there is something new under the sun. Some of these same arguments have been had hundreds of years ago. Theology has to be studied in its entirety, not just the grace part or the works part, or the justice part (though I find that this is rarely punctuating sermons anymore as we are less likely to want to come back to a church which preaches something that keeps us from doing what we prefer to do). I have so mnay thoughts on this but perhaps I should do an ongoing blog posting on this topic in the future. I appreciate your comments and your perspective on this. I wonder what others have to allow on this as well.
Another note, my last post is not to presume that church history is the same as theology at all. Church history impacts our view of church and some of our forefathers have written some of the most life changing works that compliment the Word of God and flesh out in much more depth some of the same issues so prevalent in today's society that stems from lack of knowledge about God's Word. Why did they know so much more than we do? Did they have more time? Did they have less to do? Was it a higher priority? Things to consider.... Anyway, just wanted to clarify.
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