Longing & Vocation

One consistent theme that has run through all of our readings has been that of longing. Everyone feels longing of some sort, at least when they are young, although they may suppress it as they grow older. All of our longings have a certain sense of nostalgia or needing to belong. Cornelius Plantinga Jr. puts it this way: “We keep wanting to 'get back', or to 'get in'” (World 5). C. S. Lewis describes this phenomenon in a similar way. “We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it” (Glory 8). Lewis’ words emphasize a unique aspect of this longing – the inability to define it. Often times, we cannot describe exactly what we are longing for in feeling this deep emotional pull.

One way that longing is expressed is through art, through music especially. Often when listening to a beautiful song, the dominant emotion conveyed by the music is that of longing. It is natural for art to display our longings, because they are often somewhat vague feelings, and emotion is the medium of art. Lewis describes “the inconsolable secret in each of you…the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both”(Glory 3) These feelings, difficult to describe in words, can be more easily told through creations of art.

All of our longings are directed at some object, even if we cannot define what it is. We all long for something. As this is the case, the question must be asked, are there certain longings that are good, and others bad? Another way of putting it is; are there certain desires for things that are always bad, and others that are always good? Lewis addresses this when he says that, “Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses.” (Christianity 7) What he means by this is that an impulse, or desire, is not inherently good or bad. It is the context in which it is played out that gives it moral worth. For example, the desire for beauty, a good thing, can be destructive. It can lead to eating disorders and a preoccupation with oneself. This same desire, however, can also lead to a greater appreciation of the qualities of others and of the magnificence of God’s creation. In the end, the pursuit of beauty is the pursuit of God, because all that is beautiful is so because it reflects the beauty of God in some way. This pursuit only becomes evil when it is twisted away from its proper end. At their roots, all longings are good, because they all come out of our nature, but they all become twisted by sin, so that there is both good and evil that comes from every longing

Whenever our desires are fulfilled, inevitably we find that we are not completely satisfied. We may find satisfaction for a short time, but there is no lasting fulfillment. The longings return, because we long for more than this world can offer us. Lewis says, “Do what they will, then, we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy” (Glory 4). All is not lost though. As Lewis points out, “A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist” (Glory 4). The very fact that we experience these longings points to there being a proper object of our longing that will fully satisfy it. The longings themselves, as well as the intermediary objects of desire, point to their final end. Lewis puts it best when he says:
“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited” (Glory 3).
The true fulfillment of our desires shines through all the earthly things that we desire, which is why we seek them so fervently thinking that they are the answer. The glow coming through this world is shalom, or heaven. One day, when we are perfectly at peace with God, we will experience the true fulfillment of these longings. In the meantime, though, what are we to do with our intermediate desires? They cannot satisfy us, so we should not focus on them exclusively, but they must be recognized for what they are - expressions of our desire for Christ's Kingdom to be on Earth as in Heaven – and realize that they cannot be done away with. The answer to this dilemma comes in the form of vocation.

Vocation and longing are two important concepts that are not often linked, though they are integrally related. In Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga Jr. quotes Fredrick Beuchner saying, “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet” (World, 118). Our longings and our vocation are related. Each of us longs for the same thing in one sense, because only perfect harmony with God, or shalom, will truly satisfy all our desires, but each of our longings for shalom are expressed, or personified, in different ways. Some people’s deepest longings are for good relationships, and they may be called to be peacemakers, possibly as counselors, or as a good friend or mother. There are others who long for knowledge, and they will probably be called to teach or expand our understanding of the world. Personally, I long for good built-environments, so I am studying architecture. No matter what the expression our longings find, it is our duty to work to bring this world closer to shalom, through the means of our vocation.

If our work is an expression of our longings, then our attitude towards work must be quite different from the typical, dreary mentality of merely getting through the work day so that you can get on with the meaningful part of your life. Dorothy Sayers addresses this change of attitude in an essay titled Why Work. She says of work, “It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God” (Work 6). When we work, we should be expressing our longings by doing, to the best of our ability. In this way, we are bringing this world closer to shalom, the state in which everything will be perfect. We will never reach our goal on this earth, but it is our duty and privilege to practice, or play make-believe, until the day in which we will experience the reality of a perfect world that will fulfill every longing.

As Christians, this is an imperative that we reform our understanding of work, because it relates to our witness to the world. When speaking about a carpenter, Sayers says, “What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables” (Work 8). Jesus would have made worse tables because He was more spiritual than any of the other carpenters he was around. Sayers putting it quite starkly, says that we have “Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work” (Work 8). Sayers’ point is that if we are working for the Lord, to glorify Him, we should not be turning out anything less than the best our efforts can produce.

All of us naturally long for beauty, or a complete family, or something we cannot define. It is an innate part of our humanity, because we were made for communion with God, and we have lost it through sin. Our longings point us back to God, but they can also lead us astray. In our Christian lives, we live out our longings through our vocations, which is the intersection of working for the glory of God and fulfilling our longings by trying to bring shalom to this earth.






Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. Weight of Glory. http://www.calvin.edu/~pribeiro/DCM-Lewis-2009/Lewis/weighofglory.pdf. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.
---. Mere Christianity. http://www.calvin.edu/~pribeiro/DCM-Lewis-2009/Lewis/MERE%20CHRISTIANIT-%201-4.doc. Web 12 Jan. 2011.
Plantinga, Cornelius Jr. Engaging God's World: A Reformed Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Eerdmans, 2002. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy. Why Work. www.faith-at-work.net/Docs/WhyWork.pdf. Web. 22 Jan. 2011.

Divine Humility

The Problem of Pain is an excellent book, and the chapter contains so much that it would be impossible to summarize, in this short of an essay, so I will not try. There was one section though, that really struck me. It is when Lewis is discussing divine humility. He says, “He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.” Even when we come to Him as a last resort, or when given no other option, He still saves us.

Lewis' point in this section is that God uses pain to bring us to the realization that we need him. He accepts us coming to him because we realize we have “nothing better” than Him. We can complain all we want about the pain we go through, but God knows of the comfortable, that “The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.” Our complacency blinds us to our need for Him, so He takes away our complacency. This is part of the answer to human pain. It exists to be God's “megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The wonderful side of this though, is that He does not required a good motive from us. He accepts those who come to Him because he is the alternative to Hell, as the last resort, that same as those who come to Him because they believe He is truth. Lewis says, “it is a poor thing, to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping”. He goes on, “If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer”. That is the beauty of divine humility. Even in our admission of need we fall short, but God is gracious. 

Why Work

With no offense meant to Lewis, this piece by Dorothy Sayers is far and away my favorite reading of this class. The reason is simple, she expresses my longing and calling and frustrations better than I could ever have. All the while making them clearer and more distinct. I honestly can barely sit still from excitement.

I am studying architecture, and I love all things related to design. Maybe too much. I get excited over well tailored jeans, or a solid, well proportioned fork. I try to avoid Walmart or Meijers as much as possible because I cannot stand the cheapness. I think it would disgust Sayers as well. She says, “We should ask of an enterprise, not 'will it pay?' but 'is it good?'; of a man, not 'what does he make?' but 'what is his work worth?'; of goods, not 'Can we induce people to buy them?' but 'are they useful things well made?'”

Sayers argues forcefully that as christians, we should care deeply about the quality of work. The image she presents is that of a craftsman lovingly creating beauty, not for profit, but for the sake of the work. It is not that the worker should not be compensated, it rather that the motivation for work should not be the reward of profit, but the work itself. She says, “So long as Society provides the worker with a sufficient return in real wealth to enable him to carry on the work properly, then he has his reward. For his work is the measure of his life, and his satisfaction is found in the fulfillment of his own nature, and in contemplation of the perfection of his work.”

This is the opposite of how we moderns or postmoderns view work. For us, profit justifies the work, not the other way around. I am reminded of the medieval belief that banking was sinful because the banker did not produce any goods, so he must simply be leaching money off of those who are actually producing. I do not think that this is a correct or just view; banking is just as noble a trade as farming is when it is done well. The view though, that the product of one's work is more important than the profit one receives is illuminating.

I think that the importance put by Sayers on quality and beauty is key. If we really did everything as if we were doing for God, we would not settle for shoddy, ugly work. It is sad that we have “Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work.”

Vocation

I found Plantinga's chapter on vocation to be a difficult one in a way. The material was covered well in Prelude, so I understood his points about vocation, and I agree with them. My difficulty was that the entire section on vocation and education seemed to be a plug for christian liberal arts colleges in general and Calvin in particular. Now, I do not have a problem with plugs, but it did not seem to fit the message of the rest of chapter.

As I understand it, vocation means that we should serve God in all areas of our lives, trying to redeem every area of the world to bring the kingdom of God to earth as much as possible. In the section on vocation, Plantinga says that the Christian going to a secular school, “may expect to stand against these ideas without caving in to them and without hardening into pious anti-intellectuals. If so, they expect a lot.” Fair enough, being a Christian in a hostile environment is hard, but then he goes on to say that “if they expect to develop a mature Christian philosophy of life without the help of their professors – in fact, with the hindrance of some of their professors – they expect even more.” As students, we cannot be expected to maintain strong Christian beliefs with out our professors holding our hands? While I am going to a Christian college, and I do think that is the best thing for me, I am not expecting my professors to guide my Christian beliefs. To be honest, I know more dedicated, thoughtful, even intellectual christians that went to secular universities than Christian ones. I do not mean this in any way to denigrate Christian education, because I think it is a great thing, but to say that a well developed christian coming out of a secular school is some sort of miracle seems misguided at the least.

How are we to redeem education if we cannot participate in non christian institutions as students? C. S. Lewis himself was a student at a secular college, though he was not a christian at the time. Despite this, I have never read anything where he warns against students studying under non christian professors.

Man or Rabbit

I liked this reading. Mostly because it allows me to talk about one of things that most infuriates me, that being evangelism for the wrong reasons. It might be more accurate to say evangelism of the wrong thing. What infuriates me is that in much of modern evangelism, we talk about what Jesus has done for us, or how He has a wonderful plan for your life, or how he wants to bless you, but we do not say that we should believe simply because it is true. Lewis says that, “If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”

You can talk about how your mother has a wonderful plan for your life, our what LSD did for you, but that is not at all a reason to listen to your mother or to use LSD. Lewis says, speaking of whether Christianity is true, that “Isn't it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which [is true]”. In God and the Dock, Lewis says "I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity." Wanting good life is a horrible reason for believing in Christ. I do not think that having the wrong motives will keep you from Christ's grace any more that any other sin, but that does not make it right.

Sanctification will give us better reasons. Lewis as always puts it well; “We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.” To say that Christ is a means to an end, whether it is money, or social standing, or being a good person is despicable. I am as much a hypocrite in this as anyone, and I have no excuse. I hope that as I mature I will become more of a man and less like a rabbit. I am sorry if this post sounded like a rant.

The Inner Ring

In The Inner Ring, C. S. Lewis talks about what we now call cliques. He calls them inner rings. An true inner ring is characterized by the desire for exclusivity, not a common purpose. A common purpose is what characterizes true friends, so they will be exclusive to a certain extent because not will have the same interests. Lewis says, “the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like.”

Lewis talks at length on how we all naturally desire to get in to the inner ring. There are a range of reasons, for this, from wanting to be needed, to simply feel superior to those who are still outside. Whatever the reason, though, Lewis says that nothing good can come of it. In fact, he says that, “Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” This is the bogey man of peer pressure that our parents always warned us about. When someone who is in says everyone is doing it, then how can you say no if you also want in.

I have moved around a lot. Whether it is because of this, or for some other reason, I have felt the desire to get in to the inner ring a little differently than I think most others do. I could be wrong though, and this might be more common than I thought. While the desire to get into a certain ring is there, and it is strong, I have always wanted to be part of more than just one ring. To be outside and alone is bad, but to be in and suffocated by lack of variety is also.

In both cases, the key seems to be to search for true friendships. “The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters.” He who would gain his life must lose it. This seems like the task of a lifetime. I know I am nowhere close to breaking the desire for the inner ring.

The Wrong Reading

First off, I misread the syllabus so I thought we had to read the whole book, rather than just the chapter on Eros, so I wasn't quite able to get all the way through it. Because of that though, I read the chapter on Affection, and I think it really helps to understand what Lewis says about Affection when looking at Eros. Eros is almost always intertwined with Affection, which can make them hard to tell apart sometimes.

Affection is the love that a mother has for her offspring, but it is also that of the offspring for it's parents. It is more than that though. It is also the love that draws to completely different people together. It is the love of the familiar. Affection is somewhat hard to define because it is a “diffuse love”.

On Eros and Affection, Lewis says,”There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease of and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round.” The picture here is of domestic tranquility and the familiarity that allows you to be completely at ease. He goes on, “No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire.” This is not Eros, this is not the love that “enters like... an invader, taking over and reorganizing”. Affection is different from Eros, but it is as much a part of a lasting good relationship as Eros is.

Lewis describes this, saying, “As for erotic love, I can imagine nothing more disagreeable than to experience it for more than a very short time without this homespun clothing of affection.” I think you can see this in the difference between people who are dating, or newlyweds, and those who have been happily married for decades. The first often fit the of lover pining away at the thought of their beloved, while the long married couple might not even talk to each other often, but it is because the depth and familiarity of their love means they don't have to.

Redemption and Hypocrisy

Plantinga spoke beautifully on many aspects of redemption in the chapter of the same name. The thing that caught my attention most was his acknowledgment of God working through sinful agents. I have run up against the hypocrisy argument in talking with family members about christianity, and though I knew it did not invalidate what I believed, I was at a loss as to how to counter it.

What I mean by the hypocrisy argument is the idea that christians say you should act a certain way, and try to force others to behave the way they think people ought to act. Meanwhile, the christians are doing the very same thing that they condemned in others. The case of Ted Haggard, who as a prominent pastor promoted an amendment banning homosexual marriage and was a large figure in the conservative evangelical scene, despite seeing a gay prostitute and purchasing meth. I want to be clear that I am using this example only because it has been used in argument against me, not to comment on any of the political issues involved.

Anyways, back to the argument. As christians we often emphasize the moral law in dealing with non-christians, and for good reason, it is the means of convicting of sin and it “liberates people and helps them flourish”, as Plantinga says. The down side though, is when we so blatantly break all those things we have held up as the best. We cannot blame anyone for asking why they should believe hypocrites like us. There is the obvious answer that you can not tell the veracity of an argument by the arguer, that was covered by Bulverism. There is a deeper question though, that cannot be countered by an argument against bulverism. Why would someone who God had chosen act in such a reprehensible way? Plantinga answers this beautifully in a way I never could have; “the Old Testament shows a lot of sin and and other heavy weather inside the covenant of grace. The people of God display the whole range of obedience and sloth, piety and treachery.” God's people do not lose any of their sinfulness, but He chooses and uses them anyway. “King David himself – simultaneously godly and corrupt – shows us what God must deal with. God loves his people (David is “a man after God's own heart”), but God hates the sin that keeps dragging his people backward toward slavery (David nearly ruins Israel by his own adultery, deceit, and conspiracy to commit murder).”

The answer to the skeptic who points out christian hypocrisy is yes. We are just as in need of redemption as anyone, we are hypocrites, and so are you. To minimize sin or claim that the sinner is not a real christian misses the point completely. We must point out with Plantinga that, “what's striking, once more, is the persistence of God's grace”, not our ability to represent God or his grace, though that is what we ought to strive for.

Learning in Wartime

In the essay, Learning in Wartime, C. S. Lewis discusses the validity of the academic life while there is a war on. I found this to be a very helpful piece, since we are at war, and I have thought about whether I should be pursuing a career in the military rather than going to college. Lewis answers the question by putting it off. He says that war does not really change the realities of life. “But there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that – of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.” Since we will all die, the real question ought to be how can we pursue learning and culture when we are “creatures who are every moment advancing either to heaven or to hell”.

The gist of his argument is expressed when he says, “You are not, in fact, going to read nothing, either in the Church or in the line: if you don't read good books you will read bad ones. If you don't go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions you will fall into sensual satisfactions.” He uses his own experience in the trenches of world war one to support this, “that the nearer you got to the front line the less everyone spoke and thought of the allied cause and the progress of the campaign”. It has been said that man is a rational animal, but I think that it might be more correct to say that he is a cultural animal. No matter the circumstances, we always are creating culture, Lewis, as usual, says it well; “They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on a scaffold, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae.” Culture and learning are intrinsic parts of man, so they do not disappear when the reality of death is made evident.

I found it helpful to be reminded that we can not put off culture making until the world is safe, or stable, or good, partly because we never attain that state. We cannot perfect the world, neither can we eliminate out need for the unpractical things that make up culture.  

Zombies or Heros

There seems to be an inherent tension in our understanding of the fallen state, which is reflected in the chapter on the fall of Cornelius Plantinga Jr.'s book, Engaging God's World. This tension can been seen in the contrasting doctrines of total depravity and common grace. Plantinga writes of “a pervasive depravity of human nature, a condition Calvinists have traditionally called 'total depravity.'” But, “It doesn't mean that, in a corrupted state, we always choose the worst alternative. Even in a fallen world, ordinary people practice ordinary kindness”. We are completely corrupted, yet we still occasionally do good. This conflict has been one that I have struggled with over the years, and I have still not found the proper balance between the two.

At the root of my problem is the fact that there seems to be two equally true visions of man that are opposites of each other. Total depravity tells me that man's will and desires are inherently evil, which would lead me to treat everyone the way you would treat a zombie, because their natural tendency would be to tear you apart if they thought it would at all be to their advantage. At the same time though, common grace has given men the ability to do good, so you see examples of men acting selflessly and doing good. Of course, at the root of almost all good actions, there are corrupted motivations. You can see man killing for pure sadistic enjoyment, and risking their lives to save animals.

Plantinga explains the ability for unregenerate man to do good by saying, “God checks the spread of corruption by preserving in humanity a sense of divinity and the voice of conscience. To bridle lawlessness, God uses shame, fear of discovery, fear of the law, even a desire for profit among those who believe that honesty is the best policy.” It seems that common grave is mostly about external restraints. But this cannot be the whole story, because no external restraint could explain acts where one gives one's life. This must be the voice of conscience. While I accept Plantinga's arguments, I still cannot conceive of how a totally depraved person could give their life to save another.

Subjectivism

In The Poison of Subjectivism, C. S. Lewis argues against the delegitimization of traditional moral understanding. The root of this is, he says, the contention that reason is not valid. Practical reason, or moral judgments is mostly what Lewis is interested in. He argues that either one can have a absolute, rational morality, or none at all.

Lewis states that through out history, morality has always consisted of reason controlling the passions. This has changed. “The modern view is very different. It does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another.” This is completely different from the Aristotelian mean, or Kantian categorical imperative, let alone traditional christian understanding. The idea that moral judgments are nothing more than cultural products is a complete break from the main stream of western thought.

There are consequences of this departure. The most obvious one is that it is impossible to criticize any other culture. If morality is a product of culture, than one can no more say that it is wrong than to say that the dress or music of a society is wrong. Lewis uses an arresting example, “Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will.” He continues, “If "good" and "better" are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another.” Virtue can be nothing more than a fashion, which one can change whenever it suits, but cannot be said to progress in any meaningful sense.

Lewis sums up our position masterfully; “Either the maxims of traditional morality must be accepted as axioms of practical reason which neither admit nor require argument to support them and not to "see" which is to have lost human status; or else there are no values at all, what we mistook for values being "projections" of irrational emotions.” We either can accept natural law, or reject it and say nothing on the subject, because nothing can be said.

Show and Tell Video

The video I showed in class can be found here.

Natural Law

In the beginning of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis carefully puts forth the concept of natural law. Natural Law is the transcendent moral sense that all men have inside them. Lewis tries to prove that the natural law exists by appealing to his readers own feeling and experience. As he says about the reasons appealed to in an argument, “Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: 'To hell with your standard.' Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse.” When we argue, we always are trying to prove we are right, which requires that there is a right and wrong that we both agree exists. Lewis compares it to soccer, saying “there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.” This basic agreement on right and wrong is universal, crossing cultural and epochal barriers.

Lewis also points out that when we normally refer to the laws of nature, we mean scientific laws. A modern would say that newtons laws were the natural law, and our moral sense would be thought of as something completely different. Lewis argues that just as physical bodies have laws, our minds have laws as well. There is two great difference between the two laws, and one is “that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.” The idea that we could choose to disobey a scientific law is ludicrous, but we disobey the moral law all the time. The other difference, which Lewis does not touch upon explicitly, is that we can imagine a world that had different scientific laws, but not a different moral law. Think of Peter Pan, the fact that he can fly, and others the ability to fly goes against all scientific knowledge, but can all imagine it happening to us. If, however, Peter had been a coward and betrayed his friends and that made him good and a hero, we would find the story absurd because we can not actually imagine a world where that would be a good thing. Scientific laws are unbreakable, but not necessary. The moral law is breakable, but transcendent and unavoidable.

Sledding

“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” This terrifies me. C. S. Lewis has a way putting things so that they strike home, and this phrase from The Screwtape Letter's does for me. I think that it is because I have not committed many “big” sins, but am constantly struggling with all the little ones, or worse, not struggling. Thought of slowly drifting until the ground underfoot is so slick and steep that there is no stopping your slide seems much more of an immediate threat than outright apostasy.

The key to this is the unwitting nature of of the drifting away. It is not so much rebellion as mindlessness. Screwtape says, “He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.” To guard against self deception seems much harder than simple temptation, and that is how we usually fall. I think over the many times I have sinned, and I rarely think, “this is a sin, I will do it.” I am always justifying myself and refusing to acknowledge it is a sin.

How do we guard against the small sins and self deception? We can only do it through continuously measuring ourselves against our goal. God has given us milestones and signposts, it up to us to look at them. We can bath ourselves in His Word, and prayer. Community can self to pull us back. In the end, we must stay on our guard, and remember that, as Screwtape says, “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.”

Christian Desire

A common critique of Christianity is that it takes away all our fun. Many would associate a devout christian life with an absence of most of the things one would commonly do to have a good time. Over and over again, we are told to resist the flesh, which means the passions. A quiet life of prayer and selfless giving seems to be the ideal we should strive for. It is shocking then, that C. S. Lewis states, in The Weight of Glory, that, “if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.”

Having been told that our desires and passions are what drive us to sin, it seems strange for Lewis to say that God would find them too weak. He explains his position more by saying “We are far too easily pleased.” Lewis' position on the struggle against sin is this: We naturally desire God, so our passions would pull us towards Him, but because of the fall, we accept cheap substitutes rather than wait for our desires to be fully fulfilled by Christ. In his own words, “We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.” Our desires for money, sex, power, and intoxication are not evil in themselves, but have become twisted and have lost their true object. He compares our sinful state to “an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” There is self denial required of the christian, but it is only so that we will have infinitely greater joy in the future.

There is one objection to his position that Lewis mentions, which should be addressed; that is, the accusation that he is making christianity into “a mercenary affair”. This comes from the belief that “that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing”. Emmanuel Kant was one of the greatest proponents of this view. Kant argued that to do anything that is good, one must do it simply because it is good and not for any benefit to oneself, including the enjoyment of doing good. The desire to to do good for its own sake is the only virtuous desire.

Lewis responds to this criticism by saying there are two types of rewards for an action. One is a natural reward, the other as no natural connexion to its action. Money is not naturally associated with love, so “we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money.” Marriage is the natural reward for love though, so we would not condemn a man for marrying for the sake of love. Lewis argues that the rewards that a christian looks forward to are the natural rewards of following Christ, so it is not mercenary.

As christians, we should strive to cultivate and strengthen our desires so that they pull us toward their true object. “Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point.” Let us desire that.

All quotes are by C. S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory.

Creation

The Trinity is the most complex and incomprehensible of all the complex and incomprehensible christian doctrines. Three in one, one in three, clover; no analogy really seems to make sense. The best explanation I had heard was that of three distinct being with the same essence, but this requires a slightly different understanding of essence than when used generally in order to remain within orthodoxy. Cornelius Plantinga Jr. speaking of God's trinitarian nature in Engaging God's World, says “God has the endless dance of Perichoresis, the ceaseless exchange of vitality, the infinite expense of spirit upon spirit in superlative, triplicate consciousness.” This phrase made the concept of the trinity seem much clearer, and I will try to explain why.

First off, perichoresis, as explained by Plantinga, shares the same root as choreography. It means the mutual indwelling of each member of the trinity in the others. I think of a marching band continuously folding in upon itself and reemerging, even while each section remains distinct. It is not close to being a perfect analogy, but it does convey some sense of the dynamic interplay that is perichoresis. The most important thing, I think, is the dynamism conveyed by the word. I had always thought of God as static, to a certain degree, since his eternal and unchanging. I had not thought that his changelessness could by more like a waterfall than a lake. A waterfall does not change, it has a defined shape, but it is not static.

His dynamism, then, is what caused him to create. The Father is eternally bestowing his essence upon the Son, the Son upon bestows it on the Father, and likewise with the Spirit. It would be natural for God to create and bestow his essence, though to an infinitely lesser extent, on His creation because he is always bestowing it upon himself. The conception of God that I got from Plantinga is one of overflowing abundant vitality, which makes creation fitting, as he says. I would have intellectually acknowledged this before, but he made it seem so clear and obvious that it struck me in way it had not before.

Our English Syllabus

This essay is the first one in which I have disagreed with Lewis. He says that in university one should specialize in one topic instead of trying to learn a little about everything. He says of this composite form of learning, “In reading such a school, therefore, you would not be turned loose on some tract of reality as it is, to make what you could of it; you would be getting selections of reality selected by your elders – something cooked, expurgated, filtered, and generally toned down for your edification.” I understand his point, and I do believe that one should find at least one topic in which to delve deeply, but I do not think that one should neglect other topics after an cursory introduction to them.

Any selection of content made by another will by digested to a certain extent, unless the whole body of knowledge is prescribed. The answer to this is not, as I believe Lewis is suggesting, specialization. Rather, the student must hunger for knowledge and study on his own. The great conversation of ideas so much greater and so much more connected than any one course of study can convey. Whether one's formal learning is focused and deep, or broad and general, it is always our responsibility to continue to explore and learn the things that we are not learning through school. At least for me, the joy of learning comes when you discover the connections between disparate subjects and they each contribute to your understanding of the other.

I think that Lewis is right in saying that education is there to give us the breadth and means to learn and make connections. I differ from Lewis in that I believe that university ought to be a place where the student who wants to learn will be stretched and pushed to learn different things and in different ways than he would have on his own. Lewis, as I understand him, thinks that university should just enable you to study one subject deeply. Learning is good for it's own sake, so the aim of a university curriculum should be to help students to to learn what they would not have on their own, so that they have a fuller understanding of reality.

Yearning for Joy

Longing has always been a part of my life. I grew up reading the Redwall series, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia, and I was constantly pretending that I was someone else. I realize now that this imaginary play was how I expressed my longing as a child. The meaning of the German term sehnsucht describes it perfectly – a longing, a separation, and a yearning to be part of something that you cannot quite describe. Now, being grown (I hesitate to say an adult), this longing is expressed in different ways, but it is still there, as strong as ever.


Cornelius Plantinga Jr. points out in Engaging God's World that “what's remarkable is that these longings are unfulfillable.” No matter how far one goes to satisfy one's longing, it will remain. In the end, only God can satisfy our longings. Plantinga speaks of St. Augustine, and explains how we must discover, as Augustine did, “the one good that would not fade away, the one good that would not crumble if he leaned on it with the full weight of his love.” I think that our longing is one of the things that is best in man. Without it, we would rarely, if ever, do, say, or write those things which most ennoble us. Would we really care about preserving nature if its beauty did not tear our hearts with inexplicable joyful pain, or sehnsucht? Our search for beauty is really the search for God.

There is terror, though, in the promise of fulfillment. This longing is such a large part of us that life without it can seem dull and myopic. The joy seems to be in the pursuit, not the success of attainment. I think that this misconception occurs because all of our experience is with lesser things that cannot satisfy, so their promise is always greater than reality. God, however, is greater than we can ever comprehend, so our finitude can never exhaust his infinite joy. All of our longing will be satisfied, although as C.S. Lewis says, we will always continue further up and further in.

“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” - Psalm 16:11

Happyness

'But what could I do?' he said. 'A man has a right to happiness. I had to take my one chance when it came.' - Mr. A

The desire for happiness is one of the strongest and most destructive passions that posseses man. This is especially true when society affirms one's right to pursue happiness above all else. In modern western life, which is the only kind I have experience with, happiness is viewed as an almost unassailable good. The question, “will this make me happy?”, is used to determine whether one ought to do one thing or another. There are still things that may make one happy but are not condoned by society at large, the German cannibal who was discovered with human meat in his freezer comes to mind. There is one are though, where almost anything is permitted, and that is love, or sex, which is often what is meant by that word.

As Lewis says, “every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is 'four bare legs in a bed'.” The desire for sleep is at times to be resisted, as is hunger, but god forbid that anyone keep two lovers apart. Lewis replies; “Our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege. The sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which, if it had any other end in view, would be condemned as merciless, treacherous and unjust.”

Why is this one passion elevated above the rest? It is because it seems to offer the greatest reward for those who satiate it; lasting wholeness and completion. Inevitably though, it's effects wear away and one must find a new object of desire. The deference given to sexual desire is irresponsible and ought not to happen.

Resistance to the passions and the subjugation of them to the will and reason is one of the oldest principles of morality. That modern man has thrown that out shows our foolishness. Lewis finishes with the observation that, “The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives.” If we do not reject sexual liberation, we will have no right to reject the free reign of any impulse.

Our Friend Bulvy

 C. S. Lewis – Bulverism

In his essay, appropriately titled Bulverism, C. S. Lewis tells the fictional story of Ezekiel Bulver. Bulver discovered, when his mother refuted his father by saying that he was a man, that “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet.” Bulverism is perfectly displayed in the argument that those who support capitalism do so because they benefit from it and have been conditioned to support it. Since they are not disinterested, they must be ignored. Thoughts that are ideologically tainted are invalid.

Lewis points out though, that all thoughts come from someone, who necessarily must have a background and ideology. So then all thoughts would seem to be tainted. The bulverists “have sawn off the branch they were sitting on. If, on the other hand, they say that the taint need not invalidate their thinking, then neither need it invalidate ours. In which case they have saved their own branch, but also saved ours along with it.”

This is one of the fundamental flaws of bulverism. They must hold that some thoughts are tainted while others are not. This is not that different from the position held by most men through history, but bulverism destroys the basis for determining whether a thought is valid or not. The root of bulverism is a denial of the validity of reason.

If one says that reason is the product of ideologically tainted minds, then it is obvious that one would not argue using reason. Though, if rationality is transcendent, then bulverism is revealed to be obfuscation to avoid scrutiny. Lewis concedes that the mind is influenced by physical factors, as the bulverists claim, but argues that thoughts do not originate from the natural world. He says, “All attempts to treat thought as a natural event involve the fallacy of excluding the thought of the man making the attempt.” If thought is the result of grey matter, then it has no more validity to claim to be true than a rock. Regarding natural phenomenon, he says, “The universe doesn’t claim to be true: it’s just there.”

Lewis correctly notes that “All reasoning assumes the hypothesis that inference is valid.” He also says that “If we couldn’t trust inference we could know nothing but our own existence. Physical reality is an inference from sensations.” Again, he is correct, but here he leaves off. He has established the necessary structure of reason, but not the necessity of reason itself. Maybe the world is unintelligible.

If we take that position though, our thoughts describing the world as unintelligible would mean nothing more than any other thought, which is meaningless. Lewis has gone to the edge of reason and chose sanity, though not for its reasonableness.

Meditation in a Toolshed

I always feel somewhat silly discussing C. S. Lewis because I know I will never be able to express anything better than he already has. Discussing though, is not quite the right word, maybe analyzing would be better. It is not that discussing – or analyzing – his writing is unenjoyable, in fact it is quite the opposite. It is rather that I seem to degrade his thoughts when I express or prove them, because I do it so much more poorly than Lewis does.

In his essay Meditations in a Toolshed, he describes the experience of seeing a sunbeam shining through a crack in the wall, at first he saw only the beam, since the rest of the shed was dark. Then he stepped into the beam and saw out to the trees, sky, and sun. He compares the each experience with two types of knowledge. The first is a detached and scientific way of observing and analyzing, while the second is actually experiencing a thing, without scrutinizing it.

When Lewis is explaining the sunbeam, I feel much the way he does looking through the it. But if one begins to pull his writing apart and dissect it, the beauty of his meaning seems to slip out through the cracks, much like how one cannot glimpse the greater world that one see when one looks along the sunbeam. His point is simple; you can agree or disagree, look at the consequences of either position, explore how what he says affects our views of reality, but to logically deconstruct his argument for the value of experiencing to gain understanding seems pointless since he is convincing because he makes you see through the world, rather than see it.

I am not saying that his arguments are not logically valid; they are. I think that much of the force of his arguments come from their beauty, not only their logical validity, and you lose that force when you treat his writing the same way you would treat that of Kant, or Descartes. That is what I see mainly as the difference between looking at or looking along as Lewis uses them in this essay. While there is great beauty in looking at a sunbeam, I do not think that Lewis wanted us to think of looking at and along as the same in that sense.