So I’m going hiking this weekend and I’m really going to try and enjoy it. The allure that other’s feel for climing and walking and taking in the fresh air has somehow eluded me over the years, mostly because I’m such a nit-pick-whiner that worries about all the details and ends up missing the big picture.
The truth of the matter is once I do get outside and climb or hike or end up where I am meaning to, I always seem to enjoy it. God’s creation is worth more than a few early mornings.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how I represent Christ in my daily life. When I go to work, when I come home, when I meet with friends, etc. I want to find the right way to spread the light of the gospel and somehow not condemn or judge and further some false idea of Christianity in someone else’s mind. A relationship with God is so infinitely amazing and of everlasting importance - you’d think that simply speaking with sincerity would be successful, but it’s not always the case.
The truth is, I’m starting to believe that it’s that word: “Success” that’s screwing me up. As a Christian, my definition for that word when it comes to spreading the truth of God should not be a “positive happy reaction” from another person. The Bible gives no reason to define it such a way and yet we often do. It’s obvious why as well, it’s because we want to be liked! Yet I know full well that the truth is not always what people want to hear. To acknowledge that they’ve stolen, lied, blasphemed, etc and be convicted in the heart isn’t fun. We are all sinners, and it should bother us when we discover such a fact (or rather admit what’s so true). I really want to be able to be open and honest, and show a passionate love and not a rules-driven sect. Christianity isn’t about religion but a relationship with the living God, the God that one can not help but know exists in the very fiber of their being.
We have a men’s group that meets weekly to discuss our lives and more importantly talk about the sins we’re struggling with. It’s modeled after the concept of confessing our sins to each other and praying for one another. The “goal” as it is, then, is to simply share your struggles, develop strategies to overcome, and pray for one another as we face the next week. We’ve been having it for over 2 years now, and many in the group have grown spiritually even if struggles in certain areas still exist. I’ve been fortunate enough to witness men growing in spiritual sensitivity, as they learn to distinguish God’s will in their lives. Myself included. The consistancy of being around men committed to Godliness (though we fail) is a wonderful avenue for growth.
I think any Christian, man or woman, should committ themselves to finding a core group of people you can be close with and share your walk with. As a body of believers, we need each other to survive. There are no lonely believers. There are no hermit believers. They simply cannot exist, as the scripture confirms. We are all parts of one body, of whom Christ is the head. If we fail in our capacity the body suffers. We can’t go in alone, we can’t venture out in search of truth by ourselves. I can personally testify to the great joy it is to have a group of people to rely upon, share with, and trust. We dont’ call each other every day or give each other hugs and share tear-filled emotional moments, but are simply there as accountability and frienship.
One of my favorite authors and minds is that of C.S. Lewis, author of works like “Mere Christianity” and “The Chronicles of Narnia”. Some of his quotes are extremely insightful and thought provoking. Take a look at some of his quotes from various works:
“The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys…”
–Mere Christianity
“The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.”
–The Weight of Glory
“You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.”
–The Weight of Glory
“Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.”
–The Weight of Glory
“If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.”
–The Weight of Glory
“When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.”
–The Weight of Glory
“As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.”
–The Weight of Glory
“No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as ‘what a man does with his solitude.’”
–The Weight of Glory
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
–The Weight of Glory
“To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow’s end or the Greek Calends.”
–The Weight of Glory
“100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.”
–The Weight of Glory
“When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude…that you have a taste for middle-aged moralizing.”
–The Weight of Glory
“Whenever you find a man who says he doesn’t believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.”
–The Case for Christianity
“This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.”
–The Case for Christianity
“Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can’t really get rid of it.”
–The Case for Christianity
“Safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other.”
–The Case for Christianity
“Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed.”
–The Case for Christianity
“Badness is only spoiled goodness.”
–The Case for Christianity
“God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form…The perfect surrender and humiliation was undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man.”
–The Case for Christianity
“Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
–The Case for Christianity
“It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“Every poem can be considered in two ways–as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“The modern idea of a Great Man is one who stands at the lonely extremity of some single line of development–”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Disobedience to conscience is voluntary; bad poetry, on the other hand, is usually not made on purpose.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Reasoning is never, like poetry, judged from the outside at all.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Everything except God has some natural superior; everything except unformed matter has some natural inferior.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Without sin, the universe is a Solemn Game: and there is no good game without rules.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Lucifer] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“It is in their ‘good’ characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self- revelations.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“People blush at praise–not only praise of their bodies, but praise of anything that is theirs.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“To fight in another man’s armour is something more than to be influenced by his style of fighting.”
–The Allegory of Love
“The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”
–The Abolition of Man
“It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.”
–The Abolition of Man
“Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.”
–The Abolition of Man
“As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ’spirited element.’”
–The Abolition of Man
“A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.”
–The Abolition of Man
“The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct.”
–The Abolition of Man
“If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them.”
–The Abolition of Man
“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.”
–The Abolition of Man
“Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.”
–The Abolition of Man
“If we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity…”
–The Abolition of Man
“What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
–The Abolition of Man
“Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.”
–The Abolition of Man
“No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.”
–The Abolition of Man
“You have gone into the Temple…and found Him, as always, there.”
–from a letter “To A Lady”
“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done…”
–from a letter “To Mrs. L.” (50)
“…art can teach without at all ceasing to be art.”
–from a letter to “I.O. Evans”
“If the universe is so bad…how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?”
–The Problem of Pain
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”
–The Problem of Pain
“When we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.”
–The Problem of Pain
“When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary.”
–The Problem of Pain
“If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows…then we must starve eternally.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one…”
–The Problem of Pain
“The ‘frankness’ of people sunk below shame is a very cheap frankness.”
–The Problem of Pain
“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.”
–The Problem of Pain
“It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.”
–The Problem of Pain
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
–The Problem of Pain
“[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”
–The Problem of Pain
“We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”
–The Problem of Pain
“It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask.”
–The Problem of Pain
“[God] is not proud…He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.”
–The Problem of Pain
“If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved?”
–The Problem of Pain
“Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere “opiate of the people” have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.”
–The Problem of Pain
“God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.”
–The Problem of Pain
“No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.”
–Surprised by Joy
“To be discontinuous from God as I am discontinuous from you would be annihilation.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,’ said Aslan. ‘And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.’”
–Prince Caspian
“Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”
–The World’s Last Night
“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is…”
–Mere Christianity
“Nothing is yet in its true form.”
–Till We Have Faces
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
–Mere Christianity
“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?”
–Encounter with Light
“It now seemed that…the deepest thirst within him was not adapted to the deepest nature of the world.”
–The Pilgrim’s Regress
“Though I do not believe that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.”
–Transposition and Other addresses
“We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness…”
–Transposition and Other addresses
“It was when I was happiest that I longed most…The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
–Till We Have Faces
“There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”
–The Last Battle
“The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.”
–Surprised by Joy
“All joy…emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”
–from an unknown letter
“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“‘You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,’” said the Lion.”
–The Silver Chair
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere–’Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”
–Surprised by Joy
“Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices.”
–Perelandra
“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”
–The Problem of Pain
“If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will…then we may take it it is worth paying.”
–Mere Christianity
“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self…”
–Mere Christianity
“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.”
–On Three Ways of Writing for Children
“The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.”
–On Three Ways of Writing for Children (100)
“Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.”
–The Allegory of Love
“If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.”
–The Abolition of Man
“The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary colour in the spectrum…”
–Christian Reflections
“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike…Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.”
–Christian Reflections
“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…”
–Mere Christianity
“If we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at he bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.”
–’Notes on the Way’, Time and Tide
“When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.”
–Mere Christianity
“If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes…it cuts its own throat.”
–A Christian Reply to Professor Price
“Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe.”
–Christian Reflections
“A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid…”
–Christian Reflections
“The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.”
–Christian Reflections
“Morality or duty…never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.”
–English Literature in the 16th Century
“You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”
–Mere Christianity
“There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails…If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft.”
–Mere Christianity
“Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be ‘given’ in the facts of experience.”
–The Problem of Pain
“All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.”
–The Problem of Pain
“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
–The Problem of Pain
“The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.”
–The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
“Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.”
–The Great Divorce
“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
–The Silver Chair
“Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“[One] can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Human intellect is incurably abstract.”
–Myth Became Fact, World Dominion
“The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think.”
–Myth Became Fact, World Dominion
“You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humour while roaring with laughter.”
–Myth Became Fact, World Dominion
“The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction.”
–Surprised by Joy
“History is a story written by the finger of God.”
–Christian Reflections
“This moment contains all moments.”
–The Great Divorce
“Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?”
–Christian Reflections
“So many things–nay every real thing–is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.”
–Letters
“There are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious.”
–An Experiment in Criticism
“If there is equality it is in His love, not in us.”
–Transposition and Other Addresses
“Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.”
–Transposition and Other Addresses
“Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many…”
–’Notes on the Way’ Time and Tide
“Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.”
–’Notes on the Way’ Time and Tide
“The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.”
–The Screwtape Letters
“They do not get their qualities from a class: they belong to that class because they have those qualities.”
–’Delinquents in the Snow’ Time and Tide
“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…”
–Transposition and Other Addresses
“The true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end.”
–The World’s Last Night
“The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.”
–Surprised by Joy
“We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism–the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good.”
–’Hedonics’ Time and Tide
“Many things–such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly–are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”
–Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
“Conquest is an evil productive of almost every other evil both to those who commit and to those who suffer it.”
–Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
“The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.”
–Surprised by Joy
“Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions.”
–A Grief Observed
“The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.”
–Encounter With Light
“Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”
–Mere Christianity
“Looking for God–or Heaven–by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare’s plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters…”
–’The Seeing Eye’, Christian Reflections (150)
“Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion.”
–Miracles
“Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only ‘mouth honour’ and that decreasingly.”
–They Asked for a Paper
“Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated.”
–Letters (25 May 1962)
“Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“For whatever else the religious life may be, it is the fountain of self-knowledge and disillusion, the safest form of psychoanalysis.”
–Book Review, Review of English Studies
“The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.”
–Reflections on the Psalms
“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“The difference [God's] timelessness makes is that this now (which slips away from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite.”
–Letters (1 August 1949)
“Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it.”
–The Problem of Pain
“No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that ‘In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth’.”
–Miracles
“Though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God’s eyes; that is, in our deepest reality.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.”
–The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
“Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot form their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity.”
–Perelandra
“God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”
–The Problem of Pain
“‘Yes,’ said Queen Lucy. ‘In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.’”
–The Last Battle
“‘How can I step out of [God's] will save into something that cannot be wished?’”
–Perelandra
“‘Don’t you mind him,’ said Puddleglum. ‘There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan.’”
–The Silver Chair
“‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver…’Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. but he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’”
–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“‘Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared.’”
–The Horse and His Boy
“Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.”
–Letters (c. September 1940)
“Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?”
–Letters to Malcolm
“‘When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.’”
–The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
“Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author’s control.”
–Miracles
“The idea which…shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience.”
–The World’s Last Night
“To play well the scenes in which we are ‘on’ concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.”
–The World’s Last Night
“‘Something of God…flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.’”
–’Scraps’, St. James’ Magazine
“‘We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge–the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.’”
–Out of the Silent Planet
“These things are not strange, Small One, though they are beyond our senses.”
–Out of the Silent Planet
“A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers–including even his power to revolt…It is like the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower.”
–A Preface to Paradise Lost
“Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”
–Surprised by Joy
“You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to ‘know of the doctrine’.”
–Surprised by Joy
“Every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us…”
–Letters to Malcolm
“We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument…Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.”
–Letters to Malcolm
“…of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.”
–That Hideous Strength
“And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.”
–The Last Battle
“To admire Satan [in Paradise Lost] is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.”
–A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’
“The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence.”
–Perelandra
“Hatred obscures all distinctions.”
–’On Science Fiction’, Of Other Worlds
“Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”
–The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’
“The gravitation away from God, ‘the journey homeward to habitual self’, must, we think, be a product of the Fall.”
–The Problem of Pain
“All that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
–Mere Christianity
“Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.”
–Foreword to Joy Davidman’s Smoke on the Mountain
“The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe.”
–Mere Christianity
“[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.”
–Mere Christianity
“This act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall.”
–The Problem of Pain
“The essence of religion, in my view, is the thirst for an end higher than natural ends…”
–A Christian Reply to Professor Price’ Phoenix Quarterly
“From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.”
–The Problem of Pain
“At this very moment you and I are either committing [selfishness], or about to commit it, or repenting it.”
–The Problem of Pain
“The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.”
–The Problem of Pain
“Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”
–The Problem of Pain (200)
“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is the hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ.”
–Mere Christianity
“‘Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death.’”
–The Great Divorce
“A blessed spirit is a mould ever more and more patient of the bright metal poured into it, a body ever more completely uncovered to the meridian blaze of the spiritual sun.”
–The Problem of Pain
“For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.”
–The Problem of Pain
“What is outside the system of self-giving is no earth, nor nature, nor ‘ordinary life’, but simply and solely Hell. Yet even Hell derives from this law such reality as it has.”
–The Problem of Pain
“That fierce imprisonment in the self is but the obverse of the self-giving which is absolute reality…”
–The Problem of Pain
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
–Answers to Questions on Christianity
“In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.”
–An Experiment in Criticism
“In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.”
I just finished reading Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, the insightful, notably controversial book about Christian Spirituality. Let me first say I don’t see any reason for believers to disgregard this work. I heard tons of bad things around the conservative/fundamentalist circles about this book that I was near telling people not to read it without even looking at the book myself. I had a false (completely) misconception that this book was written by a faithless rebel who wanted to justify sin and a disobedient life and still sound smart. This book in no way reflects any of those preconceptions and I’m ashamed to have had them in the first place.
I don’t consider myself anywhere within the “postmodern” or “emergent” movement, but I am one who believes there are some strong benefits coming out of it. There are dangers as well, but I think provoking thought, growth, and discussion as many of the works of postmodern writers do, is a plus. With that said, here are my thoughts on the book as well as some of the quotes I found profound.
My first striking impression was that Donald Miller is a blatent and passionate follower of Christ. There’s no towing the line or controversial theological content to suggest otherwise. I had heard terms like “flaky” etc when this book was talked about, but I saw none of that. I saw honesty. The book is not much more than his honest and open thoughts on Christian Spirituality outside the realm of mainstream Christian religion. At times he sounds as much a visionary as the great CS Lewis in his writing, and other times amateurishly ranting on about topic after topic. This didn’t bother me during the read however because I didn’t feel like this book was writing to attempt to further some cause or crusade or agenda. It was simply some honest thoughts that I found reflected back inside of myself.
I highly recommend this book because it provokes some honest thoughts on why we do what we do. Those coming from conservative fundamental backgrounds can become caught in cliche and religion, and abandon the scriptural realities Miller reminds us of, primarily Love. Not conditional love, but the unbelievable unconditional love set forth by Jesus.
I would say the only danger in this work is somehow romanticizing some of flaws found within Miller or the many influences and people mentioned in the book. Many of his friends, who help Miller along his path of understanding God, curse, drink, some are even hippies, and all are greatly faulted like the rest of us. I’d hate to have the glaring benefits of this work overshadowed by these completely honest portrayals, but at the same time I know I don’t need to curse or read poetry or drink to be introspective and ponder the deep things of God. I don’t need be labeled or fit within a movement to love like Jesus and to love not just my brothers and sisters in Christ but everyone, impartially.
The overarching quality in this book is it’s honesty and it has the power to make you look at your own life, relationships, and religious routines and look a little deeper at life. I think Blue Like Jazz is a great work and look forward to reading some of Miller’s other works. It’s a great book for an open and honest discussion group.
I will emphasize this book is not a work of Theology, nor do I think everything he says is amazing or great, but just that I think we struggle so much with honesty that it’s a refreshing dive inside it.
Some quotes from Blue Like Jazz:
For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained. Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me. I couldn’t share something I wasn’t experiencing. And I wasn’t experiencing Christianity. - Blue Like Jazz, 115
My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and there are some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care. - Blue Like Jazz, 103
I was a fundamental Christian once. It lasted a summer. I was in that same phase of trying to discipline myself to “behave” as if I loved light and not “behave” as if I loved darkness. I used to get really ticked about preachers who talked too much about grace, because they tempted me to not be disciplined. I figured what people needed was a kick in the butt, and if I failed at godliness it was because those around me weren’t trying hard enough. - Blue Like Jazz, 79
I really think people need to slow down. Old farts told me to do that when I was little. That you don’t need to run around like a chicken with your head cut off. Be patient. Take things slow. Despite the fact patience doesn’t often find an adolescent, they were right. The old farts had something.
I’m not an old fart yet, but I’m old enough to realize that life isn’t worth rushing. We think that the faster we do things, the more time we’ll have. But we all know it just means that we’ll have more time to do more things on our list as fast as we can. It’s a cycle of activity that drowns the human conscious and muffles thoughts of higher things. And it makes me sad!
I believe it to be divine provocation that my mind naturally feels burdened by such a pace. I often have things to do or plans to make but I become desparaged and depressed with the monotany of it all. It’s not that the things I must do aren’t worthwhile or thoughtworthy…it’s simply that they’re not worthwhile and thoughtworthy enough. They don’t “do it for me” to put it bluntly. They last as a distraction most of the time but my mind is pulled away as though they were a toy I was tired of playing with. An old truck that’s been used until it’s tires fall off and the color’s faded. It’s utter discontentment despite utter provision.
I have all I need and at heart I’m truly content, at least in a worldly sense. I don’t desire fancy cars or a bigger house, more money or a better job. I have a great job, great relationships, a great school and a wonderful family. Not enough. Sorry. Doesn’t do it for me. Give me a fancy car and a big new house and it’ll last a day. Like putting a grain of sugar on a disgusting vegatable. It doesn’t really do that much when you want to eat cake. Perhaps it’s even a small hint of the cake you can’t eat, but it sure ain’t the cake. You have to eat the vegetable first. And it’s gross.
I don’t mean to construe an absolutely downtrodden or Eeyore-ish life mentality. I simply want to construe my inner longing for bigger and better, “out-of-this-world” life. To put it another less hard to understand way, my heart divinely desires to be home. All the time. And yet I must bear this world. I do not yet get to share in the eternal glory with my creator. To have vices dissapear and peace everlasting. I have to bear the world, for the sake of Christ. Is it a joy? When my hearts in the right place, when my treasure is Christ. But He’s not always there. I don’t always put him there.
I ask why I can’t find utter contentment, and yet I know the answer. I struggle to stay “happy” in a sense, and yet I’d be more concerned if I truly was. How distant would I have to get from heavenly thought to find this world good enough. I hope I never reach that while I’m here on earth.
Yet we all long for a hapiness that doesn’t end and isn’t burdensome. A happiness that’s not contingent upon personal needs or circumstance. Such a joy is found in my savior, Christ Jesus. When my heart dwells on his grace, I find peace. When my heart dwells on his love, I find hope. Who can find such in this world I ask? There is no peace like that which he grants, no consolation like that which he offers, and no hope like that which he bestows upon His own. Only in Him am I content.
My fiance’ and I talked about true contentment the other day. We conceeded the hard-to-swallow fact that despite how godly or perfect our relationship is, it can’t bring peace. It can’t bring consolation. Not the kind that truly nurtures the soul and breeds virtue. We can offer each other so much, but it’s always limited. How humbling a reality that was, and yet such a freeing one, knowing we both had to turn to him on our own. A conscious decision to live for Him and not ourselves breeds a purity of life, a hope unmatched. Worthy of my heart to dwell eternally.
So it’s been quite some time since my last entry. I’d have to say that it is due to me prioritizing things strangely over the past couple of months. School came to a close, work caught fire, wedding plans flew to the forefront, and well - I just haven’t made time.
I have however, been blessed with several emails over the course of the break, from people across the US and overseas with kind words to say about the blog and the entries. Thank you! That is always an encouragement, and it makes me marvel at the sovereignty of our King when I see that he can use a small thing like this to impact lives even a little!
The past couple weeks have been filled with reflections on the concept of “working” for God. Often times it becomes easy, I think especially when we settle for “routine” Christianity, to develop a “works” lifestyle. We can begin to associate our Christianity with accomplishing goals, such as church attendance, frequency of devotions, prayer schedules, ministry work, etc. While this is clearly not what should define our Christianity (though are natural results of a devoted heart), I have since been convicted of the dangers of such a mindset.
When we begin to “complete” works in an effort to “do works” for God, we have a tendency to associate our own power in our faith. We can begin to give credit to ourselves, glory to ourselves in what we accomplish. We take these “works” and our nature begins to tempt us to compare ourselves with others. We view others through prideful eyes and claim superiority in our faith by our works. A works mindset leads to pride, and leads to self-glorification, not God-glorification.
We need to keep afresh upon our minds the truth that the entire purpose of our salvation is the glorification of Jesus Christ. To Him belongs ALL the glory, not some, not most, but ALL. We are all equally unworthy, all equally depraved. When you really sit and think about it, how comical it can seem to compare the petty Christian “works” in an effort to define “holiness.” This has never been the standard of God. We are called to glorify God with our lives, our bodies - not “out-work” each other in a contest to be the best…tainted man. We are all in need of a savior, and to him belongs all the Glory.
This is not a commentary in an effort to escape work for the Kingdom, but rather a refresher for our minds. Let us focus on the fact our actions should be a product of our faith, our salvation in Christ. Not what defines us as Christians. That remains what it has always been. Christ.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” - Ephesian Benediction
I would like to call your attention to a ministry in need of our prayer and financial support. I visited a Messianic
congregation in Tel Aviv, Israel when I was there over this past summer. Dugit (Adonai Roi Congregation) are an amazing group of servants spreading the gospel through a land where it is dangerous to do so. Below is their mission statement, and you can read more about them here and download their PDF ministry flyer here.
Dugit is an evangelistic outreach center located in the heart of Tel Aviv. Staff members are available to meet with anyone who stops by, answering their questions and ministering the Life of Yeshua as they are led of the Holy Spirit.
Dugit also provides coordination for evangelism efforts in Tel Aviv for visiting church groups from all over the world. Instruction is provided on outreach methods suitable for Israel and Israelis before taking the group into the streets. The center is designed as a comfortable meeting place where people may gather to fellowship with other believers and also provides a resource for believers and non-believers who are searching for information about Messiah.
I must say I am profoundly startled by the immense lack of thought given to the afterlife. I am not speaking of Christians, but those who are non-believers.
I cannot comprehend some of the responses, quotes, etc I have received in regards to questions like “What do you think will happen if you die”
Some say “nothingness” - others say “well, i believe that everyone will go to one place.” or other variable responses.
The part that’s startling is that it *seems* so many believe that if they conjure up some form of thought about the afterlife, that it will somehow manifest for them. They base their philosophies on literally nothing, only things they’ve “thought up” over the course of their lives. They beg for absolutes in all other areas…won’t invest in STOCK A without the proper evidences of growth potential, blah blah blah. They won’t vote for a political leader, go to a certain college, even begin a relationship with another person without some form of research or consideration on their part. If they did, they’d be “illogical, irresponsible, stupid, etc” -
But when it comes to eternity, it becomes “willy-nilly, it’s all relative, anything goes”
Am I the only one that finds that insane? Are they really that busy to not give a measure of thought to the logic behind that?
I have heard “Well I think this…” or “Well, probably this will happen…” or “I’m not sure, but maybe this…”
Do we settle for maybe, probablies or relative thought when it comes to other areas?
“Yes sir, you’ll probably, maybe get better if you take this medicine, I mean, I think maybe you will…maybe you won’t”
Of course not! We want to know if we’re going to take the medicine prescribed whether we will recover or die. We’ll spend money, and invest time and effort to save our lives by finding this assurance.
But the afterlife? The Bible? These people get to “re-write” it themselves, with “what if’s, maybes, probablies, i’d hope…etc”
Well…I hope, maybe, that you’ll consider, if you want, that there’s a sad piece of missing logic here…probably…
I really think we need to start making a fuss about Christ.
I would like to take moral relativism, set it in the middle of the highway, and run it over with my semi-truck of absolute truth.
I want to smash up concession, and replace it with obedience.
I want to offend people if need be. I think we’re supposed to.
I’m tired of these hollow and deceptive philosophies…and I’m tired of tradition.
“…If i were trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Gal 1:10b)
Well I’m back and well jet-lagged!
The trip went extremely well - in all ways the Lord provided, and it was a wonderful experience. I will be working the next week or so on trying to get a bunch of pictures online here of the trip - as I took way way way too many.
Thanks to all who kept the trip in their thoughts and prayers - they were felt every step of the way.
I’m heading out for Israel early Saturday morning - and am including a brief itenerary, as many wanted to know where we’d be on each day. Please please please keep our group over there in prayer, prayer for safety on the travel side and just safety from injury / sickness over there. Thanks everyone! I’ll have plenty of pics when I get back…
———–
June 4 - - Traveling from US to Germany
June 5 - - Arrive in Frankfurt, Germany, depart for Tel Aviv, Israel,
June 6 - - Old Jaffa and Tel Aviv, going to the ancient port of Joffa, from which Jonah sailed. Touring old city, markets, and a coffehouse run by messianic jews, also visiting the spot where Prime Minister Rabin was shot. Free for night / swim in mediterranean…
Juny 7 - - Tel Aviv to the Sea of Galilee:
June 8 — Worship services at sites that were important in the life of Jesus
June 9
June 10 — Mount of Olives and Old City
June 11 — The Dead Sea
June 12 - New jerusalem and Bethlehem
June 13 — Free DAY
June 14 –
June 15 - -
So I was talking to Bri about this the other day, and now i am going to attempt to put all the pieces together on paper of what I was trying to say. Whether I accomplish that goal, you my decide…but I shall attempt none-the-less.
On the topic of conversion - we can know and assume there are a lot of “false” conversions around the country. People who have muttered words free of understanding, guilted or scared into committments they do not comprehend, etc. And while we cannot know the heart of a person, and their true place with God, there are evidences of conversion that we as Christians can use to guide us in that knowledge - for instance the scripture tells us “…those who abide in me will bear much fruit” (Speaking of abiding in Christ.)
Now again there are seasons (though there shouldn’t be) that we may not bear evident fruit, that the Children of God may be caught in sin, etc. But for the most part - Christians shall be known by their love, and their fruits - and this can serve as a fairly clear guideline for speaking to those who may not have been truly saved / put their faith in Christ.
The whole point of this post is to find somewhat of an idea of what “true” faith is -
True faith is faith that justifies (frees us from sin) ANNNND sanctifies (perfects / sets apart). Both! That is what faith IS - at it’s core. True faith does not simply justify and then fail to sanctify. That is not how it works - and when we see those whose faith does not convict and perfect and sanctify, we see that that faith may not be true! “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no Means! We have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” - (Apostle Paul, Romans)
I know this to be true in my life. Until I was 17 I had the faith of a man who wanted to escape the fires of hell but do NOTHING in this life for the LORD. I wanted fire-insurance - I did not have a true and salvational faith that both justifies and sanctifies.
John Piper, Pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church and writer, said “Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust” That’s what faith IS.
This understanding helps us to put together the verses like Romans 8:30 that says all who are justified will be glorified, but those who give themselves up to impurity will be lost, (Galations 5:21) those who do not pursue holiness will not see the LORD (Hebrews 12:14) - as well as many other texts connecting obedience and a pursuit of Christ-like behavior essential to our salvation. Why - because it is! Faith that delivers from hell delivers from continual-sin -
This doesn’t mean we’ll be flawless. It means that our fight will always fight. We will not “give ourselves up” to those things, because those saved, justified, are being sanctified through Christ.
Welcome to the Unites States of America, where there is plenty to do, even more to accomplish, and so very much to experience. A place where the American dream can be translated into early retirement, big boats, and care-free living. Where we work and work and work and play and play and play, all the live long day (and night)….
What a wonderful world of distractions. I often wonder how much a product of my own culture I really am. If global income was broken down per-person, each person would get a little over 5,000. American’s make over 35,000 per person - 7 times more money per-person than anywhere in the world. Over 1 billion people live on a dollar a day. It can be a humbling thought.
Are we really doing everything we can? I know i’m not. I shovel 28 bucks into an envelope every month and feel like i’m doing my part. But it’s not enough…and i’m certainly comfortable with my lifestyle. Heck, i can see myself living the way I am now the rest of my life. It’s such a struggle to become content with material things, worldly ideals. We often fail to keep it all in perspective.
As believers we’re called to be different, set apart from the world and everythign in the world. The world tells us what success is, beauty, love, contentment, status, power, and tells us why each is crucial to everyday. So sometimes we fall into the trap of simply accepting every little bit of of it just because we’re immersed in every little bit of it.
How difficult it can be to focus on his eternal kingdom - and not the one we’re making for ourselves.
“Therefore, I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?
“Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith?
“Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.”
Matthew 6:25-34
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