A reason for engaging cultural life

 If you attempted, in either case, to suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you would only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better. 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.

 -- from "Learning in War-time"(p52 of The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis)

Engage the culture - enjoy good music, good books, even good movies, but don't let bad music, bad books, or bad movies flood your mind.

Rejecting made-up Jesuses

Why and how would you reject this Jesus?

But I cannot apply to divine matters a method of exegesis which I have already rejected with contempt in my profane studies. Any theory which bases itself on a supposed "historical Jesus" to be dug out of the Gospels and then set up in opposition to Christian teaching is suspect. There have been too many historical Jesuses - a liberal Jesus, a pneumatic Jesus, a Barthian Jesus, a Marxist Jesus. They are the cheap crop of each publisher's list, like the new Napoleons and new Queen Victorias. It is not to such phantoms that I look for my faith and my salvation.
 -- from "Why I am not a Pacifist" by C. S. Lewis (p. 88, The Weight of Glory)

I hope, by this quote, people wouldn't misunderstand and think the historical Jesus is actually to be rejected. It is what we may in our days call, the reconstruction of historical Jesus that we must reject. It is the biblical Jesus, that is also the real historical Jesus we must embrace for our faith and salvation.

As a side note, it is interesting that, while Lewis himself had some theological problems, he doesn't seem to have had much patience for Barth.

All is gift

‘I know what he is thinking,’ said the King, looking upon the Queen. ‘He is thinking that you suffered and strove and I have a world for my reward.’ Then he turned to Ransom and continued. ‘You are right,’ he said, ‘I know now what they say in your world about justice. And perhaps they say well, for in that world things always fall below justice. But Maledil always goes above it. All is gift. I am Oyarsa not by His gift alone but by our foster mother’s, not by hers alone but by yours, not by yours alone but by my wife’s - nay, in some sort, by gift of the very beasts and birds. Through many hands, enriched with many different kinds of love and labour, the gift comes to me. It is the Law. The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own.’

- p. 266, Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

We always think we must work in order to get something. Even when we are given a gift from a friend, we often feel obliged to pay her back by giving her a gift when it’s her birthday. Or we feel that we deserved to receive that gift since we had been very nice to her as a friend. So when you see somebody who received things without working for it, or you think he received it undeservedly, you feel it is unfair, or unjust even.
We are all like that. The world has taught us well. You receive what you deserve, and you are suspicious of free gifts.
So the meaning of grace escapes us. The notion of “free gift”, which is a tautology already, is alien to us. There is no free lunch, the world tells us, and we say amen to that.

But the forgiveness of sins and in fact, all the good things we enjoy in this world are gifts from God. All is gift, indeed. We have never deserved it, and will never deserve it. Who of us can claim that we toiled to make ourselves be born into this world? Who of us can claim that we earned our ways into the Kingdom of God? We are given the wonderfully bright mornings by God’s sheer grace, and we are given the seasonal rains by His grace. We are forgiven by His grace and we are accepted and taken into the relationship with Him by His grace. Was there any price involved? Any hidden costs? Cost indeed incurred. God has sent His Son into the world of sinners, and He died at the cross to pay for our sins. It cost God. But since He paid for it, we receive it freely. All is gift. It cost God to give us this gift, but for us it is free as we receive it. And what a gift it is. To know and to live with the rightful King of all ages, to love and to be loved by the Creator of the universe. There is no better gift that we could have ever imagined.

How could there be anything that I did not want?

'What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or a setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished - if it were possible to wish - you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.'
Ransom interrupted. 'That is hardly the same thing as finding a stranger when you wanted your husband.'
'Oh, that is how I came to understand the whole thing. You and the King differ more than two kinds of fruit. The joy of finding him again and the joy of all the new knowledge I have had from you are more unlike than two tastes; and when the difference is as great as that, and each of the two things so great, then the first picture does stay in the mind quite a long time - many beats of the heart - after the other good has come. And this, O Piebald, is the glory and wonder you have made me see; that it is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good.'
'I don't see the wonder and the glory of it,' said Random.
Her eyes flashed upon him such a triumphant flight above his thoughts as would have been scorn in earthly eyes; but in that world it was not scorn
'I thought,' she said, 'that I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent me drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. I feel as if I were living in that roofless world of yours when men walk undefended beneath naked heaven. It is delight with terror in it! One's own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths - but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.'
'And have you no fear,' said Random, 'that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to the thing Maleldil sends?'
'I see', said the Lady presently. 'The wave you plunge into may be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim into it. You mean, He might send me a good like that?'
'Yes - or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little.'
'It often happens that way in swimming,' said the Lady. 'Is not that part of the delight?'
'But are you happy without the King? Do you not want the King?'
'Want him?' she said. 'How could there be anything I did not want?'

- p. 80-82 Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

When our hearts are regenerated by God, when our hearts are sanctified by God, finally being freed, we, out of our own hearts, rejoice and choose, yes, willingly and joyfully choose God and follow Him, trusting God and gladly receiving whatever is given to us, because we have come to know the infinitely wise, just, sovereign, and loving Father.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

You can get your copy of Perelandra from Amazon, BookDepository, or Koorong.

Lines I like from 'Out of the Silent Planet'

'What are you so afraid of, Ransom of Thulcandra?' [Oyarsa of Malacandra] said. - p.152

Men are fearful beings until they come to know and trust Lord Jesus Christ. But not many of them know the reason for their fear or even the fact that they are fearful.

We think that Meleldil would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into. - p.154
I wish to hear of Thulcandra and of Meleldil's strange wars there with the Bent One; for that, as I have said, is a thing we desire to look into. -p.156
[After Ransom answered the question above from Oyarsa] 'You have shown me more wonders than are known in the whole of heaven.' -p.182

Indeed the deeds, love, grace of Lord Jesus is more wonderful than anything else, everything else altogether in this whole universe. I love the way it is described and praised here.

Immortals

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
- by C. S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory, p.45

We have many myths about immortal beings who are above and beyond us. But do you realise that we, humans are, in fact, immortals? The only difference among us will be whether we will be one day like Jesus the one and true God, the most glorious, or eternally judged and condemned to be separated from Him and remain as the most damned creature of all for eternity.

A Grief Observed: the supremacy of God in grief

Ok, one more quote from the book, A Grief Observed

The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not to have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it. Praise in due order; of Him as the giver, of her as the gift. Don't we in praise somehow enjoy what we praise, however far we are from it? I must do more of this. I have lost the fruition I once had of H. And I am far, far away in the valley of my unlikeness, from the fruition which, if His mercies are infinite, I may some time have of God. But by praising I can still, in some degree, enjoy her, and already, in some degree, enjoy Him. Better than nothing.
- p. 62-63 A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

I am hearing the hallmark of Christians, namely, other-centredness. And even more so I smell Piper in this text of Lewis in saying that we enjoy what we praise. Interesting.

A Grief Observed: grief feels like suspense

I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But not there's an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.
- p. 47 A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

A Grief Observed: love and idolatry

C. S. Lewis says:

"I must think more about H. and less about myself.
Yes, that sounds very well. But there's a snag. I am thinking about her nearly always. Thinking of the H. facts - real words, looks, laughs, and actions of hers. But it is my own mind that selects and groups them. Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. Founded on facts, no doubt. I shall put in nothing fictitious (or I hope I shan't). But won't the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me."
- p. 18 C. S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

Again,

"Images of the Holy easily become holy images - sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are 'offended' by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers.
All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is, in her foursquare and independent reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead. [...] Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour."
- p 66-67 C. S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

Lewis shows something very insightful about idolatry and love. If you are to love someone you must love her as she really is, not someone whom you wish to love. If you are to love God, you must love God as He really is, not a god you wish to love. In the case of loving another human being, if you fail to see, know, and love her as she really is, you are only going to judge her against your imagining of her, and you will only deeply hurt her. When it is a case for God, it becomes idolatry. And God will not tolerate that for long.

This is another reason why we must keep reading the Bible, which is God's own revelation to us, not human imagination or wishful thinking about God.

Lewis says,

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him. I want H., not something that is like her.
- p 65 C. S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

We must acknowledge and love God as He truly is. And we must acknowledge and love other people as they truly are.

(Oh, and as a trailing thought, given that we must acknowledge and love God as He truly is, and we must do the same for other people, do you see why God is more satisfying than anything or anyone else in the whole universe and beyond? Just take some time to ponder on that.)

Book Review: A Grief Observed

I was hearing some alarm bells ringing when I first started reading the book, A Grief Observed. The foreword and introduction to this short book sounded as if C. S. Lewis gave up his belief in God through his time of grief. Even as I was reading the first chapter of the four, I was feeling uneasy when Lewis seemed to give up his hope of heaven, and makes much out of death. But I believe Lewis was simply being honest, honest about how he felt. As the book progressed, this seemingly un-Christian confession was elaborated and in the last chapter of the book, his faith and hope in God was restored, or rather, more at the front of his confession, since I do not think Lewis had lost his faith at any point in the earlier chapters.

Regarding the real content of the book, or what I learned through it, I don't know how to put it. I am not sure if I learned a great deal about grief, since this book is a very personal memoir than a book that was intended to teach you about grief and how to deal with it. And I cannot say that I enjoyed the book either, for there in the book, I found a soul, a Christian brother, agonising over his wife's death. I will not say it was a bad book, or not worth while reading, I just find it hard to describe the book and my experience of reading it, because the book is utterly honest.

I think it would be helpful for anyone who wants to minister to others, and all Christians ought to do so. Although I said this book isn't intended to teach you about grief, hearing from such an articulate and honest Christian brother how he felt as he went through a dark and painful time surely helps when one of your friends is in a similar situation. Or even for yourself as well.
Additionally, while he does not develop his ideas fully in this book, his insights about other issues in Christian living in general also seep through. I will post up some quotes from the book which I think show such insights in coming days.

Now, although I said this book would be helpful for any Christian, it is not a must, nor is suitable for everyone in all different stages in their Christian walk. So, while I would recommend this book to Christians, I think you will want to take time in reading it, and ask God for wisdom how you take in what is in this book.

Book (p)review: A Grief Observed

I'm reading "A Grief Observed" by C. S. Lewis.
It's a short book, only 76 pages in total and that with generous spacing on each page.
Because I haven't got much time for reading lately, I chose this book, so I can get through it without too much delay.
I'll probably give a longer review on the book sometime later, but all I can say, or need to say about the book at the moment is that in this book, C. S. Lewis is brutally honest. He articulates his wandering thoughts and grieving love for his wife in very much detail, that I am discovering a Lewis that I never knew before.

You can get this book from Amazon.

Uniqueness of Lewis

Great comments from William Stuntz regarding the Lewis article I mentioned the other day.