Sunday, October 01 2006
"Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened 'Temperance', it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further." Mere Christianity Balance . . . it's my wife's favorite word. I have trouble keeping certain things in balance, or practicing temperance in certain areas of my life. Take, for example, eating. I love food, of all kinds! Consequently I often eat too much--more than I need. And eventually I gain weight. I have certainly been overweight, even obese according to the standards of the medical profession. The real question is: why? Why do I eat too much? I probably use food to make up for other things, or even relationships which I think are lacking in my life. Most of this works at a subconscious level most of the time. But I can actually remember the first time I used food as this sort of psychological comfort. I was, perhaps, five years old. I was on the outs with other kids in the neighborhood, for some reason I do not now remember. I came home in tears. My mother offered me an ice cream sundae. That seemed to fill the gap. I have used the same method of compensation many times since, both consciously and unconsciously. So how do I get back in balance and live with greater temperance when it comes to eating? Certainly I must start by reducing my food intake. I also need to exercise every day. I have done these things fairly well over the past year and lost fifty pounds--bringing my weight into the proper range for my height. I'm grateful to the Lord for helping me accomplish this. But I know it is only a beginning. Eating right and exercising daily must become a lifelong lifestyle. I also need to maintain health in other areas of my life--in my human relationships for example--so that I won't be so tempted to use food to fill a relational gap. Most of all, I need to feed daily on Jesus, who said:
I have long loved the following holy sonnet from the pen of John Donne (1572-1631). It may be said as a prayer. And if one changes the last line to read: "Nor ever temperate, except You feed me." then the sonnet ties in directly to today's meditation. Of course, the sexual dimension of life, to which Donne refers, is yet another area where we may be intemperate, unless Christ ravishes us.
Friday, September 29 2006
"Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it. Nowadays most people hardly think of Prudence as one of the 'virtues'. In fact, because Christ said we could only get into His world by being like children, many Christians have the idea that, provided you are 'good', it does not matter being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. In the first place, most children show plenty of 'prudence' about doing the things that they are really interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as St Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary. He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves', but also 'as wise as serpents'. He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head." Mere Christianity The worst kind of foolishness is when one acts as a fool, with reckless abandon, toward a self-centered end. Christ wants us to act as fools for him (1 Corinthians 4:10), with reckless abandon toward a godly end, giving him our all when it seems crazy in the world's eyes to do so. No doubt, being a fool for Christ requires much prudence, much planning in the sense that the book of Proverbs talks about; "a prudent man gives thought to his steps" (Proverbs 14:15). The Apostle Paul, who recommended being a fool for Christ, carefully planned out his missionary activities. But Christ wants us to be uncalculating, childlike, spontaneously overflowing in our love toward God. Christ wants us to love God with all our mind as well as all our heart. And only the Holy Spirit can give us the proper balance between a child's heart and a grown-up's head. If we are going to love God totally with heart, mind, soul and strength, then we have to be willing to be seen as fools in the world's eyes--because right at the center of our faith is something which the world thinks very foolish indeed: Christ crucified. "Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Corinthians 1:20-25).
Thursday, September 28 2006
"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play." Mere Christianity Lewis tells us there are these three purposes of the moral law: (1) outward harmony between human beings, (2) inner harmony within each human being and (3) playing the tune the conductor wants us to play. That tune is really a love song; it is all about a love relationship with God and with others. The first four of the Ten Commandments have to do with our relationship with God. The latter six have to do with our relationship with each other as human beings. Jesus summed up the law when he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself". The 16th century Reformers, like Lewis, talked about three "uses" of the law, but they looked at the matter from a slightly different angle. They said that one use of the law is to restrain corruption in society. If God never told us how to act we would be "all over the map". If there were no civil laws in society people would probably hurt each other even more than they do already. A second and most important use of the law is to show us our need of a savior and point us to Jesus as that savior. As Lewis notes, there are two remarkable things about the moral law: (1) we all have similar ideas about right human conduct, yet (2) none of us live up to our own standards. The law of human nature reveals that we fall short of God's perfect plan for us and we need someone to make up for our shortcomings. A third use of the law is to provide a guide to us in how to live as Christians. However, I'm not sure that the Reformers really saw this third aspect in its fullness. There tends to be a sort of flatness, a Protestant moralism, stemming from some of the views expressed at the time of the Reformation. Certainly the law is a guide, a map if you will, showing us how to conduct our lives in order to get to God's desired destination for us. However, we have something better than this map now than what the Lord's people had in Old Testament times. We actually have the map-maker with us to guide us. The map-maker became a human being in Jesus Christ and showed us how to follow the map. When you are trying to get from point A to point B by car it is always helpful to have a map. But what is even more helpful is to have someone lead you in their car while you follow along behind. (That is part of what Jesus did for us 2,000 years ago.) And what is even better is to have someone with you in your car who knows the way. That is just what we have in the Christian life; we have the Holy Spirit riding in the car with us, our spiritual Global Positioning System! In fact, the Holy Spirit will do the driving for us, if we let him take the driver's seat. That is what it means to be filled with the Spirit; it means to come under his full influence and control. And not only will he do the driving for us, he will also provide the fuel to get us where we need to be. If we leave the driving to the Holy Spirit he will enable us to follow God's map and get to our final destination on time.
Wednesday, September 27 2006
"When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else--something it never entered your head to conceive--comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it." Mere Christianity The Apostle Paul tells us:
It hasn't happened yet, but one day everyone will recognize Jesus for who he really is--the Lord of the universe. Why doesn't God make it obvious to everyone now? Why doesn't he write a message in the sky saying: "Jesus is my Son; worship him!"? Lewis says the reason is that God "wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely." If the choice was forced then it really wouldn't be a choice. And without that free choice there is no love--only roboticism--artificial intelligence. Lewis reminds us that one day God will make it obvious to all who Jesus is. One day God will invade this universe, making his presence known, not only in the sky, but everywhere. Why is he waiting to invade? 2 Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." God is giving us time right now to choose to follow Christ. And if people choose not to listen to the God-man, Jesus Christ, what makes anyone think people would pay attention to a message written in the sky? No, the message has already come in human flesh. We must respond to that message and carry that message to others with whatever time God gives us.
Tuesday, September 26 2006
"Your natural life is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else. In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts." Mere Christianity Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8). No one can snatch us out of Jesus' hand (John 17). He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion in the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1). All of these statements are absolutely true, but these statements do not mean that we can just sit back and do nothing in the Christian life. As Lewis says, if we do not nourish the Christ-life we have been given we may lose it. No external force or person or event can separate us from Christ and his love, or prevent us from becoming the complete, whole, happy creatures God wants us to be. But we can separate ourselves from Christ if we choose to do so. And we often do, whenever we choose self over God. So how do we nourish the Christ-life in us? We do it in all those seemingly ordinary ways which Christian teachers have explained to us throughout the last two thousand years. We need to read, study, memorize, meditate and feed upon God's Word in the Bible. This is how we hear what God has to say to us. And we must also speak to God in prayer. Like our human relationships, a relationship with God is sustained by regular, honest, meaningful communication. We also need to feed on Christ through regular and prayerful participation in the Lord's Supper. We need to worship our Triune God faithfully in the context of the Body of Christ, the Church. We need the fellowship of other Christians who can nourish us with encouragement, love and acceptance in Christ's name. God has given us multiple lifelines to nourish the Christ-life placed in us by the Holy Spirit. But often we fail to use these lifelines because, in the middle of our weary race we wonder whether we are really making any progress at all. Is all the effort really worth it? We begin to identify with the person who questioned whether sermons were really valuable because he couldn't remember the outline of a single one he had heard in his whole life. But then someone else reminded him that he couldn't remember the menu of a single meal his wife had prepared for him in their thirty-six years of marriage; yet he had the distinct impression that without those thousands of meals he would have starved long ago. Each individual meal in the Christian life may not seem like much--each time we feed on the Bible or the Lord's Supper, each time we are nourished through prayer, fellowship or worship. Each individual act can seem so insignificant. Skip one and what happens? Not much. But skip enough spiritual meals in a row and we will indeed starve to death. Why do that when Christ offers a banquet for us to feast upon?
Monday, September 25 2006
"In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us." Mere Christianity Lewis asks how this new kind of life is to be put into us. He answers: "There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names--Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord's Supper." It is interesting that Lewis begins this list of things, which spread the Christ-life to us, with baptism. Lewis was baptized as an infant. So was I. So have most of the 2 billion Christians in the world been baptized as infants. So if Lewis is right--the Christ-life is spread to many of us not by our own choice. Infant baptism displays the fact that the initiative in our salvation begins with God. We are filled with the Christ-life not, initially, because of our own work, but because of God's grace. This is not to say that we are to remain passive in the whole affair. As Lewis points out, the Christ-life is also spread to us by faith and by participation in Holy Communion. We must choose to believe in Christ for ourselves. It is not enough that we were born into a Christian family or that our parents had us baptized. That is not enough to keep the Christ-life going in us. We must continue to receive that life by faith. And here we come up against another fascinating point: the Christ-life is spread to us not just by spiritual actions like faith, but by physical actions like washing, eating and drinking, by physical elements like water, bread and wine. Why is this? Lewis says it is because Christianity is not merely about "the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution--a biological or super-biological fact." God does not merely communicate the Christ-life to our spirits, but to our bodies as well. We must be washed with Christ, feed on Christ, drink in Christ . . . or else go dirty, hungry and thirsty for eternity. "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." John 6:53 "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." John 13:8
Sunday, September 24 2006
"When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all--to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not. "But supposing God became a man--suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person--then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God." Mere Christianity The theory of the atonement which Lewis presents as the one which has been most helpful to him is that of Irenaeus and is often called the physical theory of the atonement. Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor sometime between 130 and 140 AD. As a young man he listened to the teaching of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who had in turn sat under the teaching of the Apostle John. Irenaeus went to Gaul, modern day France, where he eventually became the Bishop of the Church at Lyons. Irenaeus' belief about the work of Christ may be summed up in one sentence: "Because of His measureless love, He became what we are in order to enable us to become what He is." What we lost in Adam is recovered in Christ. Human beings have fallen from God's perfect plan through solidarity with the first human, but we can be restored through solidarity with Christ. Irenaeus' "recapitulation" theory was based on Paul's teaching which summed up the divine purpose as being "to sum up all things in Christ". Irenaeus believed that Christ comprised the whole of reality in himself, humanity included. Christ recapitulated in himself the long history of humankind, but with this great difference: he was obedient at all points to his heavenly Father. Irenaeus' physical theory of the atonement emphasizes Christ's obedient life but also comprises Christ's death:
Irenaeus and Lewis rightly emphasized Jesus Christ as the only perfect penitent person. As we identify ourselves with Christ through faith and participation in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, our sins are applied to Christ's spiritual bank account and paid for on the cross. At the same time, Christ's obedience is applied to our spiritual bank account and worked out in our lives by the Holy Spirit. We can give up trusting in the efficacy of our own repentance to save us and trust in the efficacy of Christ's penitence alone. Rather than trying to form the letters which spell s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n ourselves, we need to relax, let go, and let Christ form those letters in us by his Spirit. If we let Christ do his work in and through us then, as Irenaeus says, the glory of God will be humanity fully alive!
Friday, September 22 2006
"The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter." Mere Christianity Three main theories have been put forward over the last two thousand years as to how Christ's death puts us right with God and gives us a fresh start in life.
However, as Lewis points out, accepting any one or all of these theories of the atonement is not essential to being a Christian. "A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it." "We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself." "God, Sovereign Lord of all, you loved the world so much that you gave your only Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to suffer, die and rise again, so that everyone who has faith in him through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit may advance in wisdom and your favor possessing eternal life. This is my faith. Help me where faith falls short." Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) Wednesday, September 20 2006
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." Mere Christianity The first time I read this paragraph from Mere Christianity I was in a postage-stamp size room in a B&B in Donegal, Ireland. It was raining cats and dogs outside my window and I was buried under the bed-covers with a head cold. I was 19 years old and in the midst of a solo pilgrimage to the British Isles. I had brought along with me paperback copies of all the Lewis books I had not read to date. I was diligently visiting the many places where Lewis lived, worked, worshiped and vacationed. More importantly, I was searching for a personal faith that was intellectually credible. When I came to the end of Lewis's chapter on The Shocking Alternative I came to the conclusion that Christianity did indeed make sense. Since that time I have heard a number of people question the solidity of Lewis's argument. Poached egg, Devil or Son of God, are these the only options? Or as Josh McDowell later re-phrased Lewis's argument--Liar, Lunatic or Lord--are these the only sensible ways of viewing Jesus? What about legend--could it not be that Jesus' supposed claims to divinity were legendary? Lewis, as astute literary critic, rejected the Gospels as legend--they were written too close to the historical event of Jesus' life. There wasn't sufficient time between event and Gospel for legend to develop. But did Jesus really think of himself as divine? That is the sticking point for many scholars. Personally my mind resonates with what N. T. Wright, one of the foremost New Testament scholars in the world today, has written on this question.
Poached egg, Devil or Son of God? Liar, lunatic, legend or Lord? Each one of us must answer these questions for ourselves. Jesus himself asks us for our response: "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" (Matthew 16:15) Personally, I gave my answer twenty-four years ago in a little room on the west coast of Ireland . . . and I haven't changed my mind since. I still pray to Jesus every day, just as Christians have done for centuries. . . . "I pray you, noble Jesu, that as you have graciously granted me joyfully to imbibe the words of Your knowledge, so You will also of Your bounty grant me to come at length to Yourself, the Fount of all wisdom, and to dwell in your presence forever." The Venerable Bede 673-735 Sunday, September 17 2006
"Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." Mere Christianity When Lewis asserts that God is the fuel for our souls he is basically saying that human beings were created to be in relationship with God. After all, even God is in relationship within God's self--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus Augustine liked to refer to the three members of the Trinity as the Lover, the Beloved and the Love Between Them. That love relationship is fundamental to God's own being. So it should come as no surprise that human beings, created in God's image, are designed to live in a love relationship with God and with one another. Lewis's own favorite analogy for the Trinity is that of a dance. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are like the partners in a dance, and our Triune God invites us to enter into that Great Dance. Until we join in that celestial movement we do not even know what we were really created for. If we never enter into the dance we will have failed to discover the greatest joy of life itself. But when we do enter the dance we find love, joy, peace and true happiness. How do we do that? How do we join in the Great Dance? How do we take in the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, the food we were designed to feed on? Whatever analogy one uses, the answer is the same. We must hear God's invitation to the dance in Scripture. We respond to the invitation through prayer. We join in the dance through sacrament and worship. We discover the fellowship of brothers and sisters of the dance as we do. And we invite others to join in the dance through outreach. Word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship are all ways that we feed on God, take on board the divine fuel for living. These are all essential elements to "abiding in Christ". And Jesus says, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love." (John 15:9) "God, of thy goodness, give me thyself; for thou art enough for me, and I may ask nothing that is less than may be full worship to thee; and if I ask anything that is less, I am ever in want: but only in thee I have all." Lady Julian of Norwich 1342-1416 |
