The Daily Lewis: 04/12/2012

Today's Lewis quote, pictures artistically above, courtesy of google, reminds me of the importance of perspective.

Thoughts?

The Daily Lewis: 04/06/12

The Daily Lewis...infused with Chesteron...and then more Lewis.

Today as I meandered around my campus, I saw a small group of children wandering about...

Suddenly I was pulled out of reality and into the realms of nostalgia!
A beautiful, blinding, and outright brilliant nostalgia in which I thought about the beauty of all the books I read in my childhood. From Little Woman to A Wrinkle In Time to The Scarlet Pimpernel I found one factor that all these books have in common; that factor being the little bits of truth I got out of them.

And so, without further ado, one of my favorite lines from one of works of C.S. Lewis, generally thought to be written for children, but enjoyed by all who dare take them up and read(nota bene St. Augustine conversion story reference):

                                                                   
From The Last Battle:

'You see,' said Aslan, 'They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.'

Pure brilliance about what is true close-mindedness.

To continue my narrative:

What did this little passage that I had memorized(I'm crazy) remind me of?
It came to me!

It was Chesteron, from his beautiful work, Orthodoxy,

He is in the clean well lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. 

-From "The Maniac"(Chapter Two).

Then again my mind flew to another brilliant idea from Lewis, namely, his chapter on "Human Wickedness" from The Problem of Pain. 

To classify it as an idea, is perhaps not so accurate. I would say this particular section offers several steps on how to stay OUT of the prison of one idea.

But the illusion has grown, in modern times, so strong, that I must add a few considerations tending to make the reality[of sin/ human wickedness] less credible.

Essentially here Lewis pinpoints eight different ways in which we tend to rationalize away the wrong doings we act.

1.We are deceived by looking on the outside of things. We suppose ourselves to be roughly much worse than Y, whom all acknowledge a decent sort of person, and certainly(though we should not claim it out loud) better than the abominable X...We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are exceptional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues-like a bad tennis player who calls his normal form his 'bad days' and mistakes his rare successes for his normal...

 2.  ...We feel ourselves to be involved in a iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt...For corporate guilt cannot be, and certainly is not, felt wit hthe same force as personal guilt...

 3. We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin...

4. We must guard against the feeling that there is 'safety in numbers'. It is natural to feel that if all men are as bad as the Christians say, then badness must be very excusable. 

 5. The larger society to which I here contrast the human 'pocket' may not exist according to some people, and at any rate we have no experience of it. We do not meet angels, or unfallen races...From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling on how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God.

6. ...we have become so[an increasingly cruel age] in an attempt to reduce all virtues to kindness. For Plato rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues.

7. The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claim of moral duty. I do not deny it: but this conception, like that of corporate guilt, is very easily used as an evasion of the real issue. God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less. The to to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is not transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure. 

8. Many schools of thought encourage us to shift the responsibility for our behavior from our own shoulders to some inherent necessity in the nature of human life, and thus, indirectly, to the Creator.

This has been a mere summation of just one part of the the beautiful book that is The Problem of Pain...
I have this tendency to want to connect all the things I've ever read, EVER, in my mind, so I hope it made as much sense for you as if did for me... I apologize if the road trip was long, at the very least is was scenic.

Thoughts?

The Daily Lewis: 04/06/2012

Actually, as concerns recent developments in my own life, and more generally THE ENTIRE WORLD, I do deviate from Lewis, and give thee Madeleine L'Engle in his stead this day,

"If Jesus was a threat to Herod two thousand years ago, he is still a threat today, because he demands that we see ourselves as we really are, that we drop our smug, self-protective devices, that we become willing to live the abundant life he calls us to live." -The Rock That is Higher


Any thoughts?
I think it is also significant as Easter approaches(two days).

Have a blessed Good Friday. 

The Daily Lewis: 04/05/2012

Rather short today, as Easter approaches and my computer time becomes ever the more self-restricted and sparse. (I'm working on a bigger post, well, two actually, but not both on here.)

For you edification: 

"Either it is a mere twist in the human mind, corresponding to nothing objective and serving no biological function, yet showing no tendency to disappear from that mind at its fullest development in poet, philosopher, or saint, or else it is a direct experience of the really supernatural, to which the name Revelation might properly be given." -The Problem of Pain

Any thoughts? 

                

The Daily Lewis: 04/03/2012

                                                                         
From The Problem of Pain, Chapter 7:

"The fact that God can make complex good out of simply evil does not excuse-though by mercy it may save- those who do the simply evil.  And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sings do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil. We may apply this first to the problem of other people's suffering. A merciful man aims at his neighbor's good and so does 'God's will; consciously co-operating with 'the simple good.' A cruel man oppresses his neighbor, and so does simple evil. But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own knowledge of consent, to produce the complex good-so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry our God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John."

I highly recommend the book, and one of these days I will outline and enumerate on it here. Perhaps a nice long   post on the 'Hell' chapter might be in order!

Thoughts? 

The Daily Lewis: 04/02/2012

                                                                   
From an essay, 'The Seeing Eye'

"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 or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in the play. But he is never present in the same way as Falstaff of Lady Macbethh. Nor is he diffused throughout the play like a gas....My point is that, if God does exist, He is related to the universe more as an author is related to the play than as one object in the universe is related to another. If God created the universe, He created space-time, which is to the universe as the metre is to a poem of the key is to music. To look for Him as one item within the framework which He Himself invented is nonsensical. If God- such a God as any adult religion believes in- exists, mere movement in space will never bring you any nearer to Him or any farther from Him than you are at this very moment."

Thoughts?

Amy Welborn on Objective Truth

It would be a travesty to feign that I can more concisely convey the fact of objective truth so well as Amy Welborn.

Consequently, this post shall be a summation, much aided by direct quotation, from her book, Prove It: God. 


Essentially, Welborn uses logic to convince, or aid in convincing, the reader that there is an objective truth, which we live by, whether we admit it or not.

"  'What's true for you may not be true for me.'
   'All opinions are equally valuable and deserve respect.'
   'It doesn't matter what god you believe in, as long as you believe in something'
  ' All religions are equally true. '
              Sound familiar? Probably. Sound reasonable? If nothing else, you have to admit, it's a pretty cagey way to end an uncomfortable discussion about what's true: suddenly declaring there's no such thing as truth. But if you take a second to think about the inevitable conclusion of those views: 'Nothing's true, but everything's true, and it's all just opinion anyway'-the whole thing pretty much collapses into absurdity  . "

And it does sound truely absurd, thank you Miss. Welborn, for putting the matter into perspective.

Another, though blatant to you and me perhaps point Amy makes- a point that she thinks you might want to call the attention of any adversary of truth you may come upon to,

"Could it just be that some people declare there's no truth, simply because, deep down, they don't want to face - the Truth?"

Strike at the core, Amy says, and establish truth,

"Plato defined truth as 'that which is.' Pointing to a cat and calling it a rock isn't true, because a cat isn't a rock. Saying 'I love you' when you don't is a terrible, hurtful lie.
There are a couple of other words that will come in handy when you try to tease all of this apart. The first is 'objective.' To talk about 'objective reality' or 'objective truth' is to describe things as they are, in and of themselves, without our opinions shading our descriptions, just as an objective evaluation of you would attempt to describe you as you are, without regard to whether the person doing the evaluating liked you or not. The opposite of 'objective' is 'subjective.' A subjective view on a matter incorporates our opinions."

A slew of examples later and Miss Amy arrives at what she terms, the next step.

"Okay, let's go to the next step, beyond that easy level of identifying objects and events.
   ...
The next time you're in a discussion about truth and values, and Mr. Relativist tries to cop out with the declaration that  there's no such thing as truth anyway, try the following arguments.

1. Hey, I really like your car. It's mine now. No? But I thought my opinion was as valuable as yours? I thought there was no such things as truth. If that's so, then your idea that there is such a thing as 'personal property' is nothing more than opinion and has no more value than mine. Keys please.
2. Oh, absolutely. I agree. Anyone who believes that moral values have an objective basis and apply equally to everyone is a subhuman piece of trash who shouldn't be allowed to vote, drive cars, or eat anything but uncooked barley and peach pits. You don't think so? Why not? Because it wouldn't be...right? Because its not...right...to treat human beings that way? But I thought...oh, never mind. "

As brilliant are her remaining examples are, we shalt hither forth to her main point,

"Your goal at this point is the move the discussion just a little further down the road. Not the whole way yet, but just to the point where everyone can agree that the existence of things isn't dependent on our opinion or perceptions. Mosquitoes exist whether we want them to or not. So do the concepts of truth, and right and wrong."

Ahhh...concise, and simplified. Thank you Miss. Welborn.
This particular chapter is helpful as concerns objective truth. Then entire books is also well worth reading.

Hope you enjoyed!