Because it deserves more coverage
Ed Bonderenka– a respected commenter here- asked what problems I had with C.S lewis, and then asked what the reference was that I made to Buddha. I commented on that but I think it deserves a bit more coverage. First, the “if you meet the buddha’ reference, explained fairly succinctly.
next, my comment, which is easily a post in it’s own right:
The point is, like Buddhists on the road to enlightenment, Christians on their journey through life are often distracted by people purporting to have a solid handle on the truth.
the fact is, CS lewis was on his journey. You’re on yours. If you accept CS Lewis (or Calvin, or Luther, or Mahomet, or ANYONE) as your guru on your journey, you have allowed yourself to be distracted from your true path.
Was CS Lewis wrong, or bad, or whatever? Surely not. Was he still searching for the identity of his own soul as he wrote? Most certainly, he was. Why in searching for the identity of your soul, should you follow the example of someone who has not found theirs yet?
I have personal issues with Lewis because the people who follow him tend to do so blindly, as if everything he said was some new sort of gospel, when it clearly is not.
This is at the core of evil today: the idea that you read something in a book that resonates with your personal beliefs, and you latch onto that book as if it were a life preserver in a storm. This is how Mao and Trotsky and Lenin acheived so many followers, people read their bullshit and found a piece here or there that resonated, and took the whole thing as The New Truth. Followers of CS Lewis in that respect are just as uninformed as followers of Lenin, or Marx, or Mahomet.
If you want to read Lewis, and learn something from him, that’s great! lewis doesn’t have a thing to teach me, and i suspect that the majority of readers here are more than clever enough that they can’t learn anything from him either. Want to learn something about what it is like to be a Christian?
Pray, and go out into the world and live, and then pray some more. that’s how it’s done. It doesn’t come from any book written by man.
If you aren’t interested in learning what it is to be a Christian, I truly pity you, for what you’ve lost, for what you lose in turning your back on Christianity is amazing.
Finally, as an aside, I can safely say that CS Lewis believed in his chosen creed as thouroughly as it is possible to believe in anything. I am also convinced that he wrote the things he wrote to turn his beliefs into real faith. I hope he was successful, but turning belief into faith is the penultimate example of spinning straw into gold. Faith is real and pure, and belief is tawdry and cheap. I have striven all my life to have no beliefs, and it is a struggle I still deal with.
21 comments Og | Uncategorized
I generally recommend Lewis’ Mere Christianity for new Christians or people who are exploring Christianity. When you’re just beginning your own journey it’s sometimes useful to see that others have made the journey before you, and he’s somewhat more accessible than (say) St. Augustine. He’s not for everyone (my wife, for instance, finds him incomprehensible). He seems particularly useful to people like myself (and himself) who came to faith as an adult.
I don’t consider myself a follower of Lewis, but I’ve found a good deal that’s useful, and a great deal of comfort, in his writings. I could say the same about a great many other Christian writers, from the aforementioned St. Augustine, to St. Bennidict, to John Bunyan, to Thomas Merton, to Max Lucado.
I get what you’re saying about “followers” of Lewis though, I’m reminded of a story I read, I forget where, about how he came to the US once and spoke to a group of American Christians who were absolutely shocked to learn that he drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes.
I think that the case where you accept any human or book as your guru/font of all knowledgefulness/The One Purveyor of Truth is when you get into trouble. You can learn a lot of things from different sources and different teachers.
I have to admit that Lewis did affect me (read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe back in 4th grade), but mainly lead me into reading more sci-fi fantasy than any religious or religio-related epiphanies.
Re-reading the book much later, I gained a different perspective on the idea of sacrifice and self-sacrifice, but if I want to be truthful, I saw the same idea in the movie Constantine.
Literature is just someone’s thoughts written down. You can gain personal insight from just about anything. But if you latch onto one person, idea, or tome to the exclusion of everything else, you are limiting your personal growth.
If one ceases to learn, one ceases to grow and live.
Literature is just someone’s thoughts written down. You can gain personal insight from just about anything. But if you latch onto one person, idea, or tome to the exclusion of everything else, you are limiting your personal growth.
Dang.
Nicely put.
“This is at the core of evil today: the idea that you read something in a book that resonates with your personal beliefs, and you latch onto that book as if it were a life preserver in a storm. This is how Mao and Trotsky and Lenin achieved so many followers, people read their bullshit and found a piece here or there that resonated, and took the whole thing as The New Truth.”
*cough* Obama followers *cough*
TBG
It doesn’t come from any book written by man.
On their last album, “Somewhere to Elsewhere”, Kansas had a song written by Kerry Livgren called “Not Man Big”.
At its core, the song is about the fact that our existence is a hell of a lot bigger than what we can see. The stuff with the meat machines is only the beginning; there’s much more beyond this that we can’t comprehend, much the same way children can’t comprehend some of the things adults do. (“Ick! Why do you do that mushy stuff with girls?”)
And because the nuts and bolts of existence are beyond our understanding, any temporal source claiming to have a monopsony on Truth is suspect. There is divine inspiration; it’s not beyond the pale to assume there is, therefore, infernal inspiration…and true evil looks like good. It certainly doesn’t make itself easily identifiable by twisting its Snidely Whiplash mustache around an index finger…..
I am pleased to be priveleged to be surrounded by people who understand this.
Although Christians are called to be an example or ambassador for Christ the fact remains that there are no “perfect Christians†or perfect anyone, for that matter. I like Lewis; he has excellent insight/analysis/ability to convey the Christian condition in a way that helps one understand what being free in Christ really is.
Don’t forget, though, Jesus is the only true example of Christianity, not me or any one else, C.S. Lewis included. I think that is the issue. Folks tend to follow the wrong guy. Don’t kill the messenger because everyone gets all wrapped around the axle over his above average ability to explain his faith. Just point them in the right direction. Some won’t listen.
I can tell you that it is possible to know a Man that you cannot see, audibly hear or touch. It is possible to know Him well, to know His character. If that relationship is not entered into and jealously maintained, the void will be filled with someone or something else.
Just my two tin pennies worth.
Jon
TBG: *cough* Ayn Rand fanatics *cough*.
Works both ways.
“If that relationship is not entered into and jealously maintained, the void will be filled with someone or something else. ”
See, I’ll never get that. My faith has always been effortless, and I don’t understand how people have difficulties. Life is difficult; dealing with idiots is trying, but faith? never even have to think about it, it’s just there.
We are all made with different strengths and weaknesses. I happen to be particularly good with things mechanical and abstract vision, that’s just how God made me. You have been blessed with a deep and abiding faith, and a good BS meter. Consider yourself fortunate. It doesn’t come easy for us all.
You have to play the hand you’re dealt.
Jon
I hear you. God bless you in any event.
(Og- sorry to sidebar your original topic)
Nathan-
True that, however I find as a rule the AR fanatics tend to vocalize and resonate with like minded people, where the Progressives and especially Obama fanatics tend to proselytize harder and more fervently than a Southern Baptist to all and sundry, especially to those that *they* deem “need to hear The Word”.
(Just my experience, YMMV)
TBG
PS – Enjoying the crap out of RoaFC’s archive…
Well, I think I understand what og was getting at.
Maybe not Lewis so much as “Lewicism”.
I have a deep and abiding faith.
I’ve tried to keep faith with the One who is faithful in different ways over the years. Sometime I got legalistic. I watch other people of faith and sometimes question how they can talk, act, (drink, smoke) like that and be true to Him who they have faith in (tryin’ hard not to use that “belief” word, og”).
So I read books, magazines, blogs, talk to friends, and try not to be judgmental as I observe others on their walk.
Lewis would be one, og another, Steve Graham, etc.
Reference points, not tour guides.
I enjoyed the discussion here immensely.
Ed H: You may know that Kerry Livgren is now a christian musician.
Jon: that’s good stuff.
Mark D: I went to hear Os Guinness speak, and it surprised me to hear that he drank…Guinness.
Jon,
I’m not sure that there has to be an outside force to fill any void within a person. I think that a person has to be whole within themselves in order to connect with the Divine without (or within, depending upon your perspective).
TBG–Agreed, and I’ve seen both, and neither are pretty.
It’s a horrid thing for any man to be judged by his followers.
I think Lewis’ strength was for his generation; they’d literally dodged bombs and bullets and had faced fears we cannot imagine. Lewis engaged the public in a “new media” and used apologetics within a country that was already well into its post-Christian era.
My faith is a constant Grace, unearned and certainly unmerited. I do enjoy Lewis’ exposition and clarity in expressing what I already knew by spiritual instinct. I consider such an approach to be more of a balm for the mind, if you will. And a hone for the intellect as iron sharpens iron.
Dear Og, not every mind is an engineer’s mind, you know, and as silly as it may seem some of us find doubts to be troubling to our little noggins, especially when school has left off with logic to pursue “feelings.” Lewis was a harsh critic of the lack of mental discipline for logic; a thing that comes easily to your ordered mind requires a bit of effort for others, and Lewis’ approach appeals to that need for orderly thinking.
I don’t think he would have ever purported to hold up “right thinking” or “correct belief” as the equivalent of faith, but I think he fairly proved that lazy thinking is the devil’s playground.
Joan: See the point about Buddha, it is vital to your faith. It has nothing to do with engineering.
As I said, Lewis had a lot of belief. I have not read anything to suggest he had faith, or knew what to do with it if he had. It is pretty clear to me that his writing was done more to assuage his doubts about his beliefs.
I have no doubts. Faith cannot leave you. You can only leave it.
Ed: Jesus drank wine. I suspect had there been single malt available he’d have had one of those from time to time too.
Smoking, drinking, eating, having sex… these are things all people do; men and women of God everywhere. Sometimes those things might be thought of as sinful; sometimes people do other sinful things. You don’t want to KNOW the skeletons I have in my closet.
Jesus died for all our sins- those we have committed, and those we have yet to commit. There are no born-on dates, no cutoffs, and trust me, no matter who you are and how holy, you will sin again.
Don’t sweat it. Do your best. Sometimes you- like everyone- will falter.
Yes, Og. See my paragraph about my own faith. It does not rest in any man, nor in any man’s opinion.
“My faith is a constant Grace, unearned and certainly unmerited.”
@Joan:
This may sound absurd but I have thought that feelings were the minds’ short-hand for the logic and understanding of the components of the given situation at hand. These so called components, (which are judgements or an understanding of specific issues, experiences and choices that you have witnessed before in a past, yet similiar to what you are presently experiencing) have already been sorted out in previous experiences and for you to go over them again – at the conscious and thought-ful level – would be a waste of time for you and for the people experienceing it with you, too. Instead of the consciousness level gyrations of the logical thought process (which can be slow and clumsy for the given present experience), you have your feelings zip through all those processes to the proper conclusion of the present experience.
Besides, if you are with people of like mind as you, and have come to the same previous logical conclusions as you have (ie feelings), you would all feel a kind of serendipidty of feelings that might be called ‘communion’, which makes the given present experience all the more wonderful.
Being that there is so much to learn in life, those feelings zip you through the logically mundane to the more interesting mysteries of life that you need to explore at that time.
When someone questions you on why you feel a certain way about a given subject, you can express it piece by piece if you chose to spend the time (or you have a poet express it for you if you can’t explain it).
Feelings really are connections to your mind and soul, Joan. Don’t underestimate them. It is a true gift of the brain (your corporeal servant).
Golly… I better stop now. :)
“This is at the core of evil today: the idea that you read something in a book that resonates with your personal beliefs, and you latch onto that book as if it were a life preserver in a storm.”
@Og: On the political side of things, that is what the Intellectual Elitists want you to do – to follow them blindly because they are … smarter.
Dangerous.
That is where Tyrants draw their power.
Here’s what Bill Whittle says about Elitists and their desire to build their own ‘cult of personality’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0MESB6VZM4