tabletalk

Vulnerability: Make Relationships a Priority not Reputations

This is a short follow-up to the "heretical imperative".  Here's my stab at it.

The Bible and the Christian faith are attempting to tell the story of God's relationship to the world.  God is intimately related to his creation.  His great desire is to be in relationship with us.  There is room in God's love for humanity to be wrong thinking.  In fact there is room in God's love for humanity to be wrong in most everything.  But God's love intends not to make us right thinkers (though I believe that comes along the way.) but make us right in relationship to himself, to each other and the whole of creation. 

To make relationships the priority of the Community, and not reputations, takes us away from the modernist approach that says it is right thinking that makes us right with God.  Instead it is God's right acts in Jesus that make us right with God and each other.  By focusing our lives on relationship with God, others and the creation, we act differently.  We act out of a growing knowledge of connectedness. 

When we act out of having right knowledge or belief systems, we can and often do end up in a competitive stance to everything around us.  Now we have to maintain our reputation over and against the belief systems of others.  We have to prove ourselves.  Our arguments have to succeed for us to be.  The biblical witness never really asks us to make this kind of separation.  There is a wholeness in the scriptures that affirms our unity as persons.  This is maintained by integrity of relationship. 

Reducing relationships to rules is unsatisfying.  To try to stay connected in relationship will make us stronger not weaker.

What is Lewis's point about math and faith?  The boy who learned only the answers to the problems never learns math and fails at the comprehensives later. The boy who learned to love the processes and the relationship of himself to math, will be able to do far better. Clinging to the answers of faith without knowing the faith intimately, that is knowing Jesus, only advances our reputation not our lives. 

I'm having trouble making sense even to myself!

Questions From Without: Before Deconstruction

Deconstruction in some circles is a dirty word. For many it means making changes for change sake. For others it means throwing the baby out with the bath. Still others believe it is simply a reaction to the status quo by anarchists who want their own way to be put in place. Some of you are puzzled right now by the use of the word and what I'm saying.

It's a simple word. We're going to, as McLaren says, deconstruct Hell.

Let me give you an analogy. I've worked on many cars over the years. I've rebuilt engines a couple of times. I'm very methodical when I work on an engine. The manual is always next to me. As I pull things off the engine to examine the trouble, I lay them out neatly on the garage floor, usually on some sort of tarp, taking care to remember and organize the parts in the order that I have removed them. When I find the parts that don't work, worn rings, charred valves, whatever...I replace those things with new parts. Then I reassemble the engine with the new and original parts. Careful again to put everything back that is needed. If there are extra parts when I reassemble...then I have to go back and start over. I don't want to do that.

Deconstruction is a little like that, though we may decide that there are extra parts in our engine that we can do without. Things that simply inhibit the running of the engine. Or there are better designs to our current concerns.

Before we begin deconstructing Hell, let me remind us of one of C.S. Lewis's points in Experiment in Criticism. Again, I believe this is a must read for any teacher or preacher. I think it is a must read for anyone who wants to know how to view art or read a book. This little book, though quite literary in scope, outshines Adler's book How to Read a Book.

The point I want to take away from Lewis is this: allow the book to tell you about itself. As much as you can, surrender to the text. Don't read into it (which in hermeneutics we would call eisegesis). Literature like art, Lewis says, will communicate itself. Good, bad, enduring, superficial, it comes out in the reading of it. It is difficult to surrender to a book sometimes. Sometimes we're at odds with the author and their method. Sometimes it is over our heads. Sometimes there is such historical distance that we are unfamiliar with the context. All of this happens when we read the scriptures.

How does this apply to Hell? What we know of Hell is often informed by everything but the teaching of Jesus. We hold dear lots of opinions that simply don't come from Jesus. In order to know what it is, we also need to know what it is not. McLaren does the heavy lifting here. In his chapter "Homework Assignment" he outlines the Gospel's teachings on Hell in a way that allows us to examine closely what they are about, and he gives us a way of seeing what they are not about. You may disagree with his method or conclusions, but in the end we must at least take a look at the scriptural passages and determine whether our interpretations are broken or not. If they are, what needs to be done to fix the problem?

So, my encouragement: Be open to reading the text of scripture and surrendering to it alone. We can never be fully objective. But surrender means we will look, and read and wait until the truth or lack thereof, comes out at us. We also don't do this in isolation. There are reputable and faithful saints who have gone before who inform our reading. But for right now, let's put all the opinions aside and see if we can't simply take Jesus at his word without Dante or Milton or Luther jumping in. And let's be honest when they do jump in to not let what we've always held onto get put into Jesus' mouth.

Deconstruction is next.

Minds that Matter

One of the things I've always liked about the Presbyterian Church is that it encourages an educated clergy. Beyond that it encourages an educated Church. When held in the right perspective, the education is never simply head knowledge but intended to develop critical thinking. This critical thinking allows us to become discerning people.

Alas, we live in a culture that doesn't want to work at thinking. We live in a time that settles too quickly, believes too naively, and builds foundations for living on less than solid footings. Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, After Virtue, describes our culture as being unable to engage in true moral debate. He says what happens is that we develop premises on arguments that are not thought through. We hold moral positions, because, well - we hold moral positions. He writes:

"It is precisely because there is in our society no established way of deciding between these claims that moral argument appears to be necessarily interminable. From our rival conclusions we can argue back to our rival premises; but when we do arrive at our premises and the invocation of one premise becomes a matter of pur assertion and counter-asssertion. Hence perhaps the slightly shrill tone of so muuch moral debate.
"But that shrillness may have an additional source. For it is not only in arguments with others that we are reduced so quickly to asssertion and counter-assertion; it is also in the arguments that we have within ourselves. For whenever an agent enters the forum of public debate he has already presumably, explicitly or implicitly, settled the matter in question in his own mind. Yet if we possess no unassailable criteria, no set of compelling reasons by means of which we may convince our opponents, it follows that in the process of making up our own minds we can have made no appeal to such criteria or such reasons. If I lack any good reasons to invoke against you, it must seem that I lack any good reasons...It is small wonder if we become defensive and shrill."

We live in an interesting time. First we live in a time of abundant information. But information is not wisdom. Wisdom is something that must be achieved through work, discipline, experience, challenge, re-working, and the like. For many information is too easily adopted as fact without examining it closely. Second, if modernity resulted in the questioning of authority, why is it that people so readily accept the authority of personalities in the media, without any connection to their character? We allow people to become authorities way too easily. They don't have to prove themselves, just offer opinions that agree with my assertions.

All this leads me to the challenge of education. Not for children but for adults. And here I'm not just talking Christian education, but all kinds. I had a learned pastor once tell me that there was no advantage to ignorance. He was absolutely right. Ignorance isn't bliss, it leads to potential abuse and enslavement.

A recent survey that was published on-line concluded that the most influential books for men were read in their Jr. Hi years. For women, the most influential books were read in college. There are tons of conclusions to be drawn from this finding. One easy conclusion is to say we really need to dumb down what we say and how we say it. Like I said, this is an easy conclusion, but I think it is the wrong one. I've always felt that it is better for people to ask the right questions than to merely be handed the right answers.

This fall people in our congregation will be asked to engage in adult education. It won't get them a promotion at work. It will not necessarily make them feel good (though it will in the long run). It probably will not give them six easy answers to a happy marriage or raising children. It might not be that practical. But they will be asked none-the-less to engage in learning as Christian adults. Why?

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis wrote an article entitled "Learning in War-Time." He writes this:

"If all the world were Christian it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now - not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground - would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against the cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much of what seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion." p.58 (Harper Collins Publishers 2001)

Not all of us are created equal intellectually. But we are all called to think and grow in our knowledge of God and his world. There is no advantage to ignorance. Truth, wherever it is found, will lead us to Christ who is the Truth. For our congregation and anyone out there who reads this let me implore you to be learners, explorers, educated people in the faith. It will keep our arguments from become shrill positions that must be defended. It will help us to discern falsehood from truth. In this time of postmodernity where what is in vogue is to relativise truth to the extreme, we can learn to answer our detractors, not with mere facts, but with assertions that find their roots in the very person of Jesus.

Check out our church website for opportunities this fall. Peace.

I Believe in Miracles

"All the essentials of Hinduism would, I think, remain unimpaired if you subtracted the miraculous, and the same is almost true of Mohammedanism. But you cannot do that with Christianity. It is precisely the story of a great Miracle. A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian." C.S. Lewis Miracles Chapter 10.

"I Believe in Miracles" is the title of my sermon for Easter Sunday. As I write this, I am not sure which twists and turns it might take between now and then. But, one thing is certain, I won't contradict Lewis's observation.

In my earlier posting "God the Great Iconoclast" I used a student's journal entry to make the point that God's ways are not our ways as we learn in Isaiah 55. God will always seek to break through the box of containment we construct around him. One of the ways this happens is through miracles. A miracle is just what the word connotes. It is something that happens that we cannot fathom or explain or control. It is a miracle.

The Miracle is the incarnation: life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God becoming human, living among us. His dying for our sin. His resurrection: life out of death. The end of mortality. A true breakthrough. Something we could not have fathomed, imagined, explained, controlled, or implemented. This is God at his most iconoclastic best. Two things are sure in life: death and taxes. Not! Now if God would only work on taxes!

I believe that miracles are often, not proof of God's existence, but God breaking through what we believe to be possible. The purpose of miracles is to open us up to something more than we can touch and taste and hear and see, by working through those very senses. We so often believe that what we experience from day to day is what is real. The Miracle takes us beyond our shabbily constructed boxes and opens us up to the endless possibilities of good that God has created for us.

This Easter God is intending to work a Miracle in us - Resurrection. What will the Great Iconoclast do to get through to us? My guess is it will not be unlike my friend's nephew. God will not act in the way we expect, otherwise he won't catch us off our guard and we will be guarded against his Spirit. The work is done, can we see it? The Miracle has taken place, where is He now? This is no intellectual pursuit, this is the Hound of Heaven looking for you and me, seeking to bring us life.

Of course, it will mean that we must die first. That is the catch. There is no Easter without Good Friday, no empty tomb without a cross. Now that breaks the mold.

God the Great Iconoclast

A friend of mine forwarded a part of a journal that his nephew had written as part of his observations from a mission trip to Mexico. He's about 18. Read this:

"What a long, strange trip it’s been…
Who knew I’d pick Grateful Dead lyrics to describe a Mission Trip?

Well, the ride has been strange. Lots of guys expected lots of things. The outlandish path this mission trip has led me down has got me searching. When you see or feel something profound and moving, it normally leaps out at you as to halt you with awe. I always thought mission trips were supposed to stop you in your tracks a little bit. I thought revelations, big or small, were inherent to the mission trip experience.

In Mexico, I didn’t get knocked down or challenged or enormously moved—the whole week was pretty much smooth sailing. I came, I built a house, and now I’m gone—that’s the story through and through. Lots of expectations were left unrealized.

It’s fascinating though. In reflection, it has been the lack of challenging moments and memories that has emerged as the challenge of the trip. God, if you’re not sticking things out in front of my nose, I’m really gonna have to delve deep to see what lies beneath the glassy surface. One thing that keeps ringing in my head is this quote by C.S. Lewis—“He (God) is the great iconoclast.” Darn straight He is; certainly shattered my once-plenary idea of missions."

First I had to go to the dictionary to be sure I knew what iconoclast meant. Then I had to look up plenary to make sure I got the point. After feeling a bit humbled by an 18 year-old's exceptional use of language, I sat back and enjoyed the point and the profound understanding. Several things hit me.

First, God is the one who shatters the images (iconoclast) we construct of the way things are. Lewis is so very helpful to the postmodern pilgrim at this point. Modernity claims to construct unassailable categories that help us control our environment our world our selves. But the postmodern acknowledgement is that it doesn't work - not most of the time. Certainly, modernity has given us some great insights that must not be dismissed or cast aside. But when it comes to viewing the soul, the meaning of our lives and the world, we need more and different kinds of information. My friend's nephew named the condition we find ourselves in on a daily basis. God rarely smacks us over the head or in the face.

God is subversive. Just when we've got it figured out, "I'll go on a mission trip, get God-smacked and that missing piece of my life will fall into place." This 18 year-old made the good observation, "It’s fascinating though. In reflection, it has been the lack of challenging moments and memories that has emerged as the challenge of the trip." The psalmist says that God's voice can be still and small. But like any good orator or singer, as our choir director said last week, the pianissimo or even silence can create as big a moment or bigger than any forte vocal. We know this is true by experience, but we so often believe the formulas we created instead of our observation. It's easier to fit things into formulas than to actually be aware of our circumstances and honest about our circumstances.

God is very much in charge of how we meet him. It is always on God's terms not ours. We don't beckon God, God beckons us. If we get this wrong, we get the whole message wrong. We become god and God becomes our servant.

"The outlandish path this mission trip has led me down has got me searching." It is the seemingly silence of God that has our young missionary "searching." Two observations here for us to think about. First, we tend to move quickly past the searching phase in our lives and settle the matter. This is very modern of us. We don't like the feelings associated with the search - it makes us anxious and unsettled. We try to resolve these feelings by 'landing.' We end the journey in favor of finding security, even if it means coming up short in our search. (See Lewis's discussion of 'Fixed Land' in the book Perelandra) So we often short-circuit our searching, we don't stay with it long enough. The second point is that the result of short-circuiting the search is that we often settle. We name something God that isn't. We identify what God is doing out of our anxiety without really recognizing what God is doing.

My friend's nephew could easily have stopped the reflection and landed on God's work as the houses that were built or the friendships or whatever. But none of them were it. For some it might be, but for this one there was more to the less. My guess is that God is in the process of revealing himself more fully with a greater impact. That would be my guess and hope.

Would that we be as observant. Maybe that's the problem. My generation of 50 somethings act as though our experience, unreflected experience gives us a leg-up on understanding what God is doing. We've got God in a box as J.B. Phillips often suggested. The irony is that we may be the worst at putting up with the ambiguities of life as though they have something to teach us about God. We've decided what God is like and we put our conception of God to work each day. This is what needs to be shattered. My friend's nephew is not merely expousing youthful ignorance, but perhaps youthful hope and an openness that we shut down with age.

A Prayer: "He [God] is the great iconoclast." Come and deliver us from our stayed and contrived opinions of You.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: A Question of Tactics

We are told that once we die to ourselves in our baptism and live to Christ that we are people who live in the world but we are not to be of it. We obviously have trouble with this as Christian people. We are as much of the world as we are in the world much of the time.

In Walsh and Keesmaat’s commentary on Colossians entitled Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (there is a link under my book section), they write the following as part a “Targum” on verses 2:8-3:4 –

“ And don’t get sucked into consumerist ideology when it comes dressed up in the clothes of Christian faith. A ‘new manly piety’ just might be more of the same old patriarchal power-grabbing, capitalist legitimating stuff that we have seen being pimped both at the mall and in the consumer-friendly church.” P.138

I can’t unpack this passage here and for its full import you need to read it in context with a good translation of the text. But one of the points the authors raise is important for the point of this blog. We are anxious to compete on the world’s level. That we are involved in "consumerist ideology that is dressed up in the clothes of Christian faith." The hype around the upcoming film “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is a case in point. (I believe it is the same anxious hype that accompanied “The Passion”.)

One of the concerns that Douglas Gresham (Lewis’s stepson by Joy Davidman) expressed during a speaking engagement in San Diego last spring was the fear that if the Church co-opted the film for itself, that it would jeopardize its effectiveness. It was Gresham’s hope that the Church would simply go see it with friends or listen to friends who have seen it and experienced its magic, that it would prompt deeper conversations and comparisons with our faith that would lead to faith - not make it a program for evangelism. I share his concerns. The renting of theaters and the emphasis of churches going together to see it - using the film as a tool. All of these things are, in this writer’s humble opinion, born of the desire to compete on the world’s level.

It is the constant search for a “muscular” witness that pushes us to make claims that seek to have legitimacy alongside the worldly claims of Hollywood and its surrounding culture. We do this with celebrities, with athletes, with films, with secular leaders, all whom we would consider successful or important. When the successful of the world affirm what we affirm we hope to ride their star to legitimacy. We want to say to the world, “See – if this film is successful, or this successful person embraces the faith, or this athlete converts – that proves we are not crazy and our position is one people want. We appeal to the culture’s definition of what is cool or strong or important and say “See, Jesus is just like that.” We want to bask in the light of worldly glory and success alongside the gospel.

Unfortunately, Jesus says this isn’t the way to legitimize our faith or gain standing. His ways are subversive. They are quiet, they are humble, they are bold as they stand over and against the culture or as they introduce an alternative sense of value, an alternative story. Jesus’ way is sacrifice, back-alley, backwater, behind the scenes, of where the culture is looking. He resists the red carpet and bright lights of the world. And in that way he chooses that which is insignificant in the world to bring down that which is self-important, great, and powerful in the world.

I believe that the evangelical church is well intentioned here. I too am looking forward to the film, only because I love the books and am hoping to be captivated once again by the story. I look forward to the DVD that will allow me to use it to supplement teaching on these stories or show an example rather than merely telling it. But when we take this to another level and make Narnia “our story, i.e. the property of the Church” we threaten turning away people who will not go see it who will believe it is just another Christian marketing scheme. I pray this will not happen. Why can't we Christians let this stand or fall on its own merits as a story and film? Because we're anxious. Not because we are faithful. We are anxious for standing in our world that legitimizes our beliefs.

Of course I believe if Lewis were in his grave (which I don't) he would turn over at the proposed marketing of video games, action figures, and the rest. His example in life probably should be a good guide for us here – spend your money on something better, not making a cult of Narnia. Besides it only feeds the consumerists idols of our age.

Let me suggest that rather than "go with your church en masse" to see the film, you go with a neighbor, or listen to kids who don’t go to church and hear what they think of Aslan if they’ve seen the film. Maybe all you do is hear what they think, rather than telling them what it means. Maybe you will hear what it means to them. Maybe you can help your neighbor feel welcome rather than out-numbered. Maybe we can simply enjoy the story as a good one and let the Holy Spirit do the convicting and convincing without having us to manipulate the situation. I think this whole marketing of the film is “consumerist ideology…dressed up in the clothes of Christian faith.”

There – I said my peace. This is no complete thought. I have more. I believe that Lewis himself was co-opted by the faith in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and even now - by people who thought they had an example of a powerful intellect to prove that Christianity wasn’t for the simpleton but smart people too. As a result I believe Lewis’s ability to help now has been hindered by a generation that is learning that logical argument is limited and untrustworthy. But that might well be a chapter in a book.

Subverting the Empire

“Christianity agrees with Dualism,” writes C.S. Lewis, “that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.
“Enemy occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing to our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.” – Mere Christianity: The Invasion

When we think of the world we live in, Lewis gives us a good way of perceiving our time. We are in enemy occupied territory. But our king has landed and we are to be carrying out subversive acts against the rebel.

What’s interesting about our subversive acts is that they may not seem particularly radical at first. Though if you live in Western Europe or the Western U.S. some actions will seem more radical than if you live in the Bible Belt, for instance.

Going to church is a subversive act. Last Sunday I mentioned that we teach our children to be loyal members of their soccer, baseball, softball, football, basketball or whatever teams. We encourage our kids to stick with it, or be there for their teammates. You know, I don’t find that same encouragement when it comes to showing up on Sundays – among adults or kids. Our culture has the upper hand, which means the rebellion is winning. I never thought of going to church as being subversive until I realized that most people don’t.

It is the job of Christian people to act in ways that show the Empire we belong to a different kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. As far as I can tell, one of the first steps Christian people need to take is to stand up to the Empire and strike back. Go to church. Go every week. Don’t miss. Not because you get points. Not because you're impressing God. But by doing it you stick it to the enemy. Otherwise we are merely being complicitous with the enemy's plans. May God help us to live counter to the Empire.

Thoroughly Not Modern Lewis

My thesis is that Lewis is a great guide in our present time precisely because he was no modernist. In his writings he takes on modern assumptions and challenges the Christian and non-Christian to think beyond them. Lewis knows full well that even the attempt to think through it will not be sufficient in the end, that human intellect is limited. God, however, is not limited to our thinking.

Lewis is very aware that all his metaphors and analogies are limited in their usefulness. Lewis is constantly working, intellectually and imaginatively, to define and explain and simplify the faith. But at the same time Lewis never takes the route of reductionism. He never takes complex ideas and makes them smaller. Lewis is forever trying to expand and enlarge our limited and limiting view of God. This is where I think his imagination informs his intellect.

A for instance. In the last chapter of "Mere Christianity: Beyond Personality," Lewis writes of the New Man:

"Now it seems to me that most of the popular guesses at the Next Step [for humanity] are making the same sort of mistake [as evolution proponents make]. People see (or at any rate, they think they see) men developing greater brains and getting greater mastery over nature. And because they think the stream is flowing in that direction, they imagine it will go on flowing in that direction. But I cannot help thinking the Next Step will be really new; it will go off in a direction you could never have dreamed of. It would hardly be worth calling a New Step unless it did. I should expect not merely difference but a new kind of difference. I should expect not merely change but a new method of producing the change...
"Now, if you care to talk in these terms, the Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it really is new."

Post-modernity calls into question human postivism. It challenges the idea that things are getting better on their own. It is a time when confidence in our ability to have mastery over nature has eroded. The modern person who clings to these things will have less and less influence on the next generation. The sense is that modernity just keeps going at things the same way, with trust in our mental faculties to rescue us as a people, a world.

Jesus challenges this at the most foundational levels. Lewis comments that this New Step is new in several ways.

1. It is not carried out by sexual reproduction. It is not biological. This new step is begotten of God - uncreated life given to creatures like us. From terminal to eternal.
2. The former steps forward happened to us if we buy into an evolutional understanding of human "progress." This step is one we are invited to choose. This separates us from our animal instinct which must follow. Lewis reminds us that we can't choose to make this new life or create it, but we do have the choice to receive it or refuse it.
3. Lewis says Jesus is not simply "a" new man, but "THE" New Man. Jesus is the genesis of all new people. This life is transmitted not through ideas or lifestyles or natural means. "Everyone who gets it gets it by personal contact with Him."
4. This change is going on at light speed, compared with the slow evolutionary processes. It may seem to outsiders as though it is at a dying snail's pace, but the new life in Christ is moving rapidly through human beings and from generation to generation. It is no natural process. It is what we might call Kairos time.
5. The stakes are higher. If death comes in a natural life, it is simply ended. Maybe shortened but not by much. If this new life is rejected, then death is eternal in its nature. If we won't embrace this new life we are doomed. Lewis here uses the analogy of a baby that refuses to come out of the womb. If it stays in the safe and familiar confines of the womb, it will die.

Post-modern people are looking for a geniune new life, not merely the repackaging of old religious practices in modern looking boxes. The irony is the new life is always present among us if we will embrace dying to ourselves and living in Christ. Not clinging to old ways as being gospel, but clinging to Christ who is himself the gospel.

The Great Sin Continued

"As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
"That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say that they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fello-men." p.96 Book III Chapter 8 Mere Christianity.

Lewis goes on to say that any of us at any moment could fall into this "death trap." In The Great Divorce, Lewis suggests that Napoleon is the ultimate example of Pride. Pride, for Lewis, (and I believe biblically) results in enmity with God, with ourselves and with each other. Napoleon, lives in a huge mansion, on the edges of hell in complete isolation from other inhabitants of hell. And every time someone moves closer he moves further away. Ultimate Pride will move us to be completely alone.

It is good for Christians to think about this in relation to our claims of the exclusive nature of salvation through Jesus Christ. I believe this to be absolutely true, that Jesus is the only way to the Father. But in saying that, I must be aware that this is not a smug statement. It is certainlly not a statement about how I behave in my faith (which is far from believing all that Jesus says - just check out how I act.). The point is this: When belief in Christ becomes a way of distinguishing us as better than other folks, we are no longer in the same camp as Jesus. This is spiritual Pride. It is the insidious part of Pride - it attaches itself very quickly to the religious person. God is always, for people. We need to do the same.

Lewis is helpful on another score here: "The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becomiing chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer." p.97 ibid.

So - the question to be asked of ourselves is: Do we see ourselves as superior to others because we "know God?" If so, then we have created a false God. If not, maybe we're on the right path.

The Great Sin

The Great Sin

In preparation for the film on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I’m teaching a class on Wednesday nights on C.S. Lewis. Tonight we will be looking at selections from Book III in Mere Christianity. Chapter 8 is entitled “The Great Sin”. Lewis is here speaking Ifabout Pride. As with Aristotle, Lewis also includes its virtue opposite in the conversation, Humility.

There is an aspect of this Great Sin that I would like to illustrate. The aspect is the competitive nature of Pride. Read Lewis at this point.

“The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. I f everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” P.95

Lewis will illustrate this point using money. He will ask, when you have an excessive amount of money, why would you want or need more? Only, he says, to have more than the next person. What is difficult for me as a Western Christian is that our whole economic system is built on this competitive drive. It is difficult for us to answer the question “What’s enough?” when we are being driven by Pride, not greed. Here Lewis makes the distinction: “Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point.” Once we have, the only drive left is Pride – to have more than you.

One of the challenges to me is that everything around me encourages the competition. If I have more people in church, or more money for vacations, or more friends, or more opportunities to travel, or more recognition, I am better than, say, you. It strokes my ego and places me among a perceived elite. If pride is at the center of it, then my pride needs to be dethroned. Our culture doesn’t help. We need to be in a Christian culture that values Humility over Pride. It is the way of Jesus.

Some cultures don’t know Pride in the way we do. This summer while on safari in Kenya, I asked our guide – Big Moses, if he and the other guides ever keep track of the sightings for the day and compare to see who did the best (i.e. who saw the most spectacular things, etc.). Big Moses, our Masai guide simply looked at me with a puzzled look. Our safari mate, Frank, looked at Moses and me and said something like, “I don’t think they think about things that way.” And Big Moses confirmed it.

There are lots of things to learn from people outside the faith. One might be a way of living that is co-operative rather than competitive. This would be a great lesson for the church in the West. For me especially.