It is just like Lewis to begin talking about whether Christianity is necessary to live a good life and end up with the question of whether one is a man or a rabbit. Lewis's basic point in this selection is that in order to answer the question of whether or not Christianity is necessary to lead a Good Life is a question that each person must answer for themselves. Some may seriously look into Christianity and say this is a lie and others will confront Christianity and say this is the great secret of the Universe. Neither conclusion is necessary for proving that you are a man. The necessary question is were you willing to honestly stand up to the question and look into all the facts and logic behind Christianity and its relationship to a Good life and decide for yourself. To avoid the facts or to remain purposefully ignorant of what Christianity is and try to get some one else to tell you what you should believe is to be, as Lewis says, a rabbit, a creature who lives its life in fear of almost all things and does not stand up to anything lest it might die.
How often do we as Christians and as people act like rabbits? We are always looking for the easy way out. The way that involves us being as passive as possible and get the most reward. This is a corruption of our humanity. We are given innate desires to explore and to learn and above all to be moderately skeptical, to challenge all that is presented to us. We must learn to act much like the Spartans of 300 and face our Persian empires not cower in fear. After all if the question must be answered eventually would it not be better to find out the answer as soon as possible and face what is rumored to be coming and find out if the rumors are true or false rather than let our fear take away the dignity we have and turn us into lowly rabbits?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Vocation
Vocation...this seems like a never ending theme here at Calvin College. Our professors are obsessed with it. It seems to Calvin that perhaps this is the end all and be all purpose of a college. This is a problem in my view. I hold with C.S. Lewis that college is about a human pursuing knowledge because he has interest in it. The important thing is that a person has to find on his own the what he enjoys the most because, while an institution can possibly introduce the person to a thing which he loves, the institution can only show him some of his chosen field of study and should not teach the person as one would do on the job training. When you are at college you are there to learn for the sake of learning and to learn how to be a better man not do a prolonged four or more year training for a job.
Now this is not to say that a college does not manage to prepare us for a job in four or more years, but to say that this preparation is not the primary purpose. Thus, I do not think we can say that making people find a Vocation is a plausible goal of a college. Rather the purpose of a college in this respect should be to provide a place in which one can learn more about a field one already enjoys and provide a place that a person who has many can varied interests can come and learn more about each and use that information to decide for himself what his vocation should be. The professors, while they should help the students, should not be primarily focused on the students careers but rather helping the students learn more about a subject that they enjoy which as a by-product will be beneficial to their careers. I am sure that by now you have noticed two things, One that this is very similar to "Our English Syllabus" and, two, that both points of thought give the same information, but the difference between the two schools of thought is the way in which the student and the professor engage the subject matter. On one hand, the student sits in class and gets lectured at and on the side of learning alongside one another, both student and professor engage the subject matter because of their enjoyment there of not under the coercion of the Board of Trustees or because a Core requirement says they should.
Now this is not to say that a college does not manage to prepare us for a job in four or more years, but to say that this preparation is not the primary purpose. Thus, I do not think we can say that making people find a Vocation is a plausible goal of a college. Rather the purpose of a college in this respect should be to provide a place in which one can learn more about a field one already enjoys and provide a place that a person who has many can varied interests can come and learn more about each and use that information to decide for himself what his vocation should be. The professors, while they should help the students, should not be primarily focused on the students careers but rather helping the students learn more about a subject that they enjoy which as a by-product will be beneficial to their careers. I am sure that by now you have noticed two things, One that this is very similar to "Our English Syllabus" and, two, that both points of thought give the same information, but the difference between the two schools of thought is the way in which the student and the professor engage the subject matter. On one hand, the student sits in class and gets lectured at and on the side of learning alongside one another, both student and professor engage the subject matter because of their enjoyment there of not under the coercion of the Board of Trustees or because a Core requirement says they should.
My Precious (a Lesson from Golem)
C.S. Lewis remarks in, The inner ring, about a phenomenon that each of us can find examples in our every day lives. This phenomenon is that of, what C.S. Lewis calls, the Inner Ring or more commonly known in High Schools throughout the United States as the In crowd. This is a group of people that band together and spend lots of time together.
The concept of an Inner ring is not a new one nor is it a bad one. As a matter of fact it is perhaps one of the most natural things for a person do to in that a person will always tend to spend time with people that are most like that person. The Inner Ring can be quite good when it is used to protect the members involved from persecution or to protect other people. For instance, the early church was like an inner ring in many respects, especially during the Nero's persecution of the Christian church, because to allow people who were not part of the church to know all of it's members would be much like signing a death warrant for all who were there and would destroy the church.
However the Inner ring can also be used for bad purposes. This most often, at least in Lewis's mind, occurred when the purpose of the exclusivity of the ring is to intentionally make it hard for new people to join the ring. This begets a cycle of remorse and false or undeserved privilege toward or for, respectively, the members of the inner ring. In this type of inner ring, the focus is control and vying for power, neither of which are satisfying or permanent.
Still we humans have an innate desire to be part of the inner workings of all things and be an integral part of whatever we are a part of. Perhaps this is a sign of our design according to God's plan. For indeed as C.S. Lewis says in the "Weight of Glory" that the ultimate thing that can happen to us humans is that God recognizes us and thus we are an ingredient, a necessary part of the divine happiness.
The concept of an Inner ring is not a new one nor is it a bad one. As a matter of fact it is perhaps one of the most natural things for a person do to in that a person will always tend to spend time with people that are most like that person. The Inner Ring can be quite good when it is used to protect the members involved from persecution or to protect other people. For instance, the early church was like an inner ring in many respects, especially during the Nero's persecution of the Christian church, because to allow people who were not part of the church to know all of it's members would be much like signing a death warrant for all who were there and would destroy the church.
However the Inner ring can also be used for bad purposes. This most often, at least in Lewis's mind, occurred when the purpose of the exclusivity of the ring is to intentionally make it hard for new people to join the ring. This begets a cycle of remorse and false or undeserved privilege toward or for, respectively, the members of the inner ring. In this type of inner ring, the focus is control and vying for power, neither of which are satisfying or permanent.
Still we humans have an innate desire to be part of the inner workings of all things and be an integral part of whatever we are a part of. Perhaps this is a sign of our design according to God's plan. For indeed as C.S. Lewis says in the "Weight of Glory" that the ultimate thing that can happen to us humans is that God recognizes us and thus we are an ingredient, a necessary part of the divine happiness.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Eros
One of C.S. Lewis's defined four loves is Eros. Eros is the love of a lover. For these reason it is perhaps the closest to Agape, or God to human, love. The Bible even uses this type of imagery when it says that Jesus is the lover of my soul. However unlike Agape love, Eros easily becomes manipulative, controlling, and harmful to the lover and the one who is loved, the lovee so to speak. Now Lewis makes a point of separating Eros from sexual desire that Lewis defines as Venus, in reference to the Roman God of sensual desire because he is speaking only of a lovers love and not the desire for the pleasure that is found in having sexual relations with a woman.
Eros is a hard thing to grasp for me although I have had many glimpses of it. This is because I am cautious, perhaps too cautious, about when and how my relationships form. The side effect of this is that I am not so sure that I have ever really fallen in love more like looked over the edge into the pool of love and stepped back rather than leaping. From what Lewis says, this seems to be a blessing, for the most part anyways, because if Eros is so strong I feel that a strong friendship should be there to support him and work as a balance to prevent Eros from becoming corrupt. Also Lewis says that Eros is perhaps the most mortal of all the Loves and this, to me, also supports the idea that one needs to have a foundational relationship for Eros to rest on otherwise he will be like a seed that is left out on the ground that has not been tilled. At the first rain, Eros will grow into a seedling, but will be unable to really break into the earth and so soon dies from a lack of the nutrients required to sustain itself. This is also an apt metaphor for Eros that has a strong relational foundation, but is not controlled and guided because it leads into C.S. Lewis's own saying that Eros is much like a garden that needs tending.
However we must not be too grave when dealing with such fickle things as emotions because emotions cannot and do not last as such we should be happy when they arrive and regard them as true, but not to believe their fickle promises of everlasting perseverance. If we want Eros to remain as much as possible, we cannot rely on him and him alone, as Lewis says, but it involves us fulfilling the promises we make while he whispers what to say in our ears. This is the truest expression of love. That of acting it out on a daily basis without any positive emotions to help nudge us along.
Eros is a hard thing to grasp for me although I have had many glimpses of it. This is because I am cautious, perhaps too cautious, about when and how my relationships form. The side effect of this is that I am not so sure that I have ever really fallen in love more like looked over the edge into the pool of love and stepped back rather than leaping. From what Lewis says, this seems to be a blessing, for the most part anyways, because if Eros is so strong I feel that a strong friendship should be there to support him and work as a balance to prevent Eros from becoming corrupt. Also Lewis says that Eros is perhaps the most mortal of all the Loves and this, to me, also supports the idea that one needs to have a foundational relationship for Eros to rest on otherwise he will be like a seed that is left out on the ground that has not been tilled. At the first rain, Eros will grow into a seedling, but will be unable to really break into the earth and so soon dies from a lack of the nutrients required to sustain itself. This is also an apt metaphor for Eros that has a strong relational foundation, but is not controlled and guided because it leads into C.S. Lewis's own saying that Eros is much like a garden that needs tending.
However we must not be too grave when dealing with such fickle things as emotions because emotions cannot and do not last as such we should be happy when they arrive and regard them as true, but not to believe their fickle promises of everlasting perseverance. If we want Eros to remain as much as possible, we cannot rely on him and him alone, as Lewis says, but it involves us fulfilling the promises we make while he whispers what to say in our ears. This is the truest expression of love. That of acting it out on a daily basis without any positive emotions to help nudge us along.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Chapter 4
Redemption. Such a pregnant term in modern day Christian theology especially amongst the church denominations that sprung out of the Reformation. Certainly as a Christian one knows that one needs redemption, but what is the essence of it? Plantinga says that it is the act of atonement for sins, that is to make us one with God. Now we must not be lulled into a false sense of security that says, "O Christ died for my sins so it does not matter what I do anymore because God will forgive me" this is a classic thing that Paul warns against when he says in Romans 6:1 "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Plantinga says it this way, that when we were still in slavery in Egypt, a parallel for sin, that God did not give us the Ten Commandments, but after we were freed from since then God gave the Ten Commandments to us so that we might not become slaves to sin once again.
This is when Redemption is truly evident. When human beings, who have been saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, take the initiative and begin living lives filled with the love of God because until that point, we are still unredeemed slave chained to a weight so great that we have no hope of dragging it along and unable to act as a free man should. When we begin to live lives like this, then we begin the work that God has set out for us, which is to help him redeem other lost sinners and all of creation. This is when redemption comes full circle and the redeemed becomes a part of the redeeming, which is much like what Lewis says in Weight of Glory, "The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses... shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness."
This is when Redemption is truly evident. When human beings, who have been saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, take the initiative and begin living lives filled with the love of God because until that point, we are still unredeemed slave chained to a weight so great that we have no hope of dragging it along and unable to act as a free man should. When we begin to live lives like this, then we begin the work that God has set out for us, which is to help him redeem other lost sinners and all of creation. This is when redemption comes full circle and the redeemed becomes a part of the redeeming, which is much like what Lewis says in Weight of Glory, "The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses... shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness."
Learning in war-time
C.S. Lewis, himself a veteran, feels called during the second World War to talk about the role of learning and indeed all purely societal activities. This is because during a war, citizens of the nation at war often feel called to go into service. Lewis uses common sense to counter act that extreme notion in saying that not all can be or should be soldiers. A more recent example of this is the United States Army which has it set up such that for every single soldier on the battlefield, there are twenty more individuals as support for that soldier. Also one can sight the obvious fact that if all people were soldiers then who would make the ammunition, grow the food, and do all the other things that are necessary for running a successful war campaign.
Lewis also brings out the argument that people dying is not something new. As a matter of fact, all people die so "war does not increase the frequency of death" all it can do is alter the time of death. From there Lewis says that even soldiers are not constantly focused on the war because war is a finite thing and as such cannot occupy one's every waking minute. This is why one needs an eternal thing upon which to fix his thoughts and, for Christians, that is God. Thus we, as Christians, should live to serve God in all that we do, and that God can be served even by the most menial tasks and we are not called to live, which is to spend our every waking minute, for our country, for saving others lives, or for securing the safety of our country. This is an important thing and helps us understand why we may not be participating actively in the war effort even though our country is fighting for freedom, ours or otherwise, but we still are living in accordance with God's will.
I think Lewis has a good point that just because we, as a nation, are at war, does not mean that God calls us to drop all learning to suddenly become soldiers. However, this does not mean that no-one should become a soldier either. After all, Society must find a balance and not be swinging wildly between two extremes or she will fall, but, above all, one must always put God first before deciding whatever he will do for indeed even the most self-sacrificing or honorable acts in the world will do him no good unless they be lifted up as an offering before God.
Lewis also brings out the argument that people dying is not something new. As a matter of fact, all people die so "war does not increase the frequency of death" all it can do is alter the time of death. From there Lewis says that even soldiers are not constantly focused on the war because war is a finite thing and as such cannot occupy one's every waking minute. This is why one needs an eternal thing upon which to fix his thoughts and, for Christians, that is God. Thus we, as Christians, should live to serve God in all that we do, and that God can be served even by the most menial tasks and we are not called to live, which is to spend our every waking minute, for our country, for saving others lives, or for securing the safety of our country. This is an important thing and helps us understand why we may not be participating actively in the war effort even though our country is fighting for freedom, ours or otherwise, but we still are living in accordance with God's will.
I think Lewis has a good point that just because we, as a nation, are at war, does not mean that God calls us to drop all learning to suddenly become soldiers. However, this does not mean that no-one should become a soldier either. After all, Society must find a balance and not be swinging wildly between two extremes or she will fall, but, above all, one must always put God first before deciding whatever he will do for indeed even the most self-sacrificing or honorable acts in the world will do him no good unless they be lifted up as an offering before God.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Plantinga Chapter 3
Plantinga points out in this chapter that all humanity and indeed all of creation is fallen. This is a central teaching in the Christian faith and one well worth looking at in depth. First Plantinga talks about what it means to be fallen. It means that we sin each and every day and which is part of what the Christian Reformed Church would say is the total depravity of creation. The reason this connection applies is because Sin is, as Dr. Ribeiro would say, the d/d(t) of Evil (d/d(t)) is an attempt at putting a derivative in a blog if you couldn't tell) and Evil is what defines the total depravity of all creation.
Plantinga goes on to say that Evil is not a new invention purely of the devil's own design for the devil cannot create only attempt fake mockeries of what has already been created. In this case, the devil's mockery of good is evil for in order for evil to have an existence then good must exist, but even when there is no evil then Good still can exist which means that Good is a separate and stand alone entity from evil and should not be confused as such. However the devil is of the wily type and is quite good at parading about the twisted happiness-es and joys as the real deal and exempting the parts of them that prove that the apparent "good" that the devil would have us do is in reality an evil because it does not satisfy and does not accomplish the lasting joy and happiness that it promises, but rather a empty joy and a fleeting fulfilling happiness.
God has a response to the crafty manipulative evil that the devil has created for all humanity and that is common grace. Common grace is the little nougat of goodness that can be found in all institutions, reason, and people and if nurtured can flower into righteous prosperity for the institutions, heightened insight to reason, and faith in God for the people. Common grace also acts as a barrier to prevent evil from fooling the whole world and turning creation into a very benighted place empty of God's loving light and presence. Thus, it is our duty as Christians to encourage any application of this common grace where ever we see it, be it in Christians or non-Christians, for it is one of the driving forces that is preserving and can save our ever more benighted race.
Plantinga goes on to say that Evil is not a new invention purely of the devil's own design for the devil cannot create only attempt fake mockeries of what has already been created. In this case, the devil's mockery of good is evil for in order for evil to have an existence then good must exist, but even when there is no evil then Good still can exist which means that Good is a separate and stand alone entity from evil and should not be confused as such. However the devil is of the wily type and is quite good at parading about the twisted happiness-es and joys as the real deal and exempting the parts of them that prove that the apparent "good" that the devil would have us do is in reality an evil because it does not satisfy and does not accomplish the lasting joy and happiness that it promises, but rather a empty joy and a fleeting fulfilling happiness.
God has a response to the crafty manipulative evil that the devil has created for all humanity and that is common grace. Common grace is the little nougat of goodness that can be found in all institutions, reason, and people and if nurtured can flower into righteous prosperity for the institutions, heightened insight to reason, and faith in God for the people. Common grace also acts as a barrier to prevent evil from fooling the whole world and turning creation into a very benighted place empty of God's loving light and presence. Thus, it is our duty as Christians to encourage any application of this common grace where ever we see it, be it in Christians or non-Christians, for it is one of the driving forces that is preserving and can save our ever more benighted race.
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