FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
12d ago
As someone who came from a Protestant backwater (evangelical non-denominational, essentially) I can attest to that! We didn't have Acquinas or Augustine or Calvin (and we didn't want them either!) but we had Lewis. We adored Lewis!
Why here's a potentially appropriate bit of Lewis now, on how non-Christians often view the idea of sin:
Apart from this linguistic difficulty, the greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin. This has struck me more forcibly when I spoke to the R.A.F. than when I spoke to students: whether (as I believe) the proletariat is more self-righteous than other classes, or whether educated people are cleverer at concealing their pride, this creates for us a new situation. The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.
The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God in the dock.
It is generally useless to try to combat this attitude, as older preachers did, by dwelling on sins like drunkenness and un-chastity. The modern proletariat is not drunken. As for fornication, contraceptives have made a profound difference. As long as this sin might socially ruin a girl by making her the mother of a bastard, most men recognized the sin against charity which it involved, and their consciences were often troubled by it. Now that it need have no such consequences, it is not, I think, generally felt to be a sin at all. My own experience suggests that if we can awake the conscience of our hearers at all, we must do so in quite different directions. We must talk of Conceit, spite, jealousy, cowardice, meanness, etc. But I am very far from believing that I have found the solution of this problem.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
12d ago
As far as the judgment thing goes, Lewis had some more to say! First, the idea of sin isn't that you avoid sin because God will punish you for it, but because sin is bad in and of itself:
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing." I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.
To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
As for why you should feel guilty, well, do you think a bad character is something to feel proud about? I'm a coward: I have learned that about myself. I feel shame about it. I'm trying not to be one any longer! I don't think feeling guilty about our flaws is that strange a thing to feel. When we think about God as the ultimate Judge it might be better to focus less on the potential punishment for our crimes, so to speak, then for the fact that who we are will be judged, and judged perfectly. Lewis writes a bit on this as well in his essay "The World's Last Night":
We have all encountered judgments or verdicts on ourselves in this life. Every now and then we discover what our fellow creatures really think of us. I don’t of course mean what they tell us to our faces: that we usually have to discount. I am thinking of what we sometimes overhear by accident or of the opinions about us which our neighbours or employees or subordinates unknowingly reveal in their actions: and of the terrible, or lovely, judgments artlessly betrayed by children or even animals. Such discoveries can be the bitterest or sweetest experiences we have. But of course both the bitter and the sweet are limited by our doubt as to the wisdom of those who judge. We always hope that those who so clearly think us cowards or bullies are ignorant and malicious; we always fear that those who trust us or admire us are misled by partiality. I suppose the experience of the Final Judgment (which may break in upon us at any moment) will be like these little experiences, but magnified to the Nth.
For it will be infallible judgment. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realise that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along. We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors, our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
26d ago
It's important to put that verse in context. Paul is saying that if Christ was not raised from the dead, then we will not be either. So when he refers to misery he means that if we are toiling in the hope that we have been saved from our signs and reconciled with God and will be resurrected to eternal life, and that's not true, then we would be the most "miserable".
But Paul doesn't mean "miserable" as in "feeling the emotion of sadness or depression". The Greek word that the KJV translates as "miserable" is "eleeinoteroi". It is used one other place in the Bible: Revelation 3:17: "Because you say, ‘I am rich and have prospered; I need nothing,’ but do not realize that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked,". Now isn't it a bit odd to say that someone believes they are prosperous and need nothing but in fact are miserable in the sense of being sad or depressed? In both cases the word would be better translated as "pitiable". Their condition is miserable, not their emotions: they are in a position worthy of the pity of others. Which is how other translations, like the NIV, translate the word. And certainly it is the case that it is a pitiable position to be in if you believe that your sins are wiped clean and you will be resurrected and that's not actually true.
"If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
We also have to keep in mind Paul's audience: Christians were a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire at the time. Unlike modern Mormons, Paul and his audience were daily in danger of beatings, execution, and being thrown to the lions. As he writes a few verses later:
"And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
“'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'"
Which is probably why most of the Christians here don’t like it. It’s pretty heretical! Mostly the Jesus parts. When you downgrade Jesus from “God incarnate” to “guy who did the best at being good” then it’s going to be more palatable to atheists (since it keeps God in the mysterious “ground if all being” box where he’s not likely to do anything to offend*) and less palatable to Christian’s (the guys whose hope is salvation through the intercession of Christ).
*Lewis wrote on this in his autobiography (emphasis mine):
"The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) only in us, and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anything else. And anyway, the more muddled one got about it and the more contradictions one committed, the more this proved that our discursive thought moved only on the level of 'Appearance', and 'Reality' must be somewhere else. And where else but, of course, in the Absolute? There, not here, was 'the fuller splendour' behind the 'sensuous curtain'. The emotion that went with all this was certainly religious. But this was a religion that cost nothing. We could talk religiously about the Absolute: but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us. It was “there”; safely and immovably “there”. It would never come “here”, never (to be blunt) make a nuisance of Itself. This quasi-religion was all a one-way street; all eros (as Dr. Nygren would say) steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey."
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
26d ago
C. S. Lewis wrote a bit in a letter about the appeal of fantasy over real sex which seems appropriate:
For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.
And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifice or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.
Among these shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification is ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.
Pornography asks far less of us than sex with another person does. If it displeases us we can skip to another bit of porn. We never have to think about pleasing another person, or do something that brings us little pleasure because it brings our partner great pleasure, or think of any needs but our own. Very tempting!
Speak my name, and after a week or so I'll probably appear!
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