The age-old curse is breaking
April 25, 2011
An Easter poem by C. S. Lewis, appearing in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950-1963(HarperSan Francisco, 2007), p. 955. The poem is from a June 1958 letter to Francis Turner. It’s not the kind of thing that could stand on its own, but for echoes of Narnia and a vision of the cosmic significance of the resurrection, it’s good Easter reading.
Lords coeval with creation,
Seraph, Cherub, Throne and Power,
Princedom, Virtue, Domination,
Hail the long-awaited hour!
Bruised in head, with broken pinion,
Trembling for his old dominion,
See the ancient dragon cower!
For the Prince of Heaven has risen,
Victor, from his shattered prison.Loudly roaring from the regions
Where no sunbeam e’er was shed,
Rise and dance, ye ransomed legions
Of the cold and countless dead!
Gates of adamant are broken,
Words of conquering power are spoken
Through the God who died and bled:
Hell lies vacant, spoiled and cheated,
By the Lord of life defeated.Bear, behemoth, bustard, camel,
Warthog, wombat, kangaroo,
Insect, reptile, fish and mammal,
Tree, flower, grass, and lichen too,
Rise and romp and ramp, awaking,
For the age-old curse is breaking.
All things shall be made anew;
Nature’s rich rejuvenation
Follows on Man’s liberation.Eve’s and Adam’s son and daughter,
Sinful, weary, twisted, mired,
Pale with terror, thinned with slaughter,
Robbed of all your hearts desired,
Look! Rejoice! One born of woman,
Flesh and blood and bones all human,
One who wept and could be tired,
Risen from vilest death, has given
All who will the hope of Heaven.
Coffee with Lewis: this deplorable walk
January 13, 2010
Who wouldn’t enjoy a walk with C.S. Lewis? That depends on a lot of things. Over at Scriptorium Daily, Fred Sanders shares a letter from C.S. Lewis about a walk that didn’t go very well. I’ll let Sanders take it from here:
In second volume of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Books, broadcasts, and the War, 1931-1949), Lewis tells a story about taking a terrible walk with somebody named Kenchaw, somebody with whom Lewis seemed to have nothing in common and nothing to talk about. “That Kenchaw man,” he calls him, in a letter to his brother Warnie who is serving in the military in Shanghai. Lewis writes the letter (dated March 20, 1932) with obvious relish in sharing a good yarn with his brother, but it really does sound like an awful walk. Lewis had only been a Christian for about a year, and this letter has plenty of the Read the rest of this entry »
Coffee with Lewis: a little blacker
July 2, 2009
Lewis writes this in Mere Christianity. It speaks to a characteristic of too much of our political discourse these days from pundits and talk radio. It also speaks to many of our personal relationships as well. Don’t read this if you don’t want to feel some sharp conviction:
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”
In the Westminster Larger Catechism, the lengthy answer to the question ‘What sins are forbidden in the ninth commandment?’ contains these two phrases: ‘scornful contempt’ and ‘fond admiration,’ which are essentially the same sin–seeing only what we want to see in other people. ‘Scornful contempt’ is what Lewis described. It is what David experienced that he poured out to the Lord in Psalm 35:
But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered;
they gathered together against me;
wretches whom I did not know
tore at me without ceasing;
like profane mockers at a feast,
they gnash at me with their teeth…For they do not speak peace,
but against those who are quiet in the land
they devise words of deceit.
They open wide their mouths against me;
they say, “Aha, Aha! Our eyes have seen it!” [Psalm 35:15-16,20-21]
Coffee with Lewis: love turned into Charity
January 19, 2009
This from The Four Loves:
The invitation to turn our natural loves into Charity is never lacking. It is provided by those frictions and grustrations that meet us in all of them; unmistakable evidence that (natural) love is not going to be “enough”–unmistakable, unless we are blinded by egotism. When we are, we use them absurdly. “If only I had been more fortunate in my children (that boy gets more like his father every day) I could have loved them perfectly.” But every child is sometimes infuriating; most children are not infrequently odious. “If only my husband were more considerate, less lazy, less extravagant”…”If only my wife had fewer moods and more sense, and were less extravagant”…”If my father wasn’t so fernally prosy and close-fisted.” But in everyone, and of course in ourselves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness. The necessity of practising these virtues first sets us, forcesus, upon the attempt to turn–more strictly, to let God turn–our love into Charity.”
Two kings
December 23, 2008
Can I give you a ‘once upon a time’ story? Once upon a time, a little more than two thousand years ago, in a land the Romans called Judea, two kings were alive at the same time and in the same place. One king was about seventy years old; the other king was an infant. The big king was evil; the little king was pure. The big king was rich and powerful; the little king was poor. The big king lived in a palace staffed with servants; the little king was born in a stable. The little king’s mother was a young peasant girl from an obscure village, and his adoptive father was a carpenter.
Of course, you know the names of the two kings. The big king’s name was Herod. He was known as “Herod the Great.” He was a master builder, starting an ambitious expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem. A large portion of a supporting platform of that Temple structure, now known as the Wailing Wall, is still standing today.
But there are a couple things you ought to know about King Herod. He was a puppet-king. Judea was under Roman control and occupation. The Roman emperor allowed Herod to ‘rule’ in Palestine. Herod was appointed governor of Galilee in 40 BC, and later that year the Roman senate declared him “King of Judea.” He was a king, but a king who would not dare displease Rome.
In Judea Herod was not considered to be so “great.” In fact, most conservative, observant Jews of his day would say that he was not even Jewish! His ancestors were Edomites and not Jews—and his grandfather’s generation had embraced Judaism because there were a lot of swords were pointed at them. He could never be recognized as a true king of the Jews. He was not of the tribe of Judah. He was not related to David.
No, I’m not writing a special for the History Channel. What I want you to understand is the insecure position Herod was in during his reign. In Herod’s life, reality didn’t quite match up with outward appearances. That is something worth remembering.
One day Herod receives some unusual visitors from far away—“Magi from the East,” as Matthew describes them. [Nowhere is there an indication of how many there were!] Magi were most likely Persian [think Iranian] priests of Zoroaster, who were into the interpretation dreams and the study of astrology. The Magi came to Herod because they were following a heavenly object [“a star at its rising/in the east”]. Their search led them to Judea. “We have come to worship him—he who has been born king of the Jews.”
No wonder Herod was greatly troubled. He didn’t like the idea of another king in his realm, especially a true king whose birth was signaled by signs in the sky! He consults the chief priests and scribes about Messiah. [By the way, I wonder why the chief priests didn’t go along with the Magi—perhaps indifference?] He tried to fool the wise men. He met with them secretly and asked them how to find this newborn king. He lied to them. His fear and obsession with keeping his kingdom intact turn him into a liar. When his plan fails after the Magi scoot back to Persia without reporting to him, Herod becomes enraged, and you know what happens next. Herod becomes a mass murderer, ordering the slaughter of all male children in the area of Bethlehem under two years of age. But God warned Joseph in a dream, and the young family fled to Egypt. In a short time Herod the Great died, and the new king came back from Egypt.
The big king died and now is remembered as a little king—pathetic, paranoid, murderous. The little king grew up. He is Jesus, and now he is King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords. His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom.
A part of the Christmas story is the story of a king who missed the real king. His little, insecure, pathetic kingdom mattered more than the Kingdom which God was bringing into the world. Really it’s an old, old story. The little kingdom wars with the big Kingdom, and the kingdom of this world wars against the Kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of man wars against the Kingdom of God.
This war wages behind every human intention, decision, thought, word, desire, and action. Everything any of us does is done in pursuit of one of these two kingdoms. We were created, as Paul Tripp likes to say, for ‘big Kingdom’ living. But sin twists and perverts our allegiances and causes us to become Herods—fiercely dedicated to our little kingdoms, believing our kingdom is as good as it gets, and blind to transcendent, eternal glories of the big Kingdom—the Kingdom of heaven.
Think about Herod again. Herod’s greatest achievement was a religious one. He expanded the Temple. But even that was all about advancing and securing his little kingdom. This is how we get ourselves in trouble without realizing it. Most of us don’t wake up in the morning thinking in Kingdom terms. And without realizing it, we can do religious things (go to church, help others, study the Bible), all in the hope that God will ensure the success of our little kingdom.
We end up living for earth-bound treasures: success, someone’s affection, power and control, a certain lifestyle, parenting successful children, a trouble-free marriage, pleasure, or stuff. Let me ask you this: What makes your day a ‘good day’? What tends to make you happy and satisfied with life? If we watched a video of you during 2008, what treasure would we conclude that you are seeking?
We end up defining life in terms of our needs and anxieties. Herod felt stuck between keeping Rome happy and proving himself to skeptical Jews. Maybe you feel stuck in a similar way. You will never be able to control all the things that need to be controlled in order for you to guarantee that all your needs will be met and that your kingdom will come and your will be done.
Living for your little kingdom will shape the way you respond to everything God has placed in your life. Living for your little kingdom turns life into an endless, fruitless search for earth-bound treasure and an endless, fruitless focus on yourself. The Bible has a word for this way of living: sin!
We know what we like and the people we want to be with. We know the kind of house we’d like to own and the car we want to drive. We know how we want people in our family to respond to us. Without even recognizing it, we quickly fall into a ‘my desire, my will, my way’ lifestyle, driven by the cravings of our hearts. Like Herod, the more threatened my kingdom becomes, the more likely I am to manipulate, lie, become outraged, and destroy. But the promises of the Bible are an invitation to be a part of a bigger and better Kingdom—the Kingdom of God.
“It seems then,” said Tyrian, smiling himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.”
“Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.”
“Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” [C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle]
The big Kingdom really is big! Its purposes span all of history and spread to all of creation and speak to all kinds of people. After all, a group of Iranian Zoroastrian priest-astrologers are the first seekers! The big Kingdom of God and my little kingdom cannot co-exist peacefully. The Kingdom of God cannot be squeezed or chopped down to fit into the constricted space of your little kingdom. And that is a good thing: that is why we weekly call you all to worship. Worship is opening ourselves up to the grandeur of the Kingdom of God—acknowledging one greater than we are, whose Kingdom is greater and much, much better than ours—the Lord God is his name.
I want this Christmas to be a time when you reconsider Jesus the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him and what it is to seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness—to welcome a new way of living, a way of living that recognizes a loving heavenly Father and his unwavering commitment to provide all his children need to live lives committed to his Kingdom. The little king born in Bethlehem came to tear down your kingdom and expose its emptiness. He gave his life to buy us, to bear our sins, and to welcome us into his Kingdom. By his grace may everyone hear be able to say with the Iranians, “We have come to worship him.”
Coffee with Lewis: Better for nothing than for a nuisance
December 11, 2008
Here’s a Sweet Dropper Christmas tradition [which, being interpreted, means, 'I posted this each of the last two years and can't come up with anything better.']. Enjoy the leftovers.
It’s Friday. There must be another Christmas party to attend–I hosted one last night. There must be another little gift to buy. Who’s going to be so favoured as to receive one of my signature fruitcakes? C.S. Lewis wrote a short essay for the December 1957 edition of the publication, Twentieth Century. Under the heading, ‘What Christmas Means to Me,’ Lewis launches a scathing attack on the ‘commercial racket’ that overwhelms the season–NOT because it isn’t ‘religious,’ but because it drains our energies and undermines the merry-making, and hospitality that ought to characterize the season:
The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers. Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.
1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it [in the commercial sense] in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry-making; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter-box, and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?
3. Things are given as presents which no mortal ever bought for himself—gaudy and useless gadgets, ‘novelties’ because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?
4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labour of it. We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I don’t know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst comes to the worst I’d sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than for a nuisance.
From C.S. Lewis, “What Christmas Means to Me,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 304-305.
Coffee with Lewis: a secret Master of Ceremonies
November 20, 2008
This is from Lewis’ chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves:
…in Friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others…At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.
Love of country and love of neighbor
October 28, 2008
This piece by Robert Thomas Llizo appeared in yesterday’s Scriptorium Daily:
Patriotism Firmly Rooted in Mid-Air
It brought to mind C.S. Lewis’ insightful discussion patriotism in The Four Loves. Lewis anticipated the erosion of the kind of patriotism Llizo is advocating. (Both the current U.S. administration and its rivals get skewered, so if you have no stomach for such prophesying, you may stop reading now):
Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for “their country” they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up…I may without self-reighteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds–wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine–I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nosense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.
Lewis speaks to the necessity of love of home and heritage and traditions as an essential ingredient in a patriotism that does not take on a ‘demoniac form’ that shouts the name of Christ and does the works of Molech.
Coffee with Lewis: the horror of the Same Old Thing
October 9, 2008
This is from letter 25 of The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape advises junior demon Wormwood,
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. The all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call “Christianity And.” You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, at least let them be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.
It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Christianity And…Enviromentalism, Republican politics, Classical Education, End-Times Predictions, Self-Esteem, Prosperity…ad nauseum.
Coffee with Lewis: there is no other stream
September 24, 2008
I think a great deal of setup and explanation would ruin this. To dissect it is to kill it.
“Are you thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m DYING of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I-could I-would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to-do anything to me, if I come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“O dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
- C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, 1953
