The Weight of Glory

A great part of the beauty of life lies in nature, in what we see around us. Lewis discusses that, nature being a part of a understanding of the glory of God. But, he says, it is only when we turn our lives to God that we begin to see an even greater beauty.

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. 

He goes on then, to what is perhaps one of my favorite passages in all Christian literature. The depth and understanding that he has of both humans and the doctrines of the Gospel. 

He writes:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

I must love my neighbor. I must carry their glory. I must be humble. I must come to the understanding that all those around me have the potential to be like God, because every single person around me made the choice to come to this Earth. They are His sons and daughters. I can't judge, I must not judge because they themselves have the seeds of Godhood in them. They each have their on challenges to face. If I want to return to God, to Heaven, then I have to help my neighbor, because it is only in service, in giving, that I can understand God better, and know what I must do to receive of His joy and blessings. I can have fun, I can, but, at the end of the day, I must remember what is at stake. 

Christian Behavior

This was probably my favorite section in Mere Christianity because it discussed the attributes and characteristics that we need to take upon ourselves to be considered more worthy disciples of Jesus Christ.

I don't know how much I could actually right about this section, in the sense that I think that almost everything is quotable.

Christian behavior, Lewis asserts, is based on the concept of morality. The difficulty lies in what your definition of morality is, and how that relates to us as individuals. If we assume it to be true, and I will, then what Lewis explains to us as essential moral values is extremely valuable to us.

Lewis goes from the cardinal virtues, to social and sexual morality. If I had to pick what I felt were the most important chapters are, I would have to focus on forgiveness and pride, along with the three godly virtues of faith, hope and charity.

.....

What Christians Believe

He brings up a great point right at the beginning of this section.

"If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth."

That is perhaps one of the foundational beliefs of Christianity, that because God loves all His children, He has given them light and knowledge, truth, that will lead them in the right direction. The problem lies in the fact that while some believe in God, others don't. That creates a problem because a false premise creates a false result, whether you're looking at Christianity as right or wrong. What is truth if you don't know the difference between that and untruth?

There has to be a separation between right and wrong, good and evil. Without that distinction, then there are no truths. There is no basis, it is just all objective, and then we have a problem. If we do believe that though, then where is the separation. Lewis contends that the only power there is in the world and universe is good, but evil borrows that power and uses it for its unruly gains. Lewis phrases aptly when he says, "And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel?"Lucifer was a son of the morning, but fell from grace because he twisted the good.

Free will, as Lewis reminds us, is the greatest gift that God has given to us. His love is so great that even His greatest desire to have us return to live with Him is overruled by His sense of love that requires us, gives us the choice to choose. The problem with that, says Lewis, is,

"The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the center - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race."

Humans try to find happiness in different facets of life. But, when they realize that true joy can only come from God, that's when that free will is directed in the right direction. Free will gives us the choice not to do whatever we want, but gives us the opportunity to choose the right. God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we could look towards Him to make the right decision. Many feel that Christ was just a moral teacher, but He was not. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book, where Lewis explains:

"He was the person... chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He was really the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." 

We have to try to imitate Him in some measure, to kill off every unworthy part of ourselves that holds us back from God. As we repent, and try and do that each and every day, then we can be better. The "little Christ" in all of us helps us to do that each and every day.

Right And Wrong As a Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe

To be completely honest, Book 1 of Mere Christianity confused me more than I thought it would. But, I understood a few points that he made that felt applied directly to my way of thinking. More often than not,  I think that when I do something for someone, I feel like the person should thank me or do something nice in return. I'm learning more and more that I should not expect that, I cannot expect that. The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches the complete opposite.

C.S. Lewis said that when we do that, we are asking that person to appeal "to some kind of behavior which [we] expect the other man to know about." Just because my parents taught me to act a certain way does not allow me to presume that others were raised as such. Who knows? Maybe something else I do ticks people off all the time. I'm sure that's more than a maybe.

Lewis goes on to expound later on that when we "say a man ought not to act as he does," we are just saying that "what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to [us]." We cannot allow this to rule our lives. We must look beyond that selfish viewpoint and remember that things aren't always easy, that we are here to serve our fellow-men and look out for the betterment of others.

We know and understand ourselves. The thing is, we have to take the time to do that. Lewis said that "There is one thing which we know... that one thing is man. We do not merely observe men, we are men." Being men allows us to look within ourselves and see the flaws, and change, to understand our meaning, why we are here and what we are to accomplish. Right and wrong becomes clear when we understand our position and place.

"What Is That To Thee?"

The thought that Lewis points out at the outset of this preface is common sense, but hardly ever mentioned. More often than not, Christians who argue about doctrine amongst one another end up pushing away the very people they are trying to convert. At the end of the day, we are here to get people to "come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son."

We are not to judge. We are here to share the Gospel!

"Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say "deepening," the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word [as gentlemen did]. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and indeed are forbidden to judge."

I love the preface to Mere Christianity because it reminds me that even the Savior left judgment out when he said to the woman who had been taken in adultery, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." I am to be kind to all those around me, because, at the end of the day, that is what people need from all those around them. The Gospel is here to unite people, not to create divisions. A lot of the time, the things that are discussed and argued about have no lasting consequence to our salvation. This passage from the preface sums it up perfectly:

"There are some to which I may never know the answer: if I asked them, even in a better world, I might (for all I know) be answered as a far greater questioner was answered: "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me."

At the end of the day, the "deep" doctrines aren't for us to worry about. What matters is that I keep the commandments, that I am kind to others, that I remember and know that Christ is my Savior and my Redeemer, and that is all that really matters.

"What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?"

Lewis quickly turns the question round and asks, "but what is He to make of us?"

The story of Jesus Christ is definitely out there, if you haven't grown up with the story. A man who claimed to be God? A man who said that He forgave sins? Lewis phrases it well when, in reference to Christ's teachings, he says, "the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines that whole mind of man." 

Then, there's the concept of the resurrection, that man can rise from the dead and live again.

Here's the thing though. I happen to believe in it. In fact, I know that it is true. I believe that Jesus Christ wasn't crazy, He was God. He was the Son of God." As Lewis says, you must accept or reject the story.

Lewis paraphrases some of the words that the Savior said at the end, that He is the way, the truth and the life, not that you could find it through His teachings, but He was it. He talks about giving all to know God, to sacrifice. My favorite though, where I'll actually pull out the actual scripture, is this, from John 16:33:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Going back to Lewis' original question, what is Christ to make of me? Do I show through my actions that I am Christian? If so, am I a good one? Christ has given me all to be who I want to be. Because He has overcome the world, I can, if I so choose, be exactly who He wants me to be, and I plan on doing that.

"Have I Your Permission?"

I just  finished the rest of "The Great Divorce." What an absolutely fascinating read. C.S. had such wonderful insights into the human condition and the things that make us who we are. The Great Divorce, from my point of view, helps us to understand all the worldly temptations that draw us away from our Heavenly Father, our "favorite sins," if you will. I wish I could paste the whole book here for you to read, but I guess you can just look that up yourself. Every sentence is quotable. There was a part of the story that drew me in, where a red lizard, this man's sin that was holding him back, was vanquished by good. The moral of the story, if I may place at the beginning of the story, is that not one unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of Heaven, not because God does not want it or them to, but because it would be too weak to withstand the glory and perfection of God's glory. The other moral, if you read the book, lies in the understanding that while one sin or temptation might seem worse in our eyes, it is the grasp of the particular sin on a person that drag's one down to misery.

The misery isn't in hell, the misery is in ourselves.

at the end of the day, we must enable the change within ourselves. Then only can His Grace change us. Here's The Allegory of the Red Lizard and its captive. 

I saw coming towards us a Ghost who carried something on his shoulder. Like all the Ghosts, he was unsubstantial, but they differed from one another as smokes differ. Some had been whitish; this one was dark and oily. What sat on his shoulder was a little red lizard, and it was twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear. As we caught sight of him he turned his head to the reptile with a snarl of impatience. “Shut up, I tell you!” he said. It wagged its tail and continued to whisper to him. He ceased snarling, and presently began to smile. Then be turned and started to limp westward, away from the mountains.


“Off so soon?” said a voice.


The speaker was more or less human in shape but larger than a man, and so bright that I could hardly look at him. His presence smote on my eyes and on my body too (for there was heat coming from him as well as light) like the morning sun at the beginning of a tyrannous summer day.


“Yes. I’m off,” said the Ghost. “Thanks for all your hospitality. But it’s no good, you see. I told this little chap,” (here he indicated the lizard), “that he’d have to be quiet if he came -which he insisted on doing. Of course his stuff won’t do here: I realise that. But he won’t stop. I shall just have to go home.”


‘Would you like me to make him quiet?” said the flaming Spirit-an angel, as I now understood.
“Of course I would,” said the Ghost.
“Then I will kill him,” said the Angel, taking a step forward.
“Oh-ah-look out! You’re burning me. Keep away,” said the Ghost, retreating.
“Don’t you want him killed?”
“You didn’t say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.”
“It’s the only way,” said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the lizard. “Shall I kill it?”
“Well, that’s a further question. I’m quite open to consider it, but it’s a new point, isn’t it? I mean, for the moment I was only thinking about silencing it because up here-well, it’s so damned embarrassing.”
“May I kill it?”
“Well, there’s time to discuss that later.”
“There is no time. May I kill it?”
“Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please-really-don’t bother. Look! It’s gone to sleep of its own accord. I’m sure it’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much.”
“May I kill it?”
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s the slightest necessity for that. I’m sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.”
“The gradual process is of no use at all.”
“Don’t you think so? Well, I’ll think over what you’ve said very carefully. I honestly will. In fact I’d let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I’m not feeling frightfully well to-day. It would be silly to do it now. I’d need to be in good health for the operation. Some other day, perhaps.”
“There is no other day. All days are present now.”
“Get back! You’re burning me. How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did.”
“It is not so.”
“Why, you’re hurting me now.”
“I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.”
“Oh, I know. You think I’m a coward. But it isn’t that. Really it isn’t. I say! Let me run back by tonight’s bus and get an opinion from my own doctor. I’ll come again the first moment I can.”
“This moment contains all moments.”
“Why are you torturing me? You are jeering at me. How can I let you tear me to pieces? If you wanted to help me, why didn’t you kill the damned thing without asking me–before I knew? It would be all over by now if you had.”
“I cannot kill it against your will. It is impossible. Have I your permission?”
The Angel’s hands were almost closed on the Lizard, but not quite. Then the Lizard began chattering to the Ghost so loud that even I could hear what it was saying.
“Be careful,” it said. “He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me for ever and ever. It’s not natural. How could you live? You’d be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn’t understand. He’s only a cold, bloodless abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it isn’t for us. Yes, yes. I know there are no real pleasures now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams–all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent …. ”
“Have I your permission?” said the Angel to the Ghost.
“I know it will kill me.”
“It won’t. But supposing it did?”
“You’re right. It would be better to be dead than to live with this creature.”
“Then I may?”
“Damn and blast you! Go on can’t you? Get it over. Do what you like,” bellowed the Ghost: but ended, whimpering, “God help me. God help me.”
Next moment the Ghost gave a scream of agony such as I never heard on Earth. The Burning One closed his crimson grip on the reptile: twisted it, while it bit and writhed, and then flung it, broken backed, on the turf.


“Ow! That’s done for me,” gasped the Ghost, reeling backwards.


For a moment I could make out nothing distinctly. Then I saw, between me and the nearest bush, unmistakably solid but growing every moment solider, the upper arm and the shoulder of a man. Then, brighter still and stronger, the legs and hands. The neck and golden head materialized while I watched, and if my attention had not wavered I should have seen the actual completing of a man–an immense man, naked, not much smaller than the Angel. What distracted me was the fact that at the same moment something seemed to be happening to the Lizard. At first I thought the operation had failed. So far from dying, the creature was still struggling and even growing bigger as it struggled. And as it grew it changed. Its hinder parts grew rounder. The tail, still flickering, became a tail of hair that flickered between huge and glossy buttocks. Suddenly I started back, rubbing my eyes. What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold. It was smooth and shining, rippled with swells of flesh and muscle, whinnying and stamping with its hoofs. At each stamp the land shook and the trees dwindled.


The new-made man turned and clapped the new horse’s neck. It nosed his bright body. Horse and master breathed each into the other’s nostrils. The man turned from it, flung himself at the feet of the Burning One, and embraced them. When he rose I thought his face shone with tears, but it may have been only the liquid love and brightness (one cannot distinguish them in that country) which flowed from him. I had not long to think about it. In joyous haste the young man leaped upon the horse’s back. Turning in his seat he waved a farewell, then nudged the stallion with his heels. They were off before I well knew what was happening. There was riding if you like! I came out as quickly as I could from among the bushes to follow them with my eyes; but already they were only like a shooting star far off on the green plain, and soon among the foothills of the mountains. Then, still like a star, I saw them winding up, scaling what seemed impossible steeps, and quicker every moment, till near the dim brow of the landscape, so high that I must strain my neck to see them, they vanished, bright themselves, into the rose-brightness of that everlasting morning.

I hope that I am doing all I can to give God my will, so that He can take my weaknesses, and turn them into strengths. I know that He can take me for what I am, and turn me into who I can become.

"Heaven, once attained"

In reading the first few chapters of "The Great Divorce," I have gained a better understanding of the decisions that we must make in this life. In the preface to this novel, C.S. Lewis explains,

"If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

In saying these words, he teaches us that there is no in-between, there really is no purgatory where we wait for judgment day to come. Our fate lies in our day to day choices, our decisions that determine our destiny. We have to see things for what they are, to put things into perspective and realize that Heaven (and Hell) are what we make of it.

Lewis goes on to explain, "good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective."Man makes what he can of the world, which then translates eventually, to what he makes of life after death. It all begins before death, but, when the dead look back...

"The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. and that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly."

It is what we make of our lives each day, what we decide for ourselves that will determine us. If we can see the world for what it is, and make the best with what we have, by doing our best, all things will work together for our good. Eventually, life will be good if we can look past the stones and thorns and pebbles that poke and bother us.

To end, I have found that this little thought by Lewis sums this up perfectly.

"They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."

Christ did all to succor us, even atoning for our sins. He is the reason that we can change, that we can fight through the briars in our lives and make it all the better. What are we going to choose? Are we going to allow our sins and sorrows to disappear and take on the quality of Heaven? One day, it will all be worth it. God makes all the difference. The question is, will you allow Him to?

"He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs"

"Our choices show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities," so said Professor Dumbledore to Harry Potter.

It is our agency, given to us by God, that proves to Him, and to ourselves, who we really are. More often than not, we learn through experience, and, as Randy Pausch said,

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." 

That really the beauty of life. We learn through experience, and more especially through hard things. "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me," so says Paul.

In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is writing to his nephew, Wormwood, about us, about how humans go through troughs and peaks, and how we react to that. The interesting thing is Screwtape's understanding (but not really) of how God teaches us and makes us who we are.

 To decide what the best use of it (the troughs) is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

   And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.

(Letter No. 8, The Screwtape Letters) 

I love this insight into the nature of God, that He teaches us through trials, He loves us. He wants us to learn by ourselves, because at the end of the day, that is how we grow and come into our own. We grow through trials because we learn, at the the end of the day, that we can and must always rely on God. He is the only way to true joy! When we give our wills to Him, our lives are then built on true principles that will bring eternal happiness. 


I've thought a lot about what my life would be without the Gospel, that perhaps I could still be happy. But, I don't believe that I would know that it is in a family that I can be truly happy. Keeping that eternal perspective allows me to know that when push comes to shove, God will always be there for me, even when He can't be, because He needs me to grow into the man He wants me to be.

'The Trouble With "X"...'

In our first class, our professor, Brother Young, gave us a short piece by Lewis to read. in 'The Trouble With "X...', he talks about the issue that we too often have with other people. Whenever we look at others, whenever we see them do this and that, there is an automatic judgment about the person from us. We always see the flaw in "X's" character.

That, then, is what separates us from God. He who has created all things has to see all that we do, the faults and mistakes we make. Having created a perfect world, he still has to see what we do as human beings. But, God doesn't change us, he doesn't try to change us by force. Lewis says,

"You may say it is very different for God because He could, if He pleased, alter people's characters, and we can't. But this difference doesn't go quite as deep as we may at first think. God has made it a rule for Himself that He won't alter people's character by force. He can and will alter them - but only if the people will let Him."

God will only change us if we let Him. The gift of agency allows us to find happiness on our own terms. the things is: He has all the answers.

Lewis goes on to question us about the level at which we admit our faults. More often that not, we might say, "yes, we have faults." But, how often do we actually look at ourselves and realize that the same grief that we feel or give others when they make a mistake is the same way others view us when we do the same? When we realize that, then we understand that "X" isn't the other person in the room. "X" is us. We are the ones who have the trouble, the problem. Only when we comprehend that can we be more like God.

To end, may I quote Lewis, who explains,

"You say, 'I admit I lost my temper last night'; but the others know that you're always doing it, that you are a bad-tempered person. You say, 'I admit I drank too much last Saturday'; but everyone else knows that you are a habitual drunkard.That is one way in which God's view must differ from mine. He sees all the characters: I see all except my own. But the second difference is this. He loves the people in spite of their faults. He goes on loving. He does not let go. Don't say, 'It's all very well for Him; He hasn't got to live with them.' He has. He is inside them as well as outside them. He is with them far more intimately and closely and incessantly than we can ever be."

I hope that I can perhaps see myself more as "X," as those around me as children of God who are to be loved and not be judged. That I may go on loving, even as He loves me.