I'm still not hitting the everyday goal with A Year With C.S. Lewis. But, I'm going to play catch up before I'm too far behind.
January 5
Lewis hits hard when he writes of people "playing with religion". I know that I'm saved, but I still like to tread the middle ground and dabble in religion. C.S. Lewis is not messing around and playing with religion. His theology is severe and rightfully so.
January 6
Lewis continues to pound against those that are playing with religion and only half-heartedly accepting God as some impersonal force. He sees those who look at God as something as a great mysterious force behind the universe trying to create a tame God that gives all the benefits of religion with none of its costs.
January 7
Christianity is not pantheistic in its worldview. "It thinks God made the world - that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again" (Lewis, 9). C.S. Lewis calls Christianity a 'fighting religion'. It has solid beliefs that one cannot play with, accepting the benefits without the cost or accepting them some of the time and not the other based on what is personally convenience. Christianity demands adhering to solid beliefs and what is more, those solid beliefs demand action on our part. Christianity is not some passive religion.
January 8
Christians can see past the basics of our religion. At first it seems to only be about morality and duty. But, as a Christian delves deeper into his or her faith they realize that there is something beyond this where moral beauty exists without ever having to think about it.
January 9
The Moral Law that God has put into the heads of man reveals more about God than does the universe in general. Listening to and becoming in tune with that innate idea of morality will reveal more and more about the nature of God.
January 10
Many people want a heavenly Grandfather rather than a heavenly Father. Once again, Lewis' faith demands correct belief and correct theology. We all (including Christians) want a grandfather in Heaven that smiles down with benevolence and hopes that a good time will be had by all. But, as Christians we must believe that God is Love and we know through his Word that He is our Heavenly Father and not some Heavenly Grandfather hoping that we will all get along all right. We need to correct our faith and force ourselves not to see God as such.
January 11
God is love and this means God is more than merely kindness. Kindness hopes that one will escape suffering and achieve happiness at any level. This is a weird form of contempt. One who is kind to animals will often kill animals so they avoid suffering. This is not the love of God. "If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense" (Lewis, 13).
Lewis reminds me in every single portion so far that faith in God is serious business. Yes, there is joy and happiness in God, but it isn't just warm fuzzies all day long. It is a serious relationship that one cannot simply just play at. I struggle with this. I play with the relationship and the religion.
January 12
Lewis again reminds us that God's love is not just Him trying to make us happy. It is a passionate love, a jealous love from the "consuming fire Himself". It is not something to be taken lightly.
January 14
"When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be rejected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one" (Lewis, 16). There is a lot packed into that little section. First, it's a reminder that knowing God comes from Him, not from anything we are doing. Second, it reminds us that we must get ourselves into the right condition to receive the blessing of knowledge of God. He pours out his light like the sun pours out its light, but if we are dusty mirrors we won't reflect and absorb that light the way we were intended to.
January 15
A good point on the philosophy of religion - "If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed" (Lewis, 17).
"Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being" (Lewis, 17).
It is hard to wait on God. It is hard to be only responsive. It takes a submissiveness and a breaking of pride to admit that I must respond to God and not that God will respond to me. It takes humility that I sorely need. Grant me this humility so that I can achieve the highest activity I was made for - responding to you.
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