Miracles {II}

Again, I would like to start by giving part of a definition of miracles that comes from my church:

"Christianity is founded on the greatest of all miracles, the resurrection of our Lord. If that be admitted, other miracles cease to be improbable."

C.S. Lewis starts chapter XIV by promoting a different miracle as the greatest of all:

"The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this." 

However, I think that the two are similar enough that Lewis' discussion will still hold some jewels of merit for us. Lewis maintains that miracles are not "arbitrary interferences" or "disconnected raids", but

"the various steps of a strategically coherent invastion - an invasion which intends complete conquest and "occupation." The fitness, and therefore credibility, of the particular miracles depends on their relation to the Grand Miracle; all discussion of them in isolation from it is futile."

In other words, all miracles are in some way connected to the condescension of God. Lewis would I think definitely agree with the last sentence of the LDS definition given above: "If that [the resurrection] be admitted, other miracles cease to be improbable."

Miracles {I}

I would first like to include a definition of miracles given by my own church:

Miracles: An important element in the work of Jesus Christ, being not only divine acts, but forming also a part of the divine teaching. Christianity is founded on the greatest of all miracles, the resurrection of our Lord. If that be admitted, other miracles cease to be improbable. Miracles should not be regarded as deviations from the ordinary course of nature so much as manifestations of divine or spiritual power. Some lower law was in each case superseded by the action of a higher. They were intended to be a proof to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ... Many of them were also parabolic and instructive, teaching by means of symbols such divine truths as the result of sin and the cure of sin; the value of faith; the curse of impurity; and the law of love. The miracles of healing also show how the law of love is to deal with the actual facts of life. Miracles were and are a response to faith, and its best encouragement. They were never wrought without prayer, felt need, and faith. It is important to notice the different names by which miracles are described. They are called signs, as being visible tokens of an invisible power; they are powers or mighty works, because they are the acts of One who is almighty; they are simply works, or the natural results of the Messiah’s presence among men; they are wonders, marvels, because of the effect produced on those who saw them... Miracles are a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If miracles cease it is because faith has ceased. See Mark 6:5–6;Morm. 9:10–20; Ether 12:12. {emphasis added}

The Weight of Glory

"If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point." / Interesting!

"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak... We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." [emphasis added]  / Also interesting :)

"Poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship." 

I think this is such a masterful simile, because not only does it accomplish the purpose of showing what it is like, it also gives us the imagery of being lifted, and gently compares us to a grounded ship that must be lifted if it is to go anywhere.

Mere Christianity [book IV ch 8-11]

Main points: Christ will make us perfect... whether we like it or not. We must become New Men through Him.

Is Christianity Hard or Easy?

"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says "Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours."

This reminds me of a story told in General Conference last April: 

Hugh B. Brown told of purchasing a rundown farm in Canada many years ago. As he went about cleaning up and repairing his property, he came across a currant bush that had grown over six feet (1.8 m) high and was yielding no berries, so he pruned it back drastically, leaving only small stumps. Then he saw a drop like a tear on the top of each of these little stumps, as if the currant bush were crying, and thought he heard it say: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. … And now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me. … How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” President Brown replied, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”

I think this is the message that Lewis is sharing with us - that God knows us better, and has bigger plans for us, and that it is going to hurt as he turns us into greater things than we ever could have imagined becoming. Of course, this process isn't easy.

Mere Christianity [book III, ch. 8 - book IV, ch. 7]

Main points: Lewis discusses pride, charity, hope as desire for a better country, faith as holding on despite changing moods, and faith as it works with good acts to bring about salvation once we have accepted that we can do nothing. He discusses the nature of God, and how His aim is to make us into new creatures. 

The Great Sin

The seminal work in LDS culture on the topic of pride is Ezra Taft Benson's talk, Beware of Pride. I went through this talk and looked for similarities to my favourite quotes by Lewis on the same subject. 


Lewis: "Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."
Benson: "Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled... Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers."


Lewis: "Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on."
Benson: "Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of “my will and not thine be done.”"


Lewis: "Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God."
Benson: "The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us."

Mere Christianity [book III, ch1-7]

Main points: Lewis discusses morality and how it is the condition of the inward man that matters most. Among other virtues, he touches on marriage and Christ-like forgiveness. 

Lewis starts his next section talking about morality and virtuous living. In the first chapter, he establishes the long-term importance of morality:

Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever... Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse —so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be. 

Living with an Eternal Perspective means that the little things I do... that might not be so good... that I think don't matter so much..... actually matter a lot. 

Lewis then moves into a discussion of virtues - but more important than the specific actions are what they make of us. He writes, 

"There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man... A man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of "virtue."" 

This reminded me of Elder Lynn G. Robbin's talk, What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be? 

Speaking of perseverance, Lewis also writes, "You will notice, of course, that you cannot practise any of the other virtures very long without bringing [fortitude] into play." In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis expressed the same idea when he wrote, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions."

Mere Christianity [books I&II]

Main points: Lewis sets up his argument for Christianity, discusses free will, "good dreams", the trilemma, repentance, and the end of the world.

Mere Christianity is a book I first read all the way through a year ago. It's a fascinating work that builds a logical case for Christianity and teaches us a lot about Christian beliefs. I've been inspired by it, and taken many favourite life quotes from it.

Book I - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe - is mostly spent building a philosophical case for Christianity, starting with the very basics - there exists some sort of moral law that all humans are aware of. Lewis progresses logically from there and discusses the nature of this Mind behind the moral law. This part is very interesting, but not particularly inspiring to me because I already have a very firm belief in God. This just serves to back up what I already know. 

Once Lewis has set up the idea that there is a Power or Mind behind the moral law we all know, he establishes a God that loves goodness {as evidence by the moral law He has created} and cannot abide badness. This creates a dilemma - one that is necessary for us to accept before we can accept Christianity. We have to see ourselves in the predicament that we are actually in - opposed to Absolute Goodness. Lewis writes,

"It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen, to. the doctor. When you have realised that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about." 

This reminds me of the quote by Ezra Taft Benson - "Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ." Lewis expertly sets up our dilemma and gets us to see how much we really need Christ.

Love Wins // The Great Divorce

It occurred to me yesterday to compare Lewis' beliefs espoused in The Great Divorce to the more recent work by Rob Bell - Love Wins. Unfortunately I've never read Love Wins, and though I would very much like to I don't foresee myself having the time {or money...} anytime soon. Still, I've heard quite a bit about it and read various articles online and I think the comparison still holds.


According to a USA Today article, Bell makes the following claims: 

• Heaven and hell are choices we make and live with right now. "God gives us what we want," including the freedom to live apart from God (hell) or turn God's way (heaven).
• Death doesn't cut off the ability to repent. In his Bible, Bell sees no "infinite, eternal torment for things (people) did in their few finite years of life."
• Jesus makes salvation possible even for people who never know his name. "We have to allow for mystery," for people who "drink from the rock" of faith "without knowing who or what it was.

One of my favourite parts of The Last Battle is when Aslan says, 

"Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him…Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.” 

I think this goes along with what Bell says - that Jesus makes salvation possible even for people who never know his name. "We have to allow for mystery," for people who "drink from the rock" of faith "without knowing who or what it was."

The Great Divorce

In 1946, Lewis wrote The Great Divorce in response to Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). 
Curious, I looked up The Marriage to see what it was about. I was interested to learn that The Marriage was itself written in response to an earlier book, Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg (1758). 
In each work, the author writes as though he has visited the afterlife and is writing to inform the rest of humanity about what he has seen. I briefly skimmed each to prepare to re-read The Great Divorce. To give a very, very brief summary:
Swedenborg believes that there are "heathens" in Heaven, and that God does not thrust anyone down to Hell but that people cast themselves down. {This seems to go along with Lewis' work.}
Blake calls Swedenborg's writings a "recaptiulation of all superficial opinions" and claims to have conversed with both angels and devils in a depolarized, unified afterlife.
Lewis refutes Blake's assertion that good and evil can eventually be reconciled. {This jives with Latter-day Saint belief, which states that "No unclean thing can dwell with God."}
This quotation by the George MacDonald {a poet greatly admired by C.S. Lewis} is on the title page of The Great Divorce:

'No, there is no escape.

There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--

no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our 

pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.' 

It is on this belief that Lewis bases his work. 

...

I love Lewis' style of writing. The way he describes the Tousle-Headed Poet is just so perfectly ironic: 

"To make matters worse he had been exactly the sort of boy in whose case the examination system works out with the maximum unfairness and absurdity" etc.

He always writes from "our" perspective - we imperfect humans - with the sort of reason we would use to defend ourselves. But in seeing it down on paper, we realize how ridiculous is actually is.

The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters is one of my all-time favourite books. Lewis' mastery of irony works to great effect in persuading the reader to take a second look at themselves. At times stinging, frequently profound, this is a book unmatched by others and in a category all it's own. Advice from one devil to another? Pure genius.


Some favourite quotes:

IV
"They constantly forget... that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls."
"Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they mean to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not to notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven."
{IV always make me reconsider my prayer habits...}

VI
"Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary."

VIII
"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... He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."