Favorite Books I read in 2012

1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (1955)
An epic novel that I finally got around to reading this year. I was afraid that it wouldn't be as good since I had already seen all the movies, but that wasn't a problem at all. There was obviously so much more depth and detail in the book that is much needed to fully appreciate the story. I loved following the characters again (but almost for the first time). Tolkien is so good at creating a world that seems familiar and developing characters that you want to know.

Good quote: “Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

2. The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman (1982)
One of my favorite books is "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Postman. He is such a prophetic voice for our generation obsessed with entertainment as he writes in the mid 80s. This book explains how childhood was basically an invention coming shortly after the printing press. Secrets were created by books and a sharp divide started to come between adults and children. Then, the telegraph started the demise of childhood as information became decontextualized and sent everywhere. Television, Postman argues, further erodes this distinction between the adult and child as information is presented without bias to anyone who can watch the screen. As a result, children are acting more like adults and adults are acting more like children.

Good quote: “Literature of all kinds…collects and keeps valuable secrets…In a literate world children must become adults. But in a non-literate world there is no need to distinguish sharply between the child and the adult, for there are few secrets, and the culture does not need to provide training in how to understand itself.”

3. The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry (1970)
This was my first book by Wendell Berry and it definitely won't be the last. Berry has been a farmer in Kentucky for the past forty years and has written over fifty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This particular book is a nonfiction work about racism and the damage that it has brought to our country. He gives some personal experience of growing up on a farm with slaves and argues that the white community has received a hidden wound from their injustices towards the black community and that this wound needs to be looked at and talked about in order for the destruction from it to wane.

Good quote: "The white man preoccupied with the abstractions of the economic exploitation and ownership of the land, necessarily has lived on the country as a destructive force, an ecological catastrophe, because he assigned the hand labor, and in that the possibility of intimate knowledge of the land, to a people he considered racially inferior; in thus debasing labor, he destroyed the possibility of a meaningful contact with the earth."

4. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
A fascinating true story about the Louis Zamperini, a world class runner who ends up serving in World War II as a bombardier. He survives a plane crash, weeks in the ocean, and many brutal experiences in Japanese POW camps. Great story with a great ending.

Good quote: “On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler’s death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.”

5. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (1940)
I read this earlier in the year and don't remember many of the details, so I'll let the Amazon description speak for me: "How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier...On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites. As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear." (Amazon)

Good quote: "It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization -- it needed a god to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt."

6. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World by John H. Yoder (1989)
Everyone loves Yoder at Fuller and with this book I found out why. It's really short and it looks at five New Testament practices: binding and loosing, baptism, eucharist, multiplicity of gifts, and open meeting. He explains that these were central to the life of the New Testament community and he gives some fresh perspective on what they might mean for the church today. He argues that "the full social, ethical, and communal meaning of the original practices has often been covered by centuries of ritual and interpretation" and he  "uncovers the original meaning of the five practices and shows why the recovery of these practices is so important for the social, economic, and political witness of the church today." (Amazon)

Good quote: "The people of God is called to be today what the world is called to be ultimately."

7. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey (1989)
I was quite surprised by this book. I didn't think I liked books about leadership, especially with a certain number of steps to go through. But this book is about much more than leadership, which is I think why it has been just a high seller. Covey's principles are really helpful for all of life. What I really loved is that he didn't focus on actions but on motives and heart level change. I believe I'll be thinking about the concepts here for quite a long time.

Good quote: "The real beginning of influence comes as others sense you are being influenced by them--when they feel understood by you--that you have listened deeply and sincerely, and that you are open."

8. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (2002)
A true story about how Mitch finds out his favorite college professor is dying and then meets with him every Tuesday until Morrie passes away. It's a great story of friendship and reorienting one's life based on the perspective of someone who is at the end of his. I read this as a part of my "Grief, Loss, Death, and Dying" course at Fuller this past spring. Totally worth it.

Good quote: "So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong thing."

9. Letters to Children by CS Lewis (1985)
A collection of correspondance between Lewis and his younger readers. It's fascinating to see a man of such great intellect care for children and speak great truths in ways they can understand.

Good quote: "Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it's idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc) can do the journey on their own!"

10. Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff (1987)
This was another book I read for my grief & death class at Fuller. Wolterstoff, a brilliant philosopher teaching at Yale University, lost his 25 year old son to a climbing accident. In this book, he gives the reader a look into his grief and he honestly wrestles with how such a thing could happen. I highly recommend it for anyone who is dealing with any kind of significant loss.

Good quote: “God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God…"



Honorable Mentions: A Praying Life (Paul Miller), Hannah Coulter (Berry), Hunger Games series (Collins), The Ball and the Cross (Chesterton), Gilead (Robinson), Trauma and Recovery (Herman)

Letting the Clean Breeze of the Centuries Blow Through Our Minds

I recently started reading On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius. It was written about 1700 years ago (in 319). Appropriately, C.S. Lewis writes the brilliant introduction and gives fantastic advice about reading older books. Many of you have probably heard bits of this quote before, but I wanted to share it again its fuller context. I have joyfully lived by this philosophy ever since I first heard it (I've actually started having the opposite problem -- not reading many new books). I hope it will encourage you in the same way:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium...The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him...It has always been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

(...)

...Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old...A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light...It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books..Where [modern books] are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

Encounter with Aslan: The Dawn Treader

My favorite Aslan encounter in the Narnia series comes from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace, who had been turned into a dragon, is explaining to Edmund how he got turned back into a boy:

"Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn't that kind of fear. I wasn't afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it -- if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn't any good because it told me to follow it."

"You mean it spoke?"

"I don't know. Now that you mention it, I don't think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I'd have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I'd never seen before and on top of this mountain there was a garden -- trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well."

"I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells -- like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said any words out loud or not."

I was just going to say I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that is what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales started coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it deals after an illness, or if I was a banana. In a minute of two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down to the well for my bathe."

"But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly as they had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin tore off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe."

"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I had looked at myself in the water I knew that it had been no good."

"Then the lion said -- but I don't know if it spoke -- 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it."

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is fun to see it coming away."

"I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.

"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I had no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You'd think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they've no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them."

"After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me -- "

"Dressed you? With his paws?"

"Well, I don't exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes – the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think that it must have been a dream."

"No, it wasn't a dream," said Edmund.

"Why not?"

"Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been -- well, un-dragoned, for another."

"What do you think it was then?" asked Eustace.

"I think you've seen Aslan", said Edmund.

Encounter with Aslan: The Silver Chair

I've been reading through The Chronicles of Narnia recently, since I received them for Christmas. It is my very first time through and I am loving them. It's opened up a new world of C.S. Lewis for me, as this is the first of his fiction that I've read. Not surprisingly, I love his way with words and his imagination.

My favorite moments of the books have been the encounters with Aslan. I finished The Silver Chair last night and wanted to share my favorite part of the book. It is a conversation between Jill, as she first meets Aslan:

“If you are thirsty, you may drink.”

They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time,and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not 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 do 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.

“Oh 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.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion – no one who had seen his stern face could do that – and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.

Best Books I Read in 2010

1. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken (1977)
A book very hard to put down. It is the true account of a man's love for his wife before and after her death. But it's really about how he gets to the point where he can call her death "a severe mercy." It also tells of the couple's friendship with C.S. Lewis and thankfully contains a handful of letters he wrote them over the years, all of which are goldmines of truth.

2. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (1985)
The introduction alone is worth the price of the book. From what I've heard, it is or at least should be the anchor in all advertising classrooms since it's been published. Postman looks at the history of technology and comes to the conclusion (even in 1985) that we are only doing things for their entertainment value, and that this is killing us. How much more is that statement true today? Everyone who is remotely interested in social media and technology should read this book. Actually, everyone who USES technology in the slightest should read this book.

3. The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer (1978)
An amazing look at the attributes of God.

4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
For some reason, I've put off this book for a while. I love the latest movie adaptation (with Jim Caviezel) and finally decided to read the book. The first half is pretty similar to the movie and the last half is completely different, but even better in my opinion. It's a captivating read that doesn't take as long as you might think by looking at it. Definitely worth the hype of being a classic.

5. Jack: A life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayer (2005)
I had wanted to read this for a while, and then had to for my seminary class this summer. It was well worth the 464 pages. Looking at all the biographies of Lewis, most would say this is the best and most comprehensive one (I've also heard good things about The Narnain). It is written through the eyes of a man named George Sayer who befriended Lewis at Oxford. He does a great job of not only giving the reader a look into the events that shaped Lewis in his childhood, but he also gets into the mind of who Jack (what all his close friends called him) really was, what made him tick. Excellent biography about an amazing man.

6. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton (1908)
My first introduction to Chesterton was Orthodoxy a few years back. I eventually came to love his style and wit (though it took a second reading to get there). In this latest book, the style is still intact as he cleverly conveys a story about a group of detectives, anarchists and spies. It is a very fun and quick read. It also contains an amazing line, "...no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid."

7. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (2008)
I couldn't make it through The Tipping Point. This book, however, kept me captivated throughout. Gladwell basically presents true life scenarios of different people as he seeks to understand why certain people succeed and why some don't. It's a sociological study that is riveting.

8. The Pressure's Off by Larry Crabb (2004)
Crabb explains how we no longer have to live according to the old covenant of "do this and live" or "do this and be cursed." Subtly, many of us live our lives in such a way hoping to receive God's blessing because of our behavior or using God to make our lives work. This creates huge amounts of pressure and is not living in light of the gospel. When I read this book, God was doing a huge work in my heart, uncovering ways I had believed these lies. Crabb does an excellent job of pointing us to Christ and what he has accomplished for us so that we may live in freedom and grow in our sanctification.

9. The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield (2009)
Really fun read about the history of the Guinness family and their famous beer. The Guinness company was an incredibly philanthropic company that did much for the city of Dublin and the world.

10. Doctrines of Grace by Phil Ryken and J.M. Boice (2009)
One of the best treatments of Calvinism that I have ever read. The authors do a great job at showing the biblical basis for the doctrines of grace, as well as fairly handling the difficult verses that seem to build a case for the other side. They also give a great history lesson about how Calvinism has lead to much flourishing and how Arminianism typically leads to pietism which leads to liberalism which ultimately leads to atheism. Strong words, but they give some great evidence that is hard to argue with.

Honorable Mentions: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Foer), Counterfeit Gods (Keller), Lord of the Flies (Golding)

A Severe Mercy

I finished reading A Severe Mercy over Thanksgiving. It's one of those books I had heard about for a while but never got around to reading. I'm very glad I finally did. It was easily the best book I've read this year.

The author, Sheldon Vanauken, tells the story of how he falls in love with his wife Davy, how they both befriend C.S. Lewis and come to faith in Oxford, and how Sheldon deals with the death of Davy. It is very well-written and hard to not become drawn in.

It's hard to imagine a husband and wife loving each other more than what's described in this book. And to see how Sheldon ends up calling his wife's death a severe mercy is pretty amazing.

"If my reasoning - my judgment - is correct, then her death in the dearness of our love had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealousy of God. It saved her faith from assault. It brought me, if Lewis is right, her far greater help from eternity. And it saved our love from perishing in one of the other ways that love could perish. Would I not rather our love go through death than hate?

If her death did, in truth, have these results, it was, precisely, a severe mercy."

The Real Waking

In a letter to a suffering American woman named Mary Shelburne on June 28, 1963, five months before he himself died, C. S. Lewis wrote:

Think of yourself as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams.

(via)

Praising Completes Our Enjoyment

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, pgs 93-95:

But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless...shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars...Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible...

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with...

I love this section of quotes. I remember it first quoted by John Piper early in my college days, when I first began to understand the concept of Christian hedonism (Simply put = God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him). I can honestly say the more I am able to praise God for who He is and see Him as the giver of all good things (even the small stuff), the more I feel full of life and joy.

The Harem of Imaginary Brides

As someone who struggled with it a lot of his life, C.S. Lewis once wrote that the real evil of masturbation is that it:

"sends the man back into the person 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....Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself." (George Sayer, Jack p. 208)

Heaven will solve all our problems

Wednesday night a week ago, my discipleship group met for the fourth time this summer to discuss Mere Christianity. At one point in our conversation, we started talking about heaven and what it would be like. Someone asked a question like, "Will all our questions about life be answered there?" We all threw around some thoughts and it made for some good conversation.

Then on Monday, I read Arnold's post about Jesus being the great Iconoclast. He quotes out of another Lewis book, A Grief Observed. Lewis answers our groups question brilliantly and is helpful for our humility as we learn more about who God is:

"Images of the Holy easily become holy images - sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are "offended" by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers.

All reality is iconoclastic.
...
Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet."

Let me know how fleeting I am

At the heart of Lewis's short essay entitled On Living in an Atomic Age is an incredibly important thought: we are going to die. Concerning this world, our lives our mortal. And this very fact should shape the way we live our lives. This is what Lewis is driving at in the essay.

Lewis wrote the essay in 1948, three years after the atomic bomb was used on Japan in World War II. No doubt, people around the world become frightened at the notion that they too could be destroyed by this nuclear weapon.

In order to apply Lewis's thoughts to today's time, we can simply replace "atomic bomb" with "terrorist attack" (or any way of dying that strikes fear in your heart). He begins the essay by saying that people think far too much about the atomic bomb. He goes on:

“you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways…It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.”

Instead of worrying, he says:

“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies but they need not dominate our minds.”

And finally he gives the lesson explicitly:

“What the wars and the weather and the atomic bomb have really done is to remind us forcibly of the sort of world we are living in and…which we were beginning to forget. And this reminder is, so far as it goes, a good thing. We have been waked from a pretty dream, and now we can begin to talk about realities.”

The reality is that "the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." (1 John 2:17). And may we pray with the Psalmist: "O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!"

We aren't mere atoms

In a message to atomists, C.S. Lewis says this in Present Concerns:

“You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes. You can’t go on getting any very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.”

Thankfully we were made in God's image, thus being able to appreciate beauty in people and in the arts.

How practicality has influenced philosophy and evangelism

In Present Concerns, C.S. Lewis writes an essay entitled Modern man and his categories of thought. He begins the essay by talking about how the earliest missionaries (the Apostles) preached to three sorts of men: Jews, Judaizing Gentiles, and Pagans. He argues that all three classes had a belief in the supernatural. All were conscious of sin and feared divine judgment. In this day, he explains, almost no one shares these ideas. He concludes the essay with this thought:

“I sometimes wonder whether we shall not have to re-convert men to real Paganism as a preliminary to converting them to Christianity. If they were Stoics, Orphics, Mithraists, or (better still) peasants worshipping the Earth, our task might be easier.”

What's most interesting in this essay is that he points out six causes for this shift. Of those six, I wanted to highlight two: the Emancipation of Women and Practicality (which are very closely related).

To begin, it should be noted that he is all for most freedoms women now experience in civil and social arenas. He just notes a change in the way conversation has shifted. For instance, he says:

“Any mixed society thus becomes the scene of wit, banter, persiflage, anecdote – of everything in the world rather than prolonged and rigorous discussion on ultimate issues, or of those serious masculine friendships in which such discussion arises...The only serious questions now discussed are those which seem to have a ‘practical’ importance, for these satisfy the intense practicality and concreteness of the female...But the proper glory of the masculine mind, its disinterested concern with truth for truth’s own sake, with the cosmic and the metaphysical, is being impaired.”

Dang females :). Seriously though, I'm not sure how much I agree that it is the woman's fault for causing us men to have less serious discussion and to speak more pragmatically, but I think the truth of the evolution of conversation is there.

In talking specifically about how practicality has affected the shift in our thinking, he says:

“Man is becoming as narrowly ‘practical’ as the irrational animals. In lecturing to popular audiences I have repeatedly found it almost impossible to make them understand that I recommended Christianity because I thought its affirmations to be objectively true. They are simply not interested in the question of truth or falsehood. They only want to know if it will be comforting, or ‘inspiring’, or socially useful.”

It's amazing how relevant Lewis is to today's postmodern culture. Pragmatism trumps objectivity, then and now. Let's seek to avoid this.

(I'd love to hear your thoughts)

Those who want Heaven most

I think the idea of "going green" is a good thing. But it's important to not make it the main thing. We should be a good steward of this planet, but not in order to save it. Nature, C.S. Lewis says, is a sinking ship. He goes on to say the following in Present Concerns, in an essay entitled On Living in an Atomic Age:

“For it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first: not even the survival of our species. We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honorable and merciful means.”

and

“Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”

Lewis on Equality

Many props to Roy for directing my attention to Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis. While I'm reading through it right now, I might have a few more posts regarding the essays in the book.

First, here are Lewis's thoughts on equality:

“Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”

and

“I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill.”

Best Books I Read in 2008

Out of the 13 books I read, here are my top 5:

5. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
4. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
3. The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul
2. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
1. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

We need each other to really know one another and to really know God

As I was listening to Tim Keller a couple of days ago, he pointed out this amazing quote regarding community. It comes from C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves. For context, it's important to point out that Lewis is referring to community within the Inklings, a small group of men who met weekly for almost 20 years. Lewis's closest friends seemed to be in this group, and Charles and Ronald were both members (see Arnold's comment for more insight).

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity...Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him 'to myself' now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald...we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious 'nearness by resemblance' to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying 'Holy, Holy, Holy' to one another. The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have."

Are we here by accident?

Ray Ortlund:

Questioner: Materialists and some astronomers suggest that the solar planetary system and life as we know it was brought about by an accidental stellar collision. What is the Christian view of this theory?

Lewis: If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents -- the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts -- i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy -- are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.

C. S. Lewis, "Answers to Questions on Christianity," in God in the Dock, pages 52-53.

Creation is pointing to its Maker

Roy Keely:

The Sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer, it is that they cannot even see the riddle. -GK Chesterton

Everyday I wake up and that should be enough to convince me, yet still I wonder. I then imagine a world where the Sun only rose once. A world with but one lily, with but one wave, with but one instance of love . Would not every instance of these rarities be considered a miracle in of themselves? How have the givens been forgotten as the gifts, the axioms which make all things possible.

The Dazzlingly obvious conclusion now arose in my mind: in the whole history of the universe the laws of Nature have never produced a single event. They are the pattern to which every event must conform, provided only that it can be induced to happen. -CS Lewis

To love is to be vulnerable

Tyler at the DG blog posts some good thoughts. This is a quote from The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis.

"Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as 'Careful! This might lead you to suffering.'

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."