The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly.
Those are the lives that mold us.
~Oswald Chambers, May 18th Careful Unreasonableness
Easier said than done, I am a fortunate one…
Naturally, some leaders of the Christan right huffed indignantly as being described as “useful idiots,” while many outside the movement smirked in agreement. But equally naturally, no one did anything, and the protest was ignored. As these brave Evangelicals can all see now, the Christian right failed to achieve almost all its stated goals. More importantly, it so abandoned the traditional Christian maxim of “doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way” that it came to contradict the Adversary’s ways altogether. Instead of His superhuman command to “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek,” and “do good to those who hate you,” the Christian right became so politicized that it was carried away and became all-too-human, demonizing their foes with relish and indulging in fear-mongering with abandon.
~Os Guinness as an “Anti-God Spirit of the Age Espionage Agent”, The Last Christan on Earth
I still remember quite vividly a centering conversation I had with my old youth pastor about 15 or 16 years ago concerning politics. We were talking though the news of the day and I was confidently reciting back some of the imperious yet witty accusations of Mr. Limbaugh as he radio lobbed volley after volley of contentious bombs from right to left. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I sure admired his confidence and I was enjoying experimenting with methods of appropriating this confidence in a moment of political discussion.
At some point in the conversation, my youth pastor said something to the effect of, “I don’t listen to that guy very much…”
To which I replied, “Ya, but when you do… don’t you think his arguments are right?!”…
“Yes, I do, and I suppose that is why I don’t listen to him.”
Ok, now I was in a knot. Not only did this not make sense to me, I was entering an unanticipated riff in my Christian world that would pit the obvious righteousness of Rush against a strange ambivalence on behalf of my beloved youth pastor. So I continued to press him on this and eventually he produced a self defense that sounded something like this…
I don’t listen to Rush, because often times I do end up agreeing with him, he gets me all riled up, and then there is nothing for me to do about it. I am simply mad with no positive outlet, what good is that?
In that moment, I do believe he won me over… but the temptation to politicize my life, either right or left, is always there. Recent reading has resurfaced this topic and warning.
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the Church becomes ‘the regime at prayer,’ Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one party or another, and the Cristian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interest.
~Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth
Or as another Christian sociologist (I think he would hate that title, but I do think it is apt) puts it…
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call “Christianity And”. You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.
~C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I am one of those fortunate people that is regularly sought out by the most persistent of benevolent mentors. The latest mentoring friendship that has been bestowed upon me comes in the form of a jovial Anglican technology entrepreneur with high hopes for the Detroit area.
Meet Father Richard Dalton, a local Anglican priest with his sights set on making a contribution to the lives of ordinary folks inside and out of the local church through faith, family, fellowship, and fun. Father Dalton found me a few years ago through of all places, the internet. My public blog tipped him off to a nerdy Christian Detroiter with a penchant reading appetite for the works of a fellow Anglican, Mr. C.S. Lewis. Before I knew it, I was swallowed up in the fellowship of this faithful servant of the greater Detroit area. His work and teaching is carried out in faithful footsteps through the Detroit area and the regular mirth of a warm smile, ready hug, and a sincere interest in whomever he is with. This honest joy of experiencing faith, family, fellowship & don’t ever forget fun is revealed along side the regular frustrations, difficulties, and struggles presented to any committed servant of family and community. And in that I am reminded of a quote by our mutually shared favorite author.
Joy, must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again…I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.
~C.S. Lewis
By producing this blog post and making the admission of my sincere respect for the sentiments contained within, it is unavoidably obvious that I live in a palpable state of contradiction.
Below, a wise man muses soberly at the dawn of the information age, prophetic words if ever I have heard.
Last summer for example, I read a newspaper article announcing, in the awe-stricken voice of the science journalist, “a new generation of technological inventions–most of them involving some variation on the home computer.” The two inventions specifically described in the article were electronic newspaper and something called “hypertext.”
The benefits of the electronic newspaper apparently all have to do with convenience: “These screens will display a front page with an index. The user can tap a pen to the screen to call up a story, flip a page, turn a still photograph into a TV news scene, or even make a dinner or theater reservation from an ad.”
Hypertext “makes it possible to creat all sorts of linkages and short circuits within a text.” And this “is extremely useful in organizing technical material so that the reader can efficiently select which parts of a text to read.” The reason for this, according to a “consultant,” is that “usually you don’t want to read everything–you only want to read what you don’t now.” Hypertext “is reader-friendly and makes it easy to chart a path to the desired parts.”
Thanks also to this invention, “creative-writing professors are teaching courses about how to write hypertext novels that literally go in all directions.” These novels are “interactive”…
Dear reader, I hope you will understand at least somewhat the disgust, the contempt, and the joy with which I have received this news.
It disgusts me because I know there is no need for such products, which will put a lot of money into the pockets of people who don’t care how they earn it and will bring another downward turn in the effort of gullible people to become better and smarter by way of machinery. This is a perfect example of modern salesmanship and modern technology–yet another way to make people pay dearly for what they already have (the ability to turn the pages of a newspaper or respond to an ad; the ability to read and write, to choose what to read, and to read “actively”).
I read about these things with contempt because of the nonsense and the falsehood involved. For example, no real comparison is made in this article between paper newspapers and electronic ones. The stated difference is simply that one is newer and somehow easier than the other. And what exactly is implied by the use of a machine that makes it possible to read only “what you don’t know”? Is this perhaps what we call “skimming”? But how do you know, without reading or at least skimming, whether you know or do not know what is in a text? And what of the pleasure of reading again what you already know? The assumption here is that reading is an ordeal, of which the less said the better. And don’t we remember that television was once expected to produce a new era of general enlightenment? And now will we believe that the electronically stupefied will turn from their soap operas to “hypertext” and indulge themselves in “subtleties and complexities” beyond the powers of James Joyce? And are we to suppose that readers of, say, James Joyce have hitherto been mere passive receptacles of his genius? And haven’t we known all along that the stories are endless?
My joy comes from my instantaneous knowledge that I am not going to buy either piece of equipment. When the inevitable saleswoman comes to tell me that I cannot be up-to-date, or intelligent, or creative, or handsome, or young, or eligible for the sexual favors so fair a creature as herself unless I buy these products, dear reader, I am not going to do it.
~Wendell Berry; “The Joy of Sales Resistance”, 1992
I met Gloria a few years ago, and I immediately knew she was special. My first instinct was to work an angle to capture her on film somehow, thankfully that pursuit proved impossible and I had to settle for something much better. I don’t even feel quite right about trying to describe her at all anymore.
Some have discovered her art and poetry, but only a few will have the privilege to walk in her garden.
Our Nonage
The number of fools not yet acknowledging the first condition of manhood nowise alters the fact that he who has begun to recognize duty and acknowledge the facts of his being, is but a tottering child on the path of life. He is on the path: he is as wise as at the time he can be; the Father’s arms are stretched out to receive him; but he is not therefore a wonderful being; not therefore a model of wisdom; not at all the admirable creature his largely remaining folly would, in his worst moments (that is, when he feels best) persuade him to think himself; he is just one of God’s poor creatures.
~ George MacDonald
I think I am going to be spending a lot of time with this wise old Scottish Christian full of hard truth, tender guidance, and humorous observations.
We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments… Each putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so by defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then forgetting our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self.
~ George MacDonald
(4)
(5)
(1)
(4)
(4)
(2)
(10)
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(29)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(29)
(1)
(1)
(123)
(1)
(3)
(32)
(3)
(5)
(2)
(15)
(1)
(38)
(2)
(4)
(8)
(2)
(1)
(9)
(8)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(5)
(28)
(1)
(12)
(1)
(4)
(3)
(2)
(4)
(16)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(5)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(5)
(4)
(1)
(2)
(5)
(4)
(6)
(1)
(1)
(5)
(5)
(5)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(27)
(41)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(7)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(6)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(12)
(1)
(3)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(8)
(1)
(3)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(33)
(1)
(27)
(82)
(5)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(9)
(1)
(22)
(2)
(4)
(5)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(14)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(11)
(1)
(4)
(1)
(1)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(1)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(5)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(6)
(1)
(40)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(12)
(29)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(6)
(1)
(2)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(10)
(1)
(3)
(2)
Recent Comments