Tag: C. S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters: Thirteen Through Nineteen

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

Lewis is on such a roll! This week we’re look­ing at let­ters thir­teen through nine­teen, and insights abound. I fear that if I don’t con­strain myself I’ll just cut and paste all of the text.

I’ll lim­it myself to two excerpts from Lewis along with some brief com­men­tary on them.

The great thing is to pre­vent his doing any­thing. As long as he does not con­vert it into action, it does not mat­ter how much he thinks about this new repen­tance. Let the lit­tle brute wal­low in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excel­lent way of ster­il­iz­ing the seeds which the Ene­my plants in a human soul. Let him do any­thing but act. No amount of piety in his imag­i­na­tion and affec­tions will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strength­ened by rep­e­ti­tion but pas­sive ones are weak­ened. The more often he feels with­out act­ing, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel. (Let­ter 13, page 223)

Wow. I had for­got­ten Lewis said this. This is so good! The author to which Screw­tape is allud­ing is Joseph But­ler and you can see the source of the quote at Lewisiana.

Lewis is dri­ving at this: the longer you mean to do some­thing the less like­ly you are to do it. So get off your good inten­tions and do some­thing you know you are sup­posed to do. Obe­di­ence unlocks insight. The more you do the more you will under­stand and then the more oppor­tu­ni­ties for obe­di­ence you will have. It’s a vir­tu­ous cycle.

You must there­fore con­ceal from the patient the true end of Humil­i­ty. Let him think of it not as self-for­get­ful­ness but as a cer­tain kind of opin­ion (name­ly, a low opin­ion) of his own tal­ents and char­ac­ter. Some tal­ents, I gath­er, he real­ly has. Fix in his mind the idea that humil­i­ty con­sists in try­ing to believe those tal­ents to be less valu­able than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valu­able than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him val­ue an opin­ion for some qual­i­ty oth­er than truth, thus intro­duc­ing an ele­ment of dis­hon­esty and make-believe into the heart of what oth­er­wise threat­ens to become a virtue.…  The Ene­my wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own tal­ents as frankly and grate­ful­ly as in his neigh­bor’s talents—or in a sun­rise, an ele­phant, or a water­fall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to rec­og­nize all crea­tures (even him­self) as glo­ri­ous and excel­lent things. (Let­ter 14, page 225)

This reminds me of Romans 12:3, where Paul teach­es us: “Do not think of your­self more high­ly than you ought, but rather think of your­self with sober judg­ment, in accor­dance with the faith God has dis­trib­uted to each of you.”

That verse alone would change Stan­ford if it was tak­en seri­ous­ly. “Do not think of your­self more high­ly than you ought.” Instead, Paul says, think of your­self with sober judg­ment. In oth­er words, self-aware­ness and hon­esty lay the foun­da­tion for humil­i­ty. Don’t over­es­ti­mate your com­pe­tence but also don’t down­play it. And when you eval­u­ate your­self sober­ly, do it “in accor­dance with the faith God has dis­trib­uted to each of you.” I take that to mean that instead of sub­jec­tive­ly com­par­ing our­selves to oth­ers, we should mea­sure our­selves against the objec­tive stan­dards of God’s Word and ulti­mate­ly against the per­son of Jesus. That’s a whole ser­mon, though, and that’s not the point of these updates. I just want to remind you that Lewis has some amaz­ing insights and encour­age you to fin­ish the sum­mer read­ings strong!

The Screwtape Letters: Six Through Twelve

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week’s read­ing (let­ters six through twelve) was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly short and full of insight­ful obser­va­tions.

A few of Lewis’s com­ments stood out to me:

Nev­er for­get that when we are deal­ing with any plea­sure in its healthy and nor­mal and sat­is­fy­ing form, we are, in a sense, on the Ene­my’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through plea­sure. All the same, it is His inven­tion, not ours. He made the plea­sures: all our research so far has not enabled us to pro­duce one. All we can do is to encour­age the humans to take the plea­sures which our Ene­my has pro­duced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has for­bid­den. (Let­ter Nine, page 210)

Lewis is spot-on here. Plea­sure is a gift from God. As James 1:27 reminds us, “every good and per­fect gift is from above.” Tru­ly inter­nal­iz­ing this is trans­for­ma­tive. The plea­sures of God are pre­mi­um, grade A stuff. It is true that Satan is a skill­ful knock­off artist, and this means that the oppor­tu­ni­ties he lures us with can seem as good as (or even supe­ri­or to) God’s plea­sures at first, but at the end of the day they are still knock­offs. The plea­sures they pro­duce don’t last. Hebrews 11:25 calls them “the fleet­ing plea­sures of sin.”

The upshot: few things dis­rupt Satan’s schemes for your life like a fierce love of whole­some plea­sure. One of the best ways to resist temp­ta­tion is to be full of god­ly joy.

Mov­ing on, let­ter ten seems espe­cial­ly help­ful to Stan­ford stu­dents.

[When try­ing to impress new, sophis­ti­cat­ed friends] he will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his man­ner, but present­ly by his words, all sorts of cyn­i­cal and scep­ti­cal atti­tudes which are not real­ly his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mor­tals tend to turn into the thing they are pre­tend­ing to be. This is ele­men­tary. (Let­ter Ten, pages 212–213)

Boom! Not much to add to that except pray for all the frosh head­ing to Stan­ford in a few weeks.

Also of rel­e­vance to the Stan­ford cul­ture:

But flip­pan­cy is the best [source of laugh­ter] of all. In the first place it is very eco­nom­i­cal. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about any­thing else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were fun­ny. Among flip­pant peo­ple the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actu­al­ly makes it; but every seri­ous sub­ject is dis­cussed in a man­ner which implies that they have already found a ridicu­lous side to it. If pro­longed, the habit of Flip­pan­cy builds up around a man the finest armour-plat­ing against the Ene­my that I know, and it is quite free from the dan­gers inher­ent in the oth­er sources of laugh­ter. (Let­ter Eleven, page 217)

Again, lit­tle com­men­tary is need­ed. You will find it worth­while, though, to pay atten­tion to the things that are sim­ply assumed to be false by your com­mu­ni­ty. What Lewis calls flip­pan­cy is an indi­ca­tion that there might not be sol­id argu­ments against the opin­ion being mocked. Inter­net cul­ture is espe­cial­ly prone to this sort of super­fi­cial com­men­tary. Social media, in par­tic­u­lar, incen­tivizes it. There may very well be good rea­sons that your com­mu­ni­ty believes what it does about the good life, the prob­lems fac­ing soci­ety, the true reli­gion, and right-think­ing pol­i­tics… but per­haps there are not. Seek out the non-flip­pant opin­ions before you allow the juve­nile ban­ter to sway you undu­ly.

Any­way, I hope you derived as much ben­e­fit from this week’s read­ing as I did. Enjoy the book!

The Screwtape Letters: Preface and the First Five Letters

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week we begin our final sum­mer bookk, The Screw­tape Let­ters. Before I give some thoughts on this week’s read­ing, I have some gen­er­al obser­va­tions.

  • The let­ters were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as a week­ly ser­i­al, one let­ter at at time, in a church mag­a­zine.
  • The full text of The Screw­tape Let­ters is avail­able online at http://www.truechristianity.info/en/the_screwtape_letters.php
  • The Screw­tape Let­ters is also avail­able as an audio­book read by John Cleese(!) — check it out on YouTube.

On to the main course:

Demon­ic cor­re­spon­dence in a hell­ish bureau­cra­cy is a genius idea for a book and I assumed it would have been fun to write, but Lewis said “Of all my books, there was only one I did not take plea­sure in writ­ing.” The Screw­tape Let­ters “were dry and grit­ty going. At the time, I was think­ing of objec­tions to the Chris­t­ian life, and decid­ed to put them into the form, ‘That’s what the dev­il would say.’ But mak­ing goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatigu­ing.” (source)

I’m glad Lewis put up with the fatigue. The result is tremen­dous. Let me begin with one of my favorite quotes from the book (from the pref­ace):

There are two equal and oppo­site errors into which our race can fall about the dev­ils. One is to dis­be­lieve in their exis­tence. The oth­er is to believe, and to feel an exces­sive and unhealthy inter­est in them. They them­selves are equal­ly pleased by both errors and hail a mate­ri­al­ist or a magi­cian with the same delight.

This para­graph has spe­cial mean­ing to me as a Pen­te­costal. Some cor­ners of the Pen­te­costal world seem to believe there is a demon behind every headache and traf­fic jam. But much of our soci­ety has a hard time acknowl­edg­ing that there is any­thing demon­ic about some­thing as overt as Satan wor­ship. There is a more sen­si­ble posi­tion which Lewis here describes and which the Apos­tle Paul mod­eled: Paul was com­fort­able with the spir­it realm and demons rec­og­nized that he was a force to be reck­oned with (Acts 19:11–16), but he did not obsess over it. He was not an easy man to dis­tract. Once a demon was harass­ing him, but it took sev­er­al days before it got on Paul’s nerves enough for him to respond to it (Acts 16:16–18). Strive to be like Paul — deal with the demon­ic realm with­out becom­ing con­sumed by the demon­ic realm.

In the first let­ter, Screw­tape writes to Worm­wood about how mod­ern trends have made demon­ic work eas­i­er:

Your man has been accus­tomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incom­pat­i­ble philoso­phies danc­ing about togeth­er inside his head. He does­n’t think of doc­trines as pri­mar­i­ly “true” or “false”, but as “aca­d­e­m­ic” or “prac­ti­cal”, “out­worn” or “con­tem­po­rary”, “con­ven­tion­al” or “ruth­less”. Jar­gon, not argu­ment, is your best ally in keep­ing him from the Church. Don’t waste time try­ing to make him think that mate­ri­al­ism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the phi­los­o­phy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.

Read­ing this para­graph remind­ed me of the Prime Min­is­ter of Cana­da, Justin Trudeau. He once famous­ly answered a ques­tion about his cab­i­net com­po­si­tion by say­ing, “Because it’s 2015!” This is the kind of thing Screw­tape is talk­ing about. It’s the kind of answer we have been con­di­tioned to respond to, and so it’s the kind of answer a skill­ful politi­cian gives.

Lat­er in the same let­ter, Screw­tape makes a good point about sci­ence:

Above all, do not attempt to use sci­ence (I mean, the real sci­ences) as a defence against Chris­tian­i­ty. They will pos­i­tive­ly encour­age him to think about real­i­ties he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cas­es among the mod­ern physi­cists. If he must dab­ble in sci­ence, keep him on eco­nom­ics and soci­ol­o­gy; don’t let him get away from that invalu­able “real life”. But the best of all is to let him read no sci­ence but to give him a grand gen­er­al idea that he knows it all and that every­thing he hap­pens to have picked up in casu­al talk and read­ing is “the results of modem inves­ti­ga­tion”.

I’ve min­is­tered at Stan­ford since 2002, and in my expe­ri­ence math­e­mati­cians and stu­dents of the hard sci­ences have an eas­i­er time embrac­ing the gospel than do stu­dents of the social sci­ences or the human­i­ties. In part, it seems to me, it is because social sci­en­tists tend to look for answers that “explain away” where­as hard sci­en­tists tend to look for expla­na­tions. 

The final sen­tence, though, is the real kick­er. We assume some­thing is true because a lot of peo­ple keep say­ing it and there­by mis­take rep­e­ti­tion for rea­son. When some­one tells me “the Bible is full of con­tra­dic­tions” I often dis­cov­er they don’t have any to offer. They’re not lying — they are mere­ly repeat­ing some­thing they have heard so often that they assume it must have a sol­id foun­da­tion.  Some­times there’s more cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, such as when some­one assumes the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion has been a net pos­i­tive for soci­ety. In that case my inter­locu­tor is usu­al­ly ignor­ing or dis­count­ing evi­dence they have per­son­al­ly observed. But again, they’re not con­scious­ly lying. The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion is near­ly always pre­sent­ed as progress, and peo­ple assume that there must be some­thing to that since it keeps get­ting repeat­ed.

I am not say­ing we should mis­trust the con­sen­sus of experts who are speak­ing to us about some­thing we have no knowl­edge of. Defer­ring to expert con­sen­sus is an excel­lent heuris­tic, except when the con­sen­sus con­flicts with some­thing we know. In that case we humbly return to the evi­dence and think things through again, with open­ness to the idea that we might be wrong but so might the experts. Here’s the rub: when it comes to things like moral­i­ty and reli­gion we will almost always have some direct knowl­edge which we need to con­sid­er. And espe­cial­ly with sub­jects like moral­i­ty and reli­gion we need to remem­ber that both the experts as well as our­selves have pow­er­ful motives to not think things through all the way. All that to say: trust the experts, but not too much. Fur­ther­more, don’t assume our cul­tur­al con­sen­sus is the same thing as the expert con­sen­sus. If that was always the case, we would­n’t need experts!

I’ll con­tent myself with shar­ing one final quote from the read­ing, this one from Let­ter Four:

It is fun­ny how mor­tals always pic­ture us as putting things into their minds: in real­i­ty our best work is done by keep­ing things out.

Dis­trac­tion is one of the chief ene­mies of spir­i­tu­al growth, and we live in an age that is full of it. Sus­tained and slow thought is one of the chief instru­ments in our trans­for­ma­tion. If Lewis is right and one of the infer­nal legion’s goals is to keep you dis­tract­ed and pre­vent you from focus­ing, let that inform your use of apps and the inter­net. Just a thought.

The Four Loves: Charity

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

I hope you’ve been enjoy­ing the read­ings as much as I have. I send these week­ly reminders out both as a lit­tle nudge to remind you to pick up the book and also as a quick overview of some of Lewis’s best insights in case you’re hope­less­ly busy and unable to get to this week’s read­ing.

This week we fin­ish up The Four Loves with Lewis’s thoughts on agape (ἀγάπη — benev­o­lent love). Old­er Bible trans­la­tions some­times ren­dered this word as char­i­ty, as does the King James in 1 Corinthi­ans 13.

Inter­est­ing­ly to me, Lewis does not use the word agape at all in this chap­ter. He assumes his audi­ence is well-edu­cat­ed enough to know that agape is the word under­ly­ing his com­men­tary on char­i­ty.

I’m feel­ing a lit­tle under the weath­er today, so I’ll con­tent myself with three quotes from the chap­ter and some very brief com­men­tary on them.

I’ll begin with what may be Lewis’s most famous obser­va­tion in The Four Loves — the inher­ent risk­i­ness of love. If you read noth­ing else, read this and pon­der it. It’s straight fire and stands on its own apart from the chap­ter.

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. (pages 823–824)

I also found this obser­va­tion both help­ful and chal­leng­ing.

It remains cer­tain­ly true that all nat­ur­al loves can be inor­di­nate. Inor­di­nate does not mean “insuf­fi­cient­ly cau­tious.” Nor does it mean “too big.” It is not a quan­ti­ta­tive term. It is prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to love any human being sim­ply “too much.” We may love him too much in pro­por­tion to our love for God; but it is the small­ness of our love for God, not the great­ness of our love for the man, that con­sti­tutes the inor­di­na­cy. (page 824)

When­ev­er I love some­one or some­thing more than God it is very like­ly the case that I do not love the rival too much but that I love God too lit­tle. There are excep­tions, of course. There are some bro­ken impuls­es which I might mis­tak­en­ly label love and the solu­tion there is not mere­ly to love God more but also to repent of my aber­rant attrac­tion.

And I thought his obser­va­tion on what the rare Bib­li­cal com­mands to hate mean was quite insight­ful:

Con­sid­er again, “I loved Jacob and I hat­ed Esau” (Malachi I, 2–3). How is the thing called God’s “hatred” of Esau dis­played in the actu­al sto­ry? Not at all as we might expect. There is of course no ground for assum­ing that Esau made a bad end and was a lost soul; the Old Tes­ta­ment, here as else­where, has noth­ing to say about such mat­ters. And, from all we are told, Esau’s earth­ly life was, in every ordi­nary sense, a good deal more blessed than Jacob’s. It is Jacob who has all the dis­ap­point­ments, humil­i­a­tions, ter­rors, and bereave­ments. But he has some­thing which Esau has not. He is a patri­arch. (page 825)

The entire sec­tion from which this last excerpt is tak­en is quite good — I rec­om­mend it high­ly even if you skim the rest of the chap­ter.

Next week we begin The Screw­tape Let­ters!

 

The Four Loves: Eros

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

I’m at a con­fer­ence right now with a pret­ty packed sched­ule, so I’m dash­ing this email off quick­er than nor­mal. Apolo­gies for typos or inco­her­ent thoughts. 🙂

One thing I great­ly appre­ci­at­ed in this chap­ter is Lewis’s dis­cus­sion of how amus­ing human romance is. Not every­one gets this.

I remem­ber I was once at a con­fer­ence host­ing a table dis­cus­sion with stu­dents about romance and rela­tion­ships and sex. I was mak­ing the point that sex is an objec­tive­ly absurd thing. I was, if I may say so, on top of my game that day and they were roar­ing with laugh­ter.

One of the stu­dents at my table sud­den­ly stopped laugh­ing and said, “I have a ques­tion. I just over­heard the table host at the oth­er table crit­i­cize us for laugh­ing at sex. He said that we don’t under­stand how seri­ous and sacred sex is. That laugh­ing at it like this shows that we’re imma­ture and we’re going to get our­selves into trou­ble because we don’t approach it with solem­ni­ty. What do you think about that?”

Every­one stopped laugh­ing as though they had been slapped, for indeed they had been.

I can­not remem­ber in detail how I went on to defend my thoughts that day (although I recall fur­ther and per­haps exces­sive ridicule of my critic’s per­spec­tive was deployed), but I am pleased to report that this chap­ter reveals that C.S. Lewis shared my per­spec­tive.

For I can hard­ly help regard­ing it as one of God’s jokes that a pas­sion so soar­ing, so appar­ent­ly tran­scen­dent, as Eros, should thus be linked in incon­gru­ous sym­bio­sis with a bod­i­ly appetite which, like any oth­er appetite, tact­less­ly reveals its con­nec­tions with such mun­dane fac­tors as weath­er, health, diet, cir­cu­la­tion, and diges­tion. In Eros at times we seem to be fly­ing; Venus gives us the sud­den twitch that reminds us we are real­ly cap­tive bal­loons.

And lat­er:

So the body. There’s no liv­ing with it till we recog­nise that one of its func­tions in our lives is to play the part of buf­foon. Until some the­o­ry has sophis­ti­cat­ed them, every man, woman and child in the world knows this. The fact that we have bod­ies is the old­est joke there is.

And again:

Noth­ing is falser than the idea that mock­ery is nec­es­sar­i­ly hos­tile. Until they have a baby to laugh at, lovers are always laugh­ing at each oth­er.

So here is my encour­age­ment to you in your roman­tic jour­ney: see the humor in it.

But romance is not just amus­ing — it is also pro­found. If it was only amus­ing it would not be worth so much ener­gy and atten­tion. It would be at most a hob­by. Romance is far more than that. Lewis explains one of the spir­i­tu­al dynam­ics at work in roman­tic love:

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intol­er­a­ble the idea that it should be tran­si­to­ry. In one high bound it has over­leaped the mas­sive wall of our self­hood; it has made appetite itself altru­is­tic, tossed per­son­al hap­pi­ness aside as a triv­i­al­i­ty and plant­ed the inter­ests of anoth­er in the cen­tre of our being. Spon­ta­neous­ly and with­out effort we have ful­filled the law (towards one per­son) by lov­ing our neigh­bour as our­selves. It is an image, a fore­taste, of what we must become to all if Love Him­self rules in us with­out a rival. It is even (well used) a prepa­ra­tion for that…. Can we be in this self­less lib­er­a­tion for a life­time? Hard­ly for a week. Between the best pos­si­ble lovers this high con­di­tion is inter­mit­tent. The old self soon turns out to be not so dead as he pretended—as after a reli­gious con­ver­sion. In either he may be momen­tar­i­ly knocked flat; he will soon be up again; if not on his feet, at least on his elbow, if not roar­ing, at least back to his surly grum­bling or his men­di­cant whine.

That’s it for this week. Next week: agape!

The Four Loves: Friendship

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

Now we turn to the sec­ond human love Lewis con­sid­ers: phil­ia (φιλία — friend­ship). 

Even if you’ve got­ten behind on the read­ings I encour­age you to go through this chap­ter. While much has changed in the way we think about friend­ship nowa­days (for instance, we val­ue it more than did Lewis’s con­tem­po­raries), much has not. And the nature of friend­ship has changed not at all. Lewis’s insights will help you forge bet­ter friend­ships and be a bet­ter friend.

Three com­ments before we dive in:

On to the con­tent! This is one of my favorite obser­va­tions by Lewis:

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; I want oth­er lights than my own to show all his facets. 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. Hence true Friend­ship is the least jeal­ous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the new­com­er is qual­i­fied to become a real friend. (page 783)

In case you were won­der­ing, Charles is Charles Williams (a nov­el­ist, poet, and edi­tor at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press) and Ronald is J. R. R. Tolkien (yes — that Tolkien). They along with Lewis were the cen­tral mem­bers of a lit­er­ary dis­cus­sion group called the Inklings. They would read their writ­ings aloud to one anoth­er and cri­tique each oth­er. If you’re ever in Oxford you can vis­it the pub they used to meet in — The Eagle and Child.

Back to the main top­ic. This idea of two friends bring­ing things out of each oth­er that allow me to appre­ci­ate each of them more is beau­ti­ful, and Lewis’s the­o­log­i­cal appli­ca­tion of it is one that I have found help­ful when think­ing about the glo­ry of heav­en:

…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 (Isa­iah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heav­en­ly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. (page 783)

More prac­ti­cal­ly, Lewis has some thoughts on how friend­ships begin:

Friend­ship aris­es out of mere Com­pan­ion­ship when two or more of the com­pan­ions dis­cov­er that they have in com­mon some insight or inter­est or even taste which the oth­ers do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique trea­sure (or bur­den). The typ­i­cal expres­sion of open­ing Friend­ship would be some­thing like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” (page 785)

This is one rea­son why col­lege is so exhil­a­rat­ing. You have so many more peers than you did in high school that you can eas­i­ly find peo­ple who share your inter­ests. Your friend­ships in Chi Alpha espe­cial­ly have the poten­tial to become so sat­is­fy­ing because you’ve already got your faith in com­mon, and on top of that Stan­ford itself, and on top of that your expe­ri­ence of Chi Alpha instead of anoth­er Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, and if you add on top of that just one more thing like a cer­tain sport or a spe­cif­ic fan­dom or a shared sense of humor then the odds that a sig­nif­i­cant friend­ship will form are quite high. 

Not every­one acquires those friend­ships, of course. Some respond by look­ing for friends. Lewis points out why look­ing for friends direct­ly is often coun­ter­pro­duc­tive:

That is why those pathet­ic peo­ple who sim­ply “want friends” can nev­er make any. The very con­di­tion of hav­ing Friends is that we should want some­thing else besides Friends. Where the truth­ful answer to the ques­tion Do you see the same truth? would be “I see noth­ing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friend­ship can arise— though Affec­tion of course may. There would be noth­ing for the Friend­ship to be about; and Friend­ship must be about some­thing, even if it were only an enthu­si­asm for domi­noes or white mice. Those who have noth­ing can share noth­ing; those who are going nowhere can have no fel­low-trav­ellers. (page 786)

So if you feel lone­ly — pur­sue some­thing you’re inter­est­ed in. And then chat with those around you who are engaged in the same pur­suit. Friend­ship will often emerge. This will prove to be espe­cial­ly use­ful advice once you grad­u­ate and have to forge friend­ships with­out the aggres­sive help of Stan­ford Res Ed.

Lewis also address­es a peren­ni­al ques­tion among col­lege stu­dents: can guys and girls can be just friends?

When the two peo­ple who thus dis­cov­er that they are on the same secret road are of dif­fer­ent sex­es, the friend­ship which aris­es between them will very eas­i­ly pass—may pass in the first half-hour—into erot­ic love. Indeed, unless they are phys­i­cal­ly repul­sive to each oth­er or unless one or both already loves else­where, it is almost cer­tain to do so soon­er or lat­er. (page 786)

Lewis is cor­rect, and at this junc­ture I refer you to one of my favorite YouTube videos: Why Men and Women Can’t Be Friends

Near the end of the chap­ter he gives us a help­ful reminder:

…we think we have cho­sen our peers. In real­i­ty, a few years’ dif­fer­ence in the dates of our births, a few more miles between cer­tain hous­es, the choice of one uni­ver­si­ty instead of anoth­er, post­ing to dif­fer­ent reg­i­ments, the acci­dent of a top­ic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Chris­t­ian, there are, strict­ly speak­ing, no chances. A secret Mas­ter of the Cer­e­monies has been at work. Christ, who said to the dis­ci­ples “Ye have not cho­sen me, but I have cho­sen you,” can tru­ly say to every group of Chris­t­ian friends “You have not cho­sen one anoth­er but I have cho­sen you for one anoth­er.” (pages 801–802)

Thank God for your friends!

Next week, roman­tic love…

The Four Loves: Affection

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

YouTube has some­thing amaz­ing in rela­tion to this week’s read­ing: the man him­self deliv­er­ing the radio address upon which the chap­ter is based. Check out The Four Loves (‘Storge’ or ‘Affec­tion’) (or you can read the tran­script). You should at least lis­ten to a few min­utes if you’ve nev­er heard the voice of Lewis before.

In this chap­ter, Lewis dis­cuss­es the type of love described by the Greek word storge (στοργή). In Eng­lish we would talk about affec­tion or fond­ness. Inter­est­ing­ly (at least to me), this Greek word appears only in the neg­a­tive in the New Tes­ta­ment. In both Romans 1:31 and 2 Tim­o­thy 3:3 the word astor­gos (ἄστοργος) is ren­dered by var­i­ous trans­la­tions as “heart­less” or “unlov­ing” or “with­out nat­ur­al affec­tion.” When your Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment con­tains the word affec­tion it is prob­a­bly rep­re­sent­ing splangxnon (σπλαγχηνον) instead. This does­n’t affect what Lewis says in the slight­est. I just find it inter­est­ing.

On to what Lewis actu­al­ly said.

The first thing that stood out to me was a pithy phrase: “They seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.” (page 769)

Lewis is speak­ing about peo­ple whose crav­ing for affec­tion is so intense that they push away the peo­ple around them. It’s some­thing I’ve seen before, but the imagery Lewis uses is so evoca­tive that it made me real­ize afresh how trag­ic it is. More than that, it made me pause and reflect on whether there are any areas of my life in which I am pur­su­ing some­thing so inept­ly that I make suc­cess less like­ly with every attempt I make.

The next bit that stood out to me came near the end of the chap­ter. Lewis makes a point about our ten­den­cy to treat affec­tion gone bad as a psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lem.

I do not think we shall see things more clear­ly by clas­si­fy­ing all these malef­i­cal states of Affec­tion as patho­log­i­cal. No doubt there are real­ly patho­log­i­cal con­di­tions which make the temp­ta­tion to these states abnor­mal­ly hard or even impos­si­ble to resist for par­tic­u­lar peo­ple. Send those peo­ple to the doc­tors by all means. But I believe that every­one who is hon­est with him­self will admit that he has felt these temp­ta­tions. Their occur­rence is not a dis­ease; or if it is, the name of that dis­ease is Being a Fall­en Man. In ordi­nary peo­ple the yield­ing to them—and who does not some­times yield?—is not dis­ease, but sin. Spir­i­tu­al direc­tion will here help us more than med­ical treat­ment. Med­i­cine labours to restore “nat­ur­al” struc­ture or “nor­mal” func­tion. But greed, ego­ism, self-decep­tion and self-pity are not unnat­ur­al or abnor­mal in the same sense as astig­ma­tism or a float­ing kid­ney. For who, in Heaven’s name, would describe as nat­ur­al or nor­mal the man from whom these fail­ings were whol­ly absent? “Nat­ur­al,” if you like, in a quite dif­fer­ent sense; arch­nat­ur­al, unfall­en. We have seen only one such Man. And He was not at all like the psychologist’s pic­ture of the inte­grat­ed, bal­anced, adjust­ed, hap­pi­ly mar­ried, employed, pop­u­lar cit­i­zen. You can’t real­ly be very well “adjust­ed” to your world if it says you “have a dev­il” and ends by nail­ing you up naked to a stake of wood. (page 778)

As oth­ers have said, we live in a ther­a­peu­tic age. We are con­di­tioned to assume neg­a­tive thoughts and emo­tions are psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems, but that’s not always true. I remem­ber a quote from Carl Elliott that hit me like a thun­der­bolt when I was in grad school.

On Prozac, Sisy­phus might well push the boul­der back up the moun­tain with more enthu­si­asm and more cre­ativ­i­ty. I do not want to deny the ben­e­fits of psy­choac­tive med­ica­tion. I just want to point out that Sisy­phus is not a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem. To see him as a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem is to ignore cer­tain larg­er aspects of his predica­ment con­nect­ed to boul­ders, moun­tains, and eter­ni­ty. (UPDATE: I for­get where I first saw this quote — I thought it was from The Atlantic in an arti­cle called  “The Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness”, but it was pub­lished too late for that to be the case)

Some­times neg­a­tive thoughts and feel­ings are nat­ur­al (one might even say healthy) respons­es to our sit­u­a­tion, some­times they are mis­tak­en but not espe­cial­ly harm­ful, some­times they are sin­ful, and some­times they are the result of psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems. Be open to the full range of pos­si­bil­i­ties.  

Before wind­ing this down, I’d like to high­light one more of Lewis’s insights. Ear­ly in the chap­ter as bit of an aside, Lewis says

The rival­ry between all nat­ur­al loves and the love of God is some­thing a Chris­t­ian dare not for­get. God is the great Rival, the ulti­mate object of human jeal­ousy; that beau­ty, ter­ri­ble as the Gorgon’s, which may at any moment steal from me—or it seems like steal­ing to me—my wife’s or husband’s or daughter’s heart. The bit­ter­ness of some unbe­lief, though dis­guised even from those who feel it as anti-cler­i­cal­ism or hatred of super­sti­tion, is real­ly due to this. (page 767–768, empha­sis added)

Some of your friends who are angry about reli­gion are angry because they are jeal­ous. Your friend is bent — per­haps with­out even real­iz­ing it — because some­one’s love for God has cre­at­ed dis­tance between them and your friend.  If you’re ever talk­ing about God with some­one and you can hear anger in their voice, bear this insight in mind. It might help explain what’s going on.

I’m lov­ing the Lewis read­ings so far. Next week: the love between friends. 

P.S. If, per­chance, you are behind on your read­ings then just skip ahead. Start keep­ing up now — you can always go back and read the parts you missed lat­er.

The Four Loves: Introduction and Chapter One

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

We live in an area that often over­val­ues the love of nature and under­val­ues the love of coun­try. At the end of “Lik­ings and Loves for the Sub-human” (the first chap­ter of The Four Loves) Lewis makes some astute obser­va­tions about each.

Con­cern­ing nature, he makes the claim that nature doesn’t teach us any­thing on its own.

If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exact­ly the lessons you had already decid­ed to learn; this is only anoth­er way of say­ing that nature does not teach.… Over­whelm­ing gai­ety, insup­port­able grandeur, som­bre des­o­la­tion are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imper­a­tive that nature utters is, “Look. Lis­ten. Attend.” (page 755 in The C.S. Lewis Sig­na­ture Clas­sics)

While I think his main point is sound, he words things too strong­ly here. If I adopt­ed this per­spec­tive as he phrased it, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of such pas­sages as Romans 1:20 and Psalm 19.

  • Romans 1:20, “For since the cre­ation of the world God’s invis­i­ble qualities—his eter­nal pow­er and divine nature—have been clear­ly seen, being under­stood from what has been made, so that peo­ple are with­out excuse.”
  • Psalm 19:1–2, “The heav­ens declare the glo­ry of God;    the skies pro­claim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech;    night after night they reveal knowl­edge.”

These and oth­er Scrip­tures clear­ly teach that there are things God expects us to learn from nature. But there are not many of these things. Lewis is right that nature gives con­fus­ing mes­sages — we can con­struct clever nat­ur­al argu­ments for cru­el­ty as well as for mer­cy.

Rather than look­ing to nature to pro­vide our entire sys­tem of moral­i­ty and mean­ing, Lewis says it is enough to allow nature to give us a frame­work for think­ing:

Nature nev­er taught me that there exists a God of glo­ry and of infi­nite majesty. I had to learn that in oth­er ways. But nature gave the word glo­ry a mean­ing for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the “fear” of God could have ever meant to me any­thing but the low­est pru­den­tial efforts to be safe, if I had nev­er seen cer­tain omi­nous ravines and unap­proach­able crags. And if nature had nev­er awak­ened cer­tain long­ings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the “love” of God would nev­er, so far as I can see, have exist­ed. (pages 755–756)

Good stuff and well worth pon­der­ing.

Lewis goes on to make some great obser­va­tions about patri­o­tism. Patri­o­tism is a virtue for Chris­tians as Dou­glas Wil­son points out in his 2016 essay Amer­i­can Jesus:

Patri­o­tism, right­ly devel­oped, is a duty that falls under the fifth com­mand­ment. I am to hon­or my father and moth­er, and this extends beyond them in such a way as to include my peo­ple, my tribe. Ordi­nary and ordered patri­o­tism is not just okay; it is a duty, one that needs to be cul­ti­vat­ed.

I high­ly com­mend that essay to you. Wil­son is on point and adds all the caveats you might be wor­ried about.

One of Lewis’s insights about patri­ot­ic love is that it allows us to love and respect peo­ple from oth­er nations:

Of course patri­o­tism of this kind is not in the least aggres­sive. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes mil­i­tant only to pro­tect what it loves. In any mind which has a pen­ny­worth of imag­i­na­tion it pro­duces a good atti­tude towards for­eign­ers. How can I love my home with­out com­ing to realise that oth­er men, no less right­ly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the French­men like cafe com­plet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make every­where else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were dif­fer­ent.

And he has par­tic­u­lar­ly strong words to say about those who try to replace the love of coun­try with a com­mit­ment to high­er ideals:

If peo­ple will spend nei­ther sweat nor blood for “their coun­try” they must be made to feel that they are spend­ing them for jus­tice, or civil­i­sa­tion, or human­i­ty. This is a step down, not up.… If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of anni­hi­la­tion. A false tran­scen­dence is giv­en to things which are very much of this world. (page 761)

Much of what Lewis says in this sec­tion reminds me of the way G.K. Chester­ton talked about patri­o­tism in Ortho­doxy chap­ter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patri­ots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. Because they love their nation they want to fix it.

Let us sup­pose we are con­front­ed with a des­per­ate thing—say Pim­li­co [Glen’s note: Pim­li­co is part of Lon­don]. If we think what is real­ly best for Pim­li­co we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mys­tic and the arbi­trary. It is not enough for a man to dis­ap­prove of Pim­li­co: in that case he will mere­ly cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, cer­tain­ly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pim­li­co: for then it will remain Pim­li­co, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for some­body to love Pim­li­co: to love it with a tran­scen­den­tal tie and with­out any earth­ly rea­son. If there arose a man who loved Pim­li­co, then Pim­li­co would rise into ivory tow­ers and gold­en pin­na­cles; Pim­li­co would attire her­self as a woman does when she is loved. For dec­o­ra­tion is not giv­en to hide hor­ri­ble things: but to dec­o­rate things already adorable. A moth­er does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly with­out it. A lover does not give a girl a neck­lace to hide her neck. If men loved Pim­li­co as moth­ers love chil­dren, arbi­trar­i­ly, because it is THEIRS, Pim­li­co in a year or two might be fair­er than Flo­rence. Some read­ers will say that this is a mere fan­ta­sy. I answer that this is the actu­al his­to­ry of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the dark­est roots of civ­i­liza­tion and you will find them knot­ted round some sacred stone or encir­cling some sacred well. Peo­ple first paid hon­our to a spot and after­wards gained glo­ry for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

So to sum­ma­rize:

  • Nature is wor­thy of love but not wor­thy of wor­ship. Our cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion of envi­ron­men­tal­ism far to often runs beyond the con­cerns of ecol­o­gy and veers into reli­gious ter­ri­to­ry.
  • Nations are wor­thy of love but not wor­thy of wor­ship, and we ought to cul­ti­vate a healthy and mea­sured patri­o­tism in our­selves what­ev­er our home­land may be.

See you next week!

Kicking off the C. S. Lewis Summer Reading Project

The Abo­li­tion of Man by C. S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018.

This is the first week of our sum­mer read­ing project. I’ll be send­ing out reminders to read along with some com­men­tary on the read­ings through­out the sum­mer. Remem­ber that the sched­ule is online (you can print it out and use it as a book­mark if you find that help­ful).

This week we’re read­ing the first two chap­ters of The Abo­li­tion of Man by C.S. Lewis: “Men With­out Chests” and “The Way” (pages 693–717 in the anthol­o­gy).  If you don’t have a copy of the book yet, you can hear it enter­tain­ing­ly pre­sent­ed on the C.S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel (not all of our read­ings are on this chan­nel, but some will be).

I believe this is one of Lewis’s most impor­tant books, and I am not alone in my opin­ion. In The Narn­ian, Alan Jacobs (him­self an excel­lent essay­ist) calls The Abo­li­tion of Man the “most pro­found of Lewis’s cul­tur­al cri­tiques” (page 174).

At first you may won­der why you are read­ing about a British high school text­book from 1939, but as you progress into the chap­ter you’ll dis­cov­er that Lewis is point­ing out a pro­found error in think­ing which has become even more wide­spread today. I encour­age you to per­se­vere; the pay­off is worth it. The last four sen­tences of the first chap­ter are among the most pow­er­ful I have read, and you will find that the sec­ond chap­ter seems to be addressed to your con­tem­po­raries at Stan­ford.