The Importance of continually coming back to the Gospel

“Really great teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that… The real job of every (gospel) teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.”  – C.S. Lewis

When you think about it, teaching truth really is a thankless job. The picture is much like the mother who stands over her child with a spoonful of cough syrup, urging her to open her mouth. This is because medicine is usually distasteful and goes down hard. Yet, if the mother is good and true and loving, she will not back down from her call to care for her little one.

Truth is like medicine.  It is not cool or fun or new or original. Truth is old. And even when we have not heard it before, or when truth first comes to us as a new thought, or when it seems novel because it is novel to us, even then, we often find that truth has the ring of something old.  It always seems like something that has been taught a thousand times before, something that has risen from antiquity and dusted itself off before us. When we hear truth, we get the sense that we should know this already, or that we have known it and simply allowed ourselves to forget.

And this is why teaching truth is thankless. If you will allow the illustration. It’s like selling commodes. Everybody needs one. Every home should have one. If a builder forgot to put a commode in a home, it would be the first thing the inhabitant would miss. Yet, unless one needs to use the rest room, who thinks about a commode?  It’s a necessity, yes. But it is not cool. It doesn’t draw a crowd. Hardly anyone I know would buy a new home because it has a really great commode. They’d never say, “Hey come over to the house and take a gander at our new commode. Man, it’s a real jim-dandy!” We would do this with a new car, certainly. We’re always anxious to show off a new automobile or a new set of clothes. We’d even be proud to show off a new kitchen appliance. But a toilet? Uh…no.

Let’s be honest. For the most part, truth is easily forgotten. It isn’t particularly ‘show-offable’. It isn’t ‘shiny’. Truth is not like a Christmas tree with lights and bows; it’s like a massive oak tree in the middle of a field. It’s not wrapping paper; it’s parchment. It not the ‘thing’ in the box, it’s the directions in the box that tell you how to put the ‘thing’ together. It’s not like a slick car salesman, or actress, or runway model.  It’s more like a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter. It’s not pretty; it’s plain. It’s not Marilyn Monroe in a swimsuit; it’s your mom in an apron. Truth is not a toothy guy with a soft smile coming to us live, via satellite. Nor is it a cute cuddly little baby with cherubic cheeks. Truth is an old man with weather beaten wrinkles on his face; wrinkles that tell us, “I’ve been around for a while.  I’m old.  Very old.  I was here before you.  And I’m not going anywhere.”

And so the job of the really great gospel teacher – is to bring us back again to those things that are so easily forgotten – to that timeless old man, to that mother in the apron, to that plumber, that parchment, that oak; to point us again and again back to the old and true things that we daily turn away from. Like the mother standing over the sick child, the teachers of gospel truth sit down on the side of the bed and hold a spoon full of medicine up to the tight lipped little one and whisper, “Drink this down. It’s medicine. It’s good for you. You may hate it now, but I promise you, if you swallow this, you’ll feel much better in the morning.” As the song in the musical Mary Poppins reminds us, the mother may offer a little sugar to help the medicine go down, but she must not convolute the mixture, nor must she back off from the prescribed dose. A half spoonful will not do. There isn’t much point to it all if the mother gives the child less than or something other than what the doctor has prescribed.

Because this is true, we pastors, we preachers of the gospel, we teachers of God’s word who are called to proclaim truth – whether we are teaching in a small group bible study or whether we stand behind a pulpit in front of thousands of people – we Sunday school teachers and student leaders – we parents and grandparents – we teachers of truth, if we desire to be good gospel teachers – then we must teach old things. It’s OK to add a little sugar, a little spice, a little humor. It’s perfectly fine to use a cultural reference or a literary analogy to capture the attention and help the understanding. But be sure not to convolute the message. Make sure that in the end you bring your students back to Moses, to Abraham, to Isaiah, and to Paul. Bring your students back to Calvin, and Luther, and Augustine. And more than all, bring them back to the Cross.  Back to repentance.  Bring them back to Christ.

This is our call. This is our task. We must not shrink back from it. For, as C.S. Lewis so aptly reminds us, the great theological teacher is committed to bringing his students back, again and again, to those same old simple truths, that we all are so anxious not to see.

The Pain and the Promise of “Further up and further in”

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“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”

―C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

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A couple of days ago I had a close friend tell me that she missed the joys of her youth.  She missed the joys of “care free” days.  She said flatly, “The world sucks.”

It would be better, I think, if it really did completely suck.  The world, that is.  But the almost cruel truth is that it doesn’t.  In fact, there are so many momentary joys in life – joys that are tremendously wonderful and beautiful and true and good – joys that we take for granted until they are moving past.  And as they pass, they leave behind an overwhelming dark sorrow.  A whispering sort of sorrow that says, “This joy is leaving you and there is nothing you can do.”  We sense that this is happening and desperately we try to grab hold, but to no avail.  Despite our best efforts, these joys slip through our fingers and drift away.  Our soul laments. We long to return to those joys.  To go back to that moment of laughter.  To go back to that fleeting glimpse of mirth.  And this is what fuels our idolatry.  This is what undermines our faith.  The whispering sorrow shows no mercy.  The shadows speak again.  “You will never get this back,” they mock.  “This joy has been your last.”  This seals our grief.  Anger.  Sadness.  Isolation.  Hardness settles in.  We devise a plan to never love again.  We make a decision to close ourselves off.   Shut ourselves down.  Seal ourselves up.   The pain of lost love – lost joy – is greater than to have never loved at all.  We will never hurt this way again.

Yet, for those who follow Christ, there is a different voice.  A gentle voice that whispers “follow me.”  And this is the voice that must prevail.  We have to believe. We have to trust.  We have to hope…that the way to go back is found in the way forward – “further up and further in,” as C.S. Lewis would say.  And so, for those who have been captured by the Gospel.  We take that step into the dark unknown…with nothing but the Gentle Shepherd’s voice that softly calls our name.  “Joy will come, Tim.  Joy will come.  Further up and further in.  Believe and follow me.”

Making Sense Out of Suffering (Part 3)

Yesterday I received a comment from someone named Emily concerning my recent post “Making Sense Out of Suffering” (You can read that post by clicking here).

Emily said…

“I appreciate your perspective as well as your mind, but (I’m not sure that your argument) is biblical. Read Job 1 & 2. Satan is indeed the author of Job’s suffering, yet God is sovereign and Satan can’t do anything without God’s permission. God also sets limits on what Satan can do. Yes, Satan’s goal is to cause Job disbelief.  But Spiritual warfare ceases to make sense if it is “God against God”, clearly it is “God against Satan” and man must make a choice. I am not attempting to start an argument, but simply hope to receive more understanding.”

Here is my response:

Making Sense Out of Suffering – God’s Megaphone (Part 2)

(I wrote this post early Sunday morning.  I finished it at 5am, while sitting in the dark, still suffering with a Kidney Stone.  I am presently at 18 days.)

The reality of suffering measured against God’s goodness is one of the foundational problems that unbeliever’s use to disprove the existence of God.  The line of thinking usually follows this pattern:  There is, without question, a great amount of suffering in the world.  If God is all-powerful and he is all loving, then why does he allow such suffering and death to take place?  In order to reconcile this problem, it is argued, a logical person must take one of only four positions: (1) that God is not all-powerful and therefore cannot stop our suffering, (2) that God is not all-loving and therefore does not care about our suffering, or (3) that God is neither all-powerful nor all-loving and therefore cannot stop our suffering nor does he care to, or (4) that there is no God at all.  The most likely of these four, says the atheist, is choice number four.

Sacrographic Friday – The Wardrobe and the Holy Spirit

"It was the sort of house that you never seemed to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places".

I love the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  Honestly, there are too many things about the story that I love, to recount them all in this post.  This photo made me think about the Wardrobe.  In Lewis’ story, the four Pevensies  are evacuated from London because of the air-raids during WWII.  They are sent to the home of Professor Digory Kirke.  When in the house, the children become enamored with an old Wardrobe that, as it turns out, is a portal into another world – the world of Narnia.  In this, C.S. Lewis is brilliant.  He has found a way, through the mechanism of a children’s story, to create an experience that gives his readers a frame of reference for understanding the Gospel:  A land that has been cursed, subjects who live in fear and slavery, a Queen who rules by lying and manipulating the desires of her subjects, A  Great Lion who gives his life to break that curse, the Kingdom of that Great Lion vanquishing the curse by redeeming slaves and freeing the oppressed.  It’s just so great.

Our Suffering compared to a Tickle

In my latest post titled “Favorite Lewis Quote #4 – God’s Megaphone”, I used a fictional dialogue between a Dad and his son, along with the metaphor of “tickling“, as a way of understanding or categorizing suffering in the life of a believer.  I would like to use this post to provide a few “keys” to understanding that dialogue.

Favorite Lewis Quote #4 – God’s Megaphone (Part 1)

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  – The Problem of Pain

“Papa does God hear me when I pray?”  The little boy jumped into his bed, dirty socks drooping off of each foot.  His Dad, a construction worker, tired from a hard day’s work, went into the bathroom and poured the boy a glass of water.

“Yeah, he hears you.”
“But how do you know he hears me?”
“Cause I just know.”
“Yeah, but can he see me too?”
“Yeah, he can see you.”
“But how do you know?  Can you see God?”
“No, I can’t see him? Don’t be silly.”
“Then, how do you know he can see us?”
“Well,” said the Dad, just cause we can’t see him, that don’t mean he can’t see us.”
“But how do you know?”
“Cause I just know that’s all”.  The boy’s big Dad grabbed hold of his droopy socks and playfully pulled them off his feet.

C.S. Lewis on “Pride”

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Chapter titled “The Great Sin” – p. 108 in Collier

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

Favorite Lewis Quote #8 – The Land of Safe

“Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” – The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Once upon a time…far, far away, there existed a kingdom without a King, where everyone was safe. In this Land of Safe, no one ever grew sick or ill. And no one ever died. The people were never hungry, never desperate, never thirsty, never sad. In this Land of Safe, always beautiful, never ugly; always full, never empty, the lonely people lived – Safe from the pain of war; Safe from the pain of anger; Safe from the pain of loss…Safe from the pain of love.

For in its essence, the idolatry of safety is nothing more than the desire to be free from the suffering of love. And so this land – safe, secure, happy, and comfortable – was a land without the dangers of compassion. The people all understood that hiding was the only way to be truly safe and so safety stayed in fashion. They were kind but never close. They were nice but never near. During the day they encased themselves in cubicles. At night they locked their doors and hid inside their fear. When they traveled, they sealed themselves inside moving metal boxes. They talked to one another, but only through machines. They worked safe jobs. Washed in safe bathrooms. Kept their money in safe banks. They Hid inside safe houses, that were built inside safe walls, surrounded by safe fences, and locked inside safe gates. Marriage? Far too dangerous; Babies? Much too perilous; Families? Way too hazardous…inside the Land of Safe.

Favorite Lewis Quote #9 – A Special Standard

“How difficult it is to avoid having a special standard for oneself.” – C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, p. 58

I tend to view myself as a ‘specialme’. When I’m standing in line at the grocery store, with 20 people in front of me, somehow I feel like I am the one person who is so special, that I should be allowed to go to the front of the line. When I do something wrong – like losing my temper or gossiping or building myself up while tearing someone else down, or when I kill someone and bury them in my backyard – I feel like I’m justified because I am a ‘specialme’. Now, if someone else kills a person and buries them in their back yard…well, that’s just wrong. No question about it. But me? Hey, I have my reasons, doggone it. If I want to kill people – if I want to be a cannibal – then it is my right. Me and Hannibal Lecter are in a different category. Don’t hate us just because we like to eat people.

C.S. Lewis Song

In keeping with my series on my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, I would like to share with you the “C.S. Lewis Song”, in which Brook Fraser sings a beautiful strain that is based upon some of Lewis’ words and thoughts.

Lyrics

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,
I can only conclude that I, I was not made for here
If the flesh that I fight is at best only light and momentary,
then of course I’ll feel nude when to where I’m destined I’m compared

To read the rest of the Lyrics click the link…

Favorite Lewis Quote #10 – Teachers

“Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that… The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.”

When you think about it, teaching truth really is a thankless job. The picture is much like the mother who stands over her child with a spoonful of cough syrup, urging her to open her mouth. This is because truth usually goes down hard. Yet, if the mother is good and true and loving, she will not back down from her call to care for her little one.

Truth is not sexy or fun or new or original. Truth is old. And even when we have not heard it before, when truth first comes to us as a new thought, or when it seems novel because it is novel to us, even then, we often find that truth has the ring of something old, something that has been taught a thousand times before, something that has risen from antiquity and dusted itself off before us. When we hear truth, we get the sense that we should know this already, or that we have known it and simply allowed ourselves to forget.

Favorite Lewis Quote #11 – Friends

“In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about any one else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history…That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts.” – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

How many friends do you have? How do you know when you have a friend? Sometimes it’s hard to discern. Adam and Eve, just after they’d sinned, did a particularly odd thing. They hid. They sewed together fig leaves and hid themselves. Odd. But, not really surprising. We do the same thing don’t we? In an independent, self-actualizing, wealthy (yes, we are still wealthy!), society like ours, most people live strangely private and pretentious lives.

Favorite Lewis Quote #12 – Seekers

“‘You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you’, said the Lion.” – The Silver Chair

The Evangelical church, especially of late, loves to use the term “seekers” when referring to those particular unbelievers who are interested in hearing about Christianity. Willow Creek and Emergent churches alike, love the terms: “Seeker Driven Worship”, “Seeker Sensitive Ministry”, “Seeker Friendly”, “Open to Seekers”. It sounds cool. I like the feel of it personally. I would love to believe that people are seeking – “We’re just seeking a church,bro…seeking the truth…just seeking in the hopes that someone will tell us what we long to hear.

C.S. Lewis said, and I quote…

In keeping with my former post on why I love C.S. Lewis, here are a few of my favorite Lewis-isms.

12. “‘You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you’, said the Lion.”

11. “In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about any one else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history…That is the kingliness of Friendship.We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts.”

C.S. Lewis and a theology of Christian Hope

I love C.S. Lewis. I can’t help it. About 20 years ago I read “Mere Christianity” and “Until we have Faces” and right then and there, I was hooked. The thing that I find most appealing about Lewis is the way he approaches life and spirituality. He loved to read, loved to teach, loved to debate, loved to think, and loved to study…but he also loved to imagine, loved a good story, loved to have beer with friends, loved to laugh, and loved to enjoy life. In short, Lewis saw work and play as simultaneous expressions of worship given to God. I have read very few authors, and met even fewer people, who keep as firm a grasp on this as Lewis. I am recently reading Jonathan Edwards and as I work through the material, I can’t help but wondering, “When did this guy ever lighten up?”