C.S. Lewis on the cost of love, and avoiding God.

First, Lewis on the cost of love:

“To love at all is to be vul­ner­a­ble. Love any­thing, and your heart will cer­tainly be wrung and pos­si­bly 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 only place out­side of Heaven where you can be per­fectly safe from all the dan­gers of per­tur­ba­tions of love is Hell.”¹

Nod to William Val­li­cella of Mav­er­ick Philoso­pher for this quote from C.S. Lewis, on how to avoid God:

Avoid silence, avoid soli­tude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Con­cen­trate … (Read more)

Fame

Con­sider the famous; those you’ve never heard of.… (Read more)

Definition of a Religion

It’s that time of year again.

No, no one that I know of is dis­cussing Hebrew ‘block logic’. They also aren’t describ­ing Ein­stein as a stu­dent whip­ping his pro­fes­sor. It’s that time of year where all your Facebook-Christian friends get together and say some­thing unthought­ful like, “Chris­tian­ity isn’t a reli­gion, it’s a rela­tion­ship!” Think I’m over­re­act­ing? These 23, 719 peo­ple all agree that Chris­tian­ity is NOT a reli­gion… Wel­come to the world of false dichotomies, I say — why can’t it be both? ‘Sun­day Chris­t­ian,’ ‘Face­book Chris­t­ian’… Someone’s going to hit me for say­ing this, but I find it really annoy­ing, and I’m Chris­t­ian. *Deep breath*

Now since I’ll get in trou­ble if  I leave com­ments for these well-meaning but uncrit­i­cal peo­ple, I fig­ure I would express my frus­tra­tion here. Let’s first of all deal with the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of religion.

Accord­ing to Merriam-Webster, a reli­gion is “a … (Read more)

The Preacher’s Responsibility

In Liv­ing as a Chris­t­ian, A.W. Tozer writes:

The doc­tor who mis­counts the amount of a med­i­cine that he gives a patient may kill the patient, which would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who mis­judges or mis­counts the truth con­cern sin and man and God will damn his hearer, which is infi­nitely more ter­ri­ble. Truth con­cern­ing God means I must accept God’s sov­er­eignty, God’s holi­ness, God’s jus­tice, God’s grace, God’s love and all the Bible says about God. Con­cern­ing me, it requires that I must believe myself a fallen image of God, one who wants more to His image fell short.¹

This is per­haps one of the most intim­i­dat­ing aspects of being a preacher, teacher, or oth­er­wise claim­ing spir­i­tual author­ity of some sort. At the same time, cer­tain notions have called into ques­tion the idea that truth can be known or that the mean­ing of … (Read more)

1 Timothy 2:9–15, by N.T. Wright

In research­ing the ‘issue’ of women pas­tors, I’ve run across the fol­low­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of 1 Tim­o­thy 2:9–15, by N.T. Wright:

So this is what I want: the men should pray in every place, lift­ing up holy hands, with no anger or dis­put­ing.  9In the same way the women, too, should clothe them­selves in an appro­pri­ate man­ner, mod­estly and sen­si­bly. They should not go in for elab­o­rate hair-styles, or gold, or pearls, or expen­sive clothes;   10instead, as is appro­pri­ate for women who pro­fess to be godly, they should adorn them­selves with good works.  11They must be allowed to study undis­turbed, in full sub­mis­sion to God.  12I’m not say­ing that women should teach men, or try to dic­tate to them; they should be left undis­turbed.  13Adam was cre­ated first, you see, and then Eve;  14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and fell … (Read more)

Women as pastors, or teachers.

If women ought not be ‘pas­tors,’ as many today con­tend; then by the same merit, might we also refuse women the right to teach, or become police offi­cer or judges? For that mat­ter, ought we tell women that they may not fill any posi­tion which entails ‘author­ity’ over men? … (Read more)

Some Thoughts on Love Wins

I woke up the other day, with the idea of writ­ing on ‘uncon­di­tional sal­va­tion,’ but then real­ized that I’d only be repeat­ing myself. So instead, I’ve decided to say some­thing about Love Wins (Rob Bell’s most recent book).

Some­thing both­ers me; some­thing both­ers me about the way Bell has writ­ten Love Wins. Two things bother me, in fact. The first I’ve already writ­ten about, and the sec­ond thing is what I’ll dis­cuss here. You see, I don’t under­stand what Bell’s point is. Well, actu­ally that’s not entirely true; I do under­stand what Bell’s point is, but I don’t under­stand why it matters.

A few months ago, an inter­view between Rob Bell and Mar­tin Bashir began cir­cu­lat­ing. Irre­spec­tive of the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing this inter­view, Mar­tin Bashir asked one par­tic­u­lar ques­tion (which I’ll para­phrase) that sum­ma­rizes the ‘some­thing’ that both­ers me about Love Wins: if in the end ‘love … (Read more)