C.S. Lewis once wrote:
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."
(From his sermon titled "The Weight of Glory")
I thought this was an interesting perspective of the future of our souls in eternity, and I can't help but wonder: If we could really understand and glimpse what is to become of each other, how differently would we all treat one another?
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
"Not really, no."
About 3 hours ago a friend posed some questions on his Facebook status:
I think my favorite thought on this is from one of my favorite people ever, C.S. Lewis:
To me, God gave me a soul, created in his image, so that I can have a relationship with him and love him. I couldn't do that with just my mind and my own understanding. He gives us our phenomenal human body to carry our soul while we're here, and it's because we're here that we know we have a purpose.
God didn't want to just create us there with him, he wants us to have a choice, and to choose it. Our soul is how his existence can reach us, our life is designed to bring glory to him, and our free will allows us to reject that or believe it. Our purpose is not just to choose Him, but to also tell the world about him once we have faith in Him, so that no one is left asking "What's next?". If it weren't for those things, we could have easily skipped a lot of this process of making our way back to our intended destination, eternity with God. We have a great responsibility with the short time God has given us. He could have made us as mere clones, or angelic beings constantly worshiping him forever without having a choice in the matter. But he didn't. Don't you think there's a reason for that? I believe that He did give us a soul, He did give us a body, He did give us a purpose, and He has also given us reasons to trust Him.
Not really, no. Honestly. To be human is beautiful, but we don't need a soul, a creator, or a purpose for that to be true."
I think if we disbelieve that we have a soul, our opinion is discounted. To explain, I have to also say that it is my belief that while our brains are beyond phenomenal, and are much needed in order to have knowledge enough to form our opinion, it is a soul which creates the opinion. To me, you cannot explain things like art, beauty, philosophy, dreams, or opinions, with just a physical mind, but with the individual soul, which is created to be creative. The brain is the knowledge reservoir, the soul is what turns it to wisdom and life. (This thought is similar to the philosophy of the mind term, Dualism.)I think my favorite thought on this is from one of my favorite people ever, C.S. Lewis:
"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."
To me, God gave me a soul, created in his image, so that I can have a relationship with him and love him. I couldn't do that with just my mind and my own understanding. He gives us our phenomenal human body to carry our soul while we're here, and it's because we're here that we know we have a purpose.
What is the point of having a soul and a relationship with God, and then also a body?
The body seems unimportant and useless from this view point; inhabiting time here on earth rather than skipping the whole process and being directly created for an eternity with God in heaven.
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Do without. (It's fun.)
A bag to hold your gifts is carrying what you could do so much with.
Isn't it obvious?
To wait is to find.
To follow is laborious, and staying is difficult for anybody who thinks it's not.
Tiny jumbo thoughts ringing in your limbs,
moving with your brain and rhyming all your hands can say.
If I could, I would.
I want to say it, but it's hard to find words for what I'm doing.
Practicing a word or two.
May I?
A thousand and a half add up, but just two can link "now" with final.
I think I'll show you how, in smooth illustration,
what writing can do if you go without using just a minor thing:
The Letter E.
Isn't it obvious?
To wait is to find.
To follow is laborious, and staying is difficult for anybody who thinks it's not.
Tiny jumbo thoughts ringing in your limbs,
moving with your brain and rhyming all your hands can say.
If I could, I would.
I want to say it, but it's hard to find words for what I'm doing.
Practicing a word or two.
May I?
A thousand and a half add up, but just two can link "now" with final.
I think I'll show you how, in smooth illustration,
what writing can do if you go without using just a minor thing:
The Letter E.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
This is the correlation of salvation and love .
Last night I was talking to some of my friends about our relationships with God. Some of our questions were things like:
What has changed in the last year between you and God?
What has God done for you?
What are some things you do that keep you in step with God?
At one point during our dialoging, the thought was offered that in order to be successfully experiencing God, we have to be ready to endure the things which end up revealing him to us, as well as revealing him to others through us. We have to be willing to invest in him, and alter ourselves to be more like him, so that he seeps out of our lives, into the lives of others.
Years ago, there was a time when I was uninterested in everything that God and the Bible stands for, and I was not easily persuaded to think or feel any differently. Don't think for a second that I never faced doubt, or that I never had a chance to choose the alternative to belief in my God. It's not that I haven't questioned it; I have questioned. I have fought it, and there was no chance that church, or Christianity itself would have ever caught my attention long enough to truly create a change of heart. I have not been fooled by any organization, by a system of rules and laws, or brain washed into wasting my time with a god who doesn't exist. Instead, this is what happened: As I was losing my interest and walking out on God, he re-introduced himself to me in a way that I couldn't deny. It wasn't that he suddenly proved himself to me, it wasn't that I suddenly understood, and I honestly can't fully explain the transformation in myself between then and now, but I do know without a doubt that he is very real, very alive, and very powerful. He appeals to my soul's every desire, he draws me to him, and having now recognized the power of his life within me, I cannot return to any other thing for that ultimate satiation. Despite myself, I have fallen in love with God. It's not because it always made sense to me, I am merely responding to the charm of the Almighty here and now in my life, and I will never, ever be able to turn back.
I have heard the expression many times: God is all about relationships.
The point of having God in our life is not for a set of rules or to ritually worship him. It's not about being good enough, or getting better, or being fixed: God longs for restoration of his relationship with us, and has provided a way to reconcile us to him, so long as we will desire him back. He only asks us to react to him, not to reach him on our own. All of it is merely for glorifying him.
I've always thought of this explanation as a kind of feel-good idea about God; It's far easier to consider him when it sounds so simple.
My friend Mandy shared last night that she has heard this expression before, but it had never connected to the perception she has of actual relationships with other people here on earth. Every relationship requires investment and sacrifice. A getting-to-know-you phase, then learning what it means to care for and respect someone, then committing yourself to that person. Sometimes not in that order, but regardless, there is definitely always a method of developing intimacy with other people. This applies to friendships, relatives, and significant others alike. You have to give part of yourself for the sake of the other, there has to be a two-way contribution to call it a relationship.
I too had never fully connected what that meant, and as I examined this new found ideation, I reflected on what my parts in other relationships look like, and I caught something I had never perceived before about my relationship with God:
Calling the bond between me and God a relationship is not just a way to make it appear more personal, or effortless. In fact, calling it a relationship implies more need for scrupulousness than defining it as commission of some religion. Viewing this restored bond as more than just salvation from some far off hell, or a duty to honor some far off God, suddenly engages more responsibility on my part than just saying, yeah, I believe in God. It's no longer about what I have to do, or what I shouldn't do. It's about choosing to participate in this relationship because I long for the results. I yearn for more of God, I want to know him, the same way I want to get to know my friends. That's what it's all about.
As I learn more about others, I learn more about myself. When I see the things in other people that I admire or dislike, I also discover things about myself worth keeping, the things I am willing to stand up for, and also the things I need to compromise for someone else's sake. I appreciate and value certain people enough to change, others I don't, or else it takes time. Likewise, as I get to know God more and more, I am constantly being shown exactly what about myself I can tolerate in his presence, and what things I need to seriously extricate from my life. He is the single most important thing about my life, and he is the only one who could ever cause me to genuinely apply the guidelines of living as his child to my life.
Some people find their significance in what their lifetime on this earth will bring them--whether it be looks, talents, relationships, careers, intelligence, money, or politics, and the like--which I once could have done as well. But I can no longer consider these things the most opulent options for bringing my life significance. With only 22 years worth of experiencing people, and I have only experienced a small number of various relationships and friendships in my short lifetime, I am already unsatisfied by the temporal situation that consists of trying to please and be pleased. There is a constant feeling that we're owed something, and while I know my journey with this part of life is not complete, not hardly, it is so unfulfilling at times. Recently though, I have been feeling a dire appreciation for the process of knowing others. Even more importantly, the process of knowing God. I have discovered His magnificence, and I have discovered who I am allowed to be because of his grace in me. This is why I seek to be different. It's what gives me a reason to try, and gives me the ability to succeed in genuinely loving others.
I am so very blessed, and so very happy with my life. Not because my life is anything exceptional (because it's definitely not), but because I am at peace in my Father's love. I am not seeking some form of comfort because in him I have comfort that is almost burdensome to attempt feeling, because it is so overwhelmingly complete.
What has changed in the last year between you and God?
What has God done for you?
What are some things you do that keep you in step with God?
At one point during our dialoging, the thought was offered that in order to be successfully experiencing God, we have to be ready to endure the things which end up revealing him to us, as well as revealing him to others through us. We have to be willing to invest in him, and alter ourselves to be more like him, so that he seeps out of our lives, into the lives of others.
Years ago, there was a time when I was uninterested in everything that God and the Bible stands for, and I was not easily persuaded to think or feel any differently. Don't think for a second that I never faced doubt, or that I never had a chance to choose the alternative to belief in my God. It's not that I haven't questioned it; I have questioned. I have fought it, and there was no chance that church, or Christianity itself would have ever caught my attention long enough to truly create a change of heart. I have not been fooled by any organization, by a system of rules and laws, or brain washed into wasting my time with a god who doesn't exist. Instead, this is what happened: As I was losing my interest and walking out on God, he re-introduced himself to me in a way that I couldn't deny. It wasn't that he suddenly proved himself to me, it wasn't that I suddenly understood, and I honestly can't fully explain the transformation in myself between then and now, but I do know without a doubt that he is very real, very alive, and very powerful. He appeals to my soul's every desire, he draws me to him, and having now recognized the power of his life within me, I cannot return to any other thing for that ultimate satiation. Despite myself, I have fallen in love with God. It's not because it always made sense to me, I am merely responding to the charm of the Almighty here and now in my life, and I will never, ever be able to turn back.
I have heard the expression many times: God is all about relationships.
The point of having God in our life is not for a set of rules or to ritually worship him. It's not about being good enough, or getting better, or being fixed: God longs for restoration of his relationship with us, and has provided a way to reconcile us to him, so long as we will desire him back. He only asks us to react to him, not to reach him on our own. All of it is merely for glorifying him.
I've always thought of this explanation as a kind of feel-good idea about God; It's far easier to consider him when it sounds so simple.
My friend Mandy shared last night that she has heard this expression before, but it had never connected to the perception she has of actual relationships with other people here on earth. Every relationship requires investment and sacrifice. A getting-to-know-you phase, then learning what it means to care for and respect someone, then committing yourself to that person. Sometimes not in that order, but regardless, there is definitely always a method of developing intimacy with other people. This applies to friendships, relatives, and significant others alike. You have to give part of yourself for the sake of the other, there has to be a two-way contribution to call it a relationship.
I too had never fully connected what that meant, and as I examined this new found ideation, I reflected on what my parts in other relationships look like, and I caught something I had never perceived before about my relationship with God:
Calling the bond between me and God a relationship is not just a way to make it appear more personal, or effortless. In fact, calling it a relationship implies more need for scrupulousness than defining it as commission of some religion. Viewing this restored bond as more than just salvation from some far off hell, or a duty to honor some far off God, suddenly engages more responsibility on my part than just saying, yeah, I believe in God. It's no longer about what I have to do, or what I shouldn't do. It's about choosing to participate in this relationship because I long for the results. I yearn for more of God, I want to know him, the same way I want to get to know my friends. That's what it's all about.
As I learn more about others, I learn more about myself. When I see the things in other people that I admire or dislike, I also discover things about myself worth keeping, the things I am willing to stand up for, and also the things I need to compromise for someone else's sake. I appreciate and value certain people enough to change, others I don't, or else it takes time. Likewise, as I get to know God more and more, I am constantly being shown exactly what about myself I can tolerate in his presence, and what things I need to seriously extricate from my life. He is the single most important thing about my life, and he is the only one who could ever cause me to genuinely apply the guidelines of living as his child to my life.
Some people find their significance in what their lifetime on this earth will bring them--whether it be looks, talents, relationships, careers, intelligence, money, or politics, and the like--which I once could have done as well. But I can no longer consider these things the most opulent options for bringing my life significance. With only 22 years worth of experiencing people, and I have only experienced a small number of various relationships and friendships in my short lifetime, I am already unsatisfied by the temporal situation that consists of trying to please and be pleased. There is a constant feeling that we're owed something, and while I know my journey with this part of life is not complete, not hardly, it is so unfulfilling at times. Recently though, I have been feeling a dire appreciation for the process of knowing others. Even more importantly, the process of knowing God. I have discovered His magnificence, and I have discovered who I am allowed to be because of his grace in me. This is why I seek to be different. It's what gives me a reason to try, and gives me the ability to succeed in genuinely loving others.
I am so very blessed, and so very happy with my life. Not because my life is anything exceptional (because it's definitely not), but because I am at peace in my Father's love. I am not seeking some form of comfort because in him I have comfort that is almost burdensome to attempt feeling, because it is so overwhelmingly complete.
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