Pain

Pain is something with which I have very little firsthand experience. I have seen quite a bit of it thought through my life. In this last year alone I have been to more funerals than I care to count. However while these people may have been important to the people around me I have for the most part remained emotionless through all of them. I try to be supportive of my friends and family who have lost those close to them but I honestly cannot relate. The closest I have come to and I hate to say it this way was when a classmate of mine hung himself when I was in sixth grade. This last year I saw what pain looked like when the person who was hands down the smartest person in my entire school, who sat at my table every day in a science class five years ahead of other people his age decided one day on the way to school to lay down in front of a train. Even then I didn’t feel anything until I shook his parents’ hands. I have no good advice here no overarching message I leave that duty to Lewis who actually understood what pain meant. I feel lucky that at this point in my life I have not yet had to deal with any true pain physical or emotional however what I will remember though is this when I do have something happen in my life as is inevitable I will remember to turn to God and remember that he works in all things for the good of those who love him. This is easy to say now but when the time comes I will remember as should we all.

Shattered Glass

If there was one thing that struck me about this movie it was the sheer arrogance of the main character Stephen Glass. At the very beginning of the movie he starts by saying “There are so many show-offs in journalism. So many braggarts and jerks. They are always selling, always working the room, always trying to make themselves look hotter than they actually are. The good news is, reporters like that make it easy to distinguish yourself. If you're even a little bit humble, a little self-effacing or solicitous, you stand out.” Now while this makes him a hypocrite due to just how audacious of an act publishing fake articles is. I see this in another way. In my opinion this is sound advice coming from one of the greatest actors of all time. Stephan Glass and I mean the real one at least in my opinion does not see that he ever did anything wrong. You can call him prideful however this does not even begin to scratch the surface of what he is. Years after it was brought to light that he fabricated parts or entire stories in order to make them seem more interesting he published a fictional book about the events that this movie is showing. I can tell you that if this act doesn’t show what he truly is than nothing will. He went on television and talked about how he thought that he must stop doing this every time but didn’t. However can we believe anything that comes out of his mouth? I know this is supposed to be a review of the movie however I think that the actions in the life of the person on which it was based almost speak louder. In any event what I got out of this is that we should watch our pride so that it does not turn into an arrogance that believes that anything it does is right and while he may be an amazing liar, actor, and hypocrite I think the advice that his character gives us at the beginning of the movie still stands. We can distinguish ourselves through our humility but in our case we should not let the merely be a ruse but how we live our lives.

Integrative Essay

In all honesty I have no idea what to write on. I have really not been looking forward to writing this paper since the class first started. I have always had problems with writing papers on as broad of topics as this as long as I have had to write papers. As you can tell from my torrent of complaints and participation in class, or lack thereof, there are times where I would rather have my education forced upon me like a dictatorship. However Lewis would have serious problems with this. As he said in Our English Syllabus on the subject of education “Do not tell me that you would sooner have a nice composite menu of dishes from half the world drawn up for you. You are too old for that. It is time you learned to wrestle with nature for yourself. And whom will you trust to draw up the menu? How do you know that in that very river which I would exclude as poisonous the fish you specially want, the undiscovered fish, is waiting? And you would never find it if you let us select.” Which I take to mean that Lewis wants me to just suck it up and put these childish impulses to gravitate towards whatever is easiest and come up with a legitimate introduction to my paper instead of this debauchery that tries to trick readers into thinking that they have just been given all of the things necessary to the beginning of a paper such as a background, thesis, lack of I statements (oops), and set of instructions on where all of this is going two or three pages from now so that they can simply skip ahead to the conclusion and still know what happened in the middle. While I would hate to spoil the plot of this masterfully crafted piece, a main point or at least a statement of purpose or intent at the beginning seems a little less out of my reach. What I hope to achieve here is not anything of great consequence but to simply examine the many works of CS Lewis in the context of the main themes that were discussed in Engaging God’s World by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

The first step of this in my opinion is looking at what themes were brought up by Plantinga so that we know the context in which we are viewing Lewis’s work. In the five chapters of his book Plantinga covers longing and hope, creation, the fall, redemption, and vocation. Being that these five topics basically encompass everything in the entire world, I think that it is safe to move on and view Lewis’s works as they were intended: dealing with the issues of the world. The first and foremost of these issues in my mind in looking at our world are the issues of Bulverism and Perspective.

Bulverism is something I think that each and every one of us can relate to. Not only have we all seen it I think that all of us have been guilty of it at some point. Bulverism for those of you who may be reading this and are unfamiliar with this term is the practice during an argument of assuming that your opponent is wrong without showing why and attacking them personally instead of their argument. While it’s easy to pass this off as something that is wrong with politics today or some other far away argument that fails to affect us in the slightest, it is something that we are faced with on a much more personal level on what is at least for me an almost daily basis. I personally know at least four people whose unparalleled egos prevent them from ever believing even for a moment that they could be wrong about anything. Logical arguments that clearly explain what points of their argument is incorrect do not reach them. Even the ones that are capable of argument after they have been confronted refuse to hear what you have to say. While I understand that on some issues such as our faiths we cannot be ready and able to compromise at any moment however we should be at least able to listen to what it is that the other side is trying to say, or in other words be willing to look at it from another perspective.

Lewis in his essay Meditation in a Toolshed talks about how we have to look at everything from multiple perspectives in order to see the entire picture. He says “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are very different experiences.” He goes on to ask which experience is the true one, looking at or along. He resolves this matter quite finally when he states that in order to obtain an entire view of something you must look at both sides of it. This is just as true I think for arguments as it is for sun beams. We must be willing to see things from every side and make our decisions based on our feelings (along) about the objective view of every other view (at). I heard somewhere that the best way to convince people that you are correct is to concede something to your opponent, and while this may seem like some sort of a trick I see it as a step towards understanding. This is because by conceding something we are acknowledging that our opponent is correct about something and if this is true than there may be other things on which we can agree.

This brings me to my final point we can despite all of the things that divide us, sometimes for very important reasons (see my previous entry my humble and honest opinion a correction to my blog on Mere Christianity), we still agree on some points. In the preface to mere Christianity Lewis talks about how in order to make sure that his book about the common ground on which all Christians stand regardless of denomination was not just particular to himself or his beliefs he ran it past members of four different denominations to see what they thought, “Otherwise all five of us were agreed. I did not have the remaining books similarly 'vetted' because in them, though differences might arise among Christians, these would be differences between individuals or schools of thought, not between denominations. So far as I can judge from reviews and from the numerous letters written to me, the book, however faulty in other respects, did at least succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or 'mere' Christianity.” If the churches whose leaders are represented in this grouping of people Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic could all agree on the same basic common ground then I think that despite my natural tendency towards pessimism I think that there is hope for mankind however I would point out that this hope is but a sliver.

At this point you must be asking yourself two questions one how did I make it through all of that (supposing you read it instead of skipping ahead as was advocated in the first paragraph as I recall) and secondly how does all of this mumbo jumbo laced with Lewis quotes all relate back to the themes mentioned at the beginning. I would think that this should be fairly obvious. If there is any one theme that is the focus of this essay I should think that it is longing and hope. The majority of main things I have talked about throughout this paper have been negative. This is exactly why hope is so important though even a sliver can be enough. As Plantinga said when speaking about Peter and Pentecost “Here, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, one man’s hope spreads out to cover all humankind” One man and all of humanity. There is a lot of negativity in this world I have talked about only a small portion of it and have a great deal more built up inside of me alone however with just the small hope that we can find some common ground and come together we can as Christians or even humans begin to build the kingdom of God and this is our vocation.






Works Cited

Lewis, Clive S. Bulverism. Print.
Lewis, Clive S. Meditation in a Toolshed. Print.
Lewis, Clive S. Mere Christianity. Print.
Lewis, Clive S. Our English Syllabus. Print.
Plantinga, Cornelius. Engaging God's World A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Boston: Wm. B. Eerdmans Company, 2002. Print.

Man or Rabbit

Can someone lead a good life without being a Christian? While I will not be stating the full extent of my real opinion on this matter I think that Lewis answered this best. “But the man who asks me, 'Can't I lead a good life without believing in Christianity?' is clearly not in the same position. If he hadn't heard of Christianity he would not be asking this question. If, having heard of it, and having seriously considered it, he had decided that it was untrue, and then once more he would not be asking the question. The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by no means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, 'Need I bother about it? Mayn't I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being "good"?” Lewis states here that this is not the question that these men are asking and what they want to know is if they really have to go out of their way for this whole God thing. The answer as Lewis quite plainly puts it is yes, yes you do. While he points out there is what he would call good people who had never heard of Christianity he would state that the key difference between them and the people asking the main question here is that these people have heard of it and just like every other human out there want to know how lazy they can be. So basically according to Lewis if you have heard of Christianity it is a prerequisite for leading a good life.

Plantinga Ch 5 "Your Kingdom Come"

“Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” These are words which every Christian either has prayed or should have prayed at some point in their life. However as Pantinga points out people who are doing fine don’t really want the kingdom of God they would be fine to live as they are. The way he puts it “Your kingdom come … but not right away” This is something that while I realize is not the main point of the entire article is something that struck me particularily. This is something I am guilty of myself though more recently the events of my life have led me to be praying for God’s will to be done in my life much more often. Much like Plantinga but on a personal less dramatic but still true level I find that Christianity is something that grows stronger when it is under attack. Plantinga talks about slavery and crimes, while I am only talking about having a bad year I think that both have the potential to bring people closer to God. One thing I recommend if you ever are ever in doubt about your faith look at where it is that you turn when things get rough. If you see that you turn to God you can in my opinion see this as a very good thing. If you are able to see that you turn elsewhere I still think that this is good as if you are able to notice this you still have a chance at changing it.

The Inner Ring

Inner rings are small exclusive groups of people that not just anyone can enter. These form for the most part without even our knowledge. This happens whenever people are brought together whether it is our families, the floor we live on in our dorm, people we know at work, or even street gangs, all of us are in an infinite number of rings and while I say infinite this does not stop this number from increasing through or lives. While many of these rings are good such as our families there are many out there that cause good people (a term I use lightly) to do bad things. This is especially prevalent in the last of the four groups I listed earlier however there are many groups that require an initiation which is not always harmless. Evil however is not limited to these groups whose intent is evil. Even in our families there can be evil as when something bad happens sides are drawn in accordance with our loyalties to the rings within the generic ring of our family.

One other thing I would like to cover is the idea of exclusivity. As Lewis points out “Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.” In another quote he states that “But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it.” He also points out at one point how because entrance was not easy for us into many of these inner rings we make sure that entrance is not easy for anyone else who comes after us. Hence initiations; however there is a time when exclusivity or being closed to new members entirely is a good thing. This is in relation to our families. We should be discerning in who we let in though in many cases it is not up to us who gets let in there however as the Ribeiros pointed out there is one ring that should not increase in members after it is formed and that is marriage I feel that this is fairly self explanatory so I will leave it at that. In any event we should be careful about just what rings we become a part of and what happens as a result of being in those rings.

Eros

Honestly this is another one of those blogs that isn’t going to be so easy to write. Since I am so obviously set up towards failure anyway it would appear that I don’t really have anything to lose so I should stop rambling on and on and start writing about Eros.

Eros is defined by Lewis as the love between a man and a woman. Lewis is quite specific about this love making sure to make the distinctions between it seeking pleasure, and falling in love. As far as seeking pleasure he makes several analogies the most striking of which I thought was the one about how when a person is finished smoking a cigarette they throw the wrapper and even the cigarette itself away. As you can probably guess or more accurately know as you are all reading his work with me and most of you blogging on the subject yourselves this is not what Lewis is talking about when he is talking about Eros.

However falling in love is a different story. According to how Lewis talks about it falling in love is involved in Eros and is even an important part of it however it in and of itself is not Eros. While I cannot remember who said this be it Lewis or someone in class they said that falling in love is like diving into a pool after the initial dive you have to start swimming or else it wont work. It is the combination between these two that Lewis is talking about. Both the initial dive and the work that comes after it, and something that a lot of people forget especially in America as I said in my last post is that you do have to work for the great things in life and if you rely on the dive alone what you have won’t last long.