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.

Plantinga Ch 4 Redemption

In chapter 4 Plantinga talks about reforming all things and while I would use a different word than reform as it is my opinion that when he uses the word reform in this book it sometimes implies a little more than its dictionary definition. In any event we are in agreement this world has to change but how to go about it. There are many ways to get change in this world. However many of these pathways are closed to us because of the end result for which we are aiming along with the fact that God does not justify anything least of all the end by the means so what do we do? We work hard in our fields against the overwhelming adversity with which we are faced. Simply living our lives as Christians is not supposed to be easy and changing the world under such circumstances is something that seems nearly impossible. I should point out that I use the word nearly because I think that it is something that can be done. This is because dispite the overwhelming adversity it just so happens that we have an almighty, omnipotent being on our side who created the world. If we think that even for a moment that we cannot with his help make the world a better place then obviously we need to go and strengthen our beliefs. Because the God that I believe in can do anything except create a rock so large he cannot lift it, be unholy, or unjust and in my opinion if these few things are the only things he can’t do I think that a better world us much closer than we think.

Learning during wartime

Let me make a change of pace and start this blog with a quote “The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord". This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow. We are members of one body, but differentiated members, each with his own vocation. A man's upbringing, his talents, his circumstances, are usually a tolerable index of his vocation. If our parents have sent us to Oxford, if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life.” While this may be a bit of a long excerpt to take from Lewis’s sermon I think that this is the heart of his argument. He clearly states that everyone has their own natural God given talents and they are all equally important to his kingdom so long as they are done for the lord. If there is one thing that I think Calvin has been good about it is emphasizing this point. We don’t all have to be preachers and while we should all be missionaries not all of us have to go off and translate the bible into languages that have never been written. What we should do however is let the light of god shine through us in each of our fields so that we may make greater the kingdom of heaven. In one of the Screwtape letters Screwtape wants his nephew to make his patient Christian and something in order to weaken him. However in this instance by being Christian and an engineer, or Christian and a doctor or, Christian and a CNC machine operator, or Christian and a janitor we can be stronger and bring others to Christ.

My humble and honest opinion: a correction to my blog on Mere Christianity

As beautiful of a concept as uniting the Christians under one banner is I feel that I have not been honest in conveying my true opinion. In truth there is a reason that the Christians are separated as they are and if you look to history you will see that in many cases this is because people in a church decided that what the church was doing was wrong. The Lutherans were founded because of the fact that Martin Luther did not believe that the Catholic Church was correct in raising money by selling get out of hell and purgatory free cards to its members for their loved ones who had died. On top of this while we should be praying for each other and realize that we are all Christians we should not unify the church as I had said earlier while I was caught up in the moment. Any attempt to unify ourselves would lead to compromise and while in the world it is a better alternative to fighting our faith or rather the word of God is not something that we should change just to make others happy. We are not here to agree with the world or be loved by it we are here to be its salt its guiding light leading the world towards what is righteous. Things that the world views as being ok are not in many cases things we should agree on. One of the things that God says though is that we should love the sinner and hate the sin. In my church I have seen people who were members of the church for many years confronted about sin when they refused to repent they were asked to leave until they could. In my personal opinion allowing church membership to those in sin without first having them repent of it is wrong. This is not to say I do not think that we should reach out to them or show them the love of God. That is exactly what we should do. However we should not condone their sin. We are not here to judge that is God’s job we are here to spread God’s love and will to the Earth. We are divided for a reason, because throughout history we have watched churches do things that we believed God did not approve of and if you ever have a question or a doubt about something that your church is doing or a direction it is going in go back to the source the word of God and see what it says about the manner. If the action of said Church goes against the word of God I would highly recommend that you find yourself a different church. My family has done this twice since I have been born and while we found bits of truth in every church along the way and appreciate them for guiding us to where we are now we also realize that man is fallible and any church made by men is fallible, but God is not and so long as you trust in God he will lead you to the truth.

The Poison of Subjectivism

Before I get too far let me first state that I do not pretend to understand everything that Lewis was getting at in this essay. What I do claim however is that I do understand some of the dangers that he is warning us about in this essay. The main thing Lewis warns us about is that by making our morals something we can look at subjectively we make them something that can be altered on our whims. He uses the Nazis as an example stating that they redefined justice as what was best for the Third Reich and I think all of us can see why what happened there can be viewed as dangerous. He also says that on entirely different levels this is impossible because we cannot measure or morals against something that changes with them we need a single solid unchanging universal measuring stick which he believes all of humanity has already. Weather we believe this or not it can be seen everywhere as all people when in violation of this un written code either justify their actions or try and think of a reason why the rules should not apply to them, and believe me if there is something that persists in human nature it is that. Lewis also warns us about the danger of throwing away all of the old morals and substituting new ones he says that once you throw away all of the old morals whatever justification you used to do so also prevents the reinsertion of new ones. He says that “This whole attempt to jettison traditional values as something subjective and to substitute a new scheme of values for them is wrong. It is like trying to lift yourself by your own coat collar.” Which although is something interesting to act out in public is not something that is physically possible. In short we cannot abandon our morals and substitute new ones based on evidence both in the past and the fact that any attempt to do so is based entirely on circular reasoning.

The nature of Evil

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the nature of evil. While in most cases evil is something too abstract to define accurately such as darkness which can only be described as the absence of light it is something that everyone on earth knows exists. However unlike darkness (at least to my knowledge) evil is something that can be defined. As Plantinga says evil is the corruption of something good. You will notice that this is true as you look through the bible for examples of the devil at work. You will find that in every example where the devil is personally involved such as the temptation of Eve and the attempted temptation of Jesus that every lie that the devil tells has some truth mixed in it. Almost anyone will tell you that the most effective way to lie is to mix the truth in with the fabrication. Evil follows the pattern of its devices. Just like lies evil is something that stems mainly from something that is good and makes a simple modification to it that causes it to no longer be good especially when these things are corruptions of our basic human needs. Anger and justice are converted into wrath and revenge, love and sex are transformed into lust and adultery, the need for food becomes gluttony, truth with exceptions or when altered becomes lies, and the list goes on. However being that this is not the main point I will not beat this dead horse any longer. To sum everything up we must watch everything that we do as the line between good and evil may be even thinner than we might have ever thought in the past. Our actions even if well intended may become evil and despite the many ways in which we justify our evil acts as acceptable, necessary, or even good it does not mean that they are so the only thing I can say is that yet again we must remain vigilant.

Mere Chrisianity

First let me say that while I know that this book has been out for quite some time I still must say that it’s about time. We Christians draw up so many barriers between the different sects if you will that we do not even see others who believe the same basic things that we do as our brothers. I think that we need to realize that while there are many things that we can disagree on some of them more important than others that we should see each other not as enemies nor even as competitors necessarily but like a nation of people such as America we all or at least the majority believe in the constitution however every single one of us has different views of the issues within our nation.

Lewis says this in infinitely more eloquent terms as he compares Christianity to a hallway and every different denomination as a room branching off from it. He says that “even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must he asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular doorkeeper? When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still In the hall. If they are wrong they need. your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.” This I believe is important to point out even though we are all Christian we are not all necessarily correct but that we should pray for them and treat them with respect as even if the room they are in has things that are not quite right about it that room is still connected to the hallway and they still have a basic set of beliefs that on some level matches with our own and we should in love try and correct them where they have been lead astray and keep an open mind to others who attempt to do the same for us so that we all might one day in Christ be one unified Christian front.

Dear Uncle Screwtape

The Screwtape letters have been something that I have had at least some interest in reading since I first learned of their existence. This is mainly because of what a unique concept they are based on instead of simply giving advice through example after example like so many writers Lewis uses fictional demons that are tasked with destroying the faith of believers. He does this in the form of letters of correspondence between Wormwood a young demon with his first victim and his older more experienced uncle Screwtape who is giving practical advice on how to destroy a man’s faith. However that is quite enough as everyone who is reading this knows that much already.

This particular letter deals with how to maintain the descent into sin. Screwtape states that a gradual descent is best as the victim won’t even notice what is happening if this approach is correctly implemented. Much like another analogy I have heard where a frog is tossed into a pan of boiling water and it jumps out but when it starts in warm water that is slowly heated it does not realize the danger it is in as it has slowly adjusted itself to the temperature. I think that as this analogy which depending on which movie you choose to watch you may see again applies to more than just a descent into sin but many other problems in life I think it proves just how effective of a technique it is and that we should always be wary of it and more importantly our actions and set of morals. This is not something that is easy to guard against because as is its nature it is a stealth attack, however by conversing with the enemy of these demons on a regular basis both in prayer and via his word we can at least fight back so long as we remain vigilant and it is my personal experience having gone down what I believe is this very same path that we sometimes need a dramatic wakeup call so when or if something happens look at who you turn to if it is God then you are in my opinion at least on the path to recovery.

Creation Plantinga Ch 2

Almost everyone in the developed world has heard Genesis 1:1 in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. A question I have always wondered about not in real depth but in the back of my mind is why? Why did God create the Heavens and the Earth I mean I don’t dislike this fact entirely but I cannot help but wonder why he did? If we know anything about God it is that he does not need anything. We also know that there is infinity of time on both sides of our world (an arrogant term to begin with). This is a question that as I have already stated I had thought about but there never seemed to be an answer that made sense. Though if there is one thing I am glad for in this world it is that there are people cleverer than I in these different areas of study who write down what they find so that we laymen may understand the universe without dedicating our lives to its study as they have. Plantinga writes that “creation is neither a necessity nor an accident. Instead, given God’s interior life that overflows with regard for others, we might say that creation is an act fitting for God.” He also said that and this is the main point that “Creation is a way for God to spend himself” I could not ever have possibly imagined that the entire reason for everything was so simple. God is love and it was his will that he be able to spread that love to others so he created them. He did not need to do this he simply willed it. I had known the words God is love and the most famous verse that every child in Sunday school must at some point memorize for God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not parish but have eternal life. I knew that God’s love was so great that it was beyond human comprehension but I had never realized just what that meant and I believe now that this outlook on creation gives me a better understanding of just who God is and just how great of love he has.

The Weight Of Glory

One quote from this reading stood out to me above all the others. Well in all honesty the word all is a tad strong but when CS Lewis stated that “Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself;” I realized that I much like Mr. Lewis had been mistaken this entire time about the nature of humility. I had always assumed that since pride is considered a sin that the only natural opposite of that would be humility which I have always assumed to be synonymous with modesty. However I am now realizing that pride is considered a sin depending on the context in which it is placed and once again for someone who sees the world in black and white I can talk about nothing except that the gray area is correct. I find that it is as Jesus said that we must make ourselves like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. I had heard this before but it was not until I had heard the revelation that dawned upon Lewis that I truly understood what this meant. ““Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” With that, a good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child—not in a conceited child, but in a good child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either, but even in a dog or a horse. Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years. prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator.”” I now know that humility is to have pride in the work you have put into something but only to a point. There is a line where pride does become a sin but so long as we think of it like a child going to its parents proud of something it had done we shall continue to have the correct type that is in reality the true form of humility, one that is both human and good.

When it comes to Cows versus Humans I choose Minotaurs

For the most part I have agreed with almost everything CS Lewis has said in the excerpts we have read in class up to this point however on his point about vocational training I cannot disagree more. While I do believe that learning is important and that everyone should have some degree of education outside of their normal field we should not limit ourselves entirely to as Lewis would call it leisurely exercises of thought. One example from my own life is a man who went to college for reasons unknown to me who now is one of the only people in the factory in which I work to have a college degree. While he maintains that he is smarter than everyone else who works there he is viewed as one of the most foolish. This is because while he may be moderately versed in history (a subject that the non human cattle who work with him have stumped him on before) he utterly lacks the common sense of the world which has made him a target of ridicule. He may have become a learned man but in the process he sacrificed everything that one needs to operate outside of the leisurely circles in which Lewis’s humans reside. Instead I would yet again propose a happy medium between the two which in the information age is something that is not difficult to achieve. Almost everyone at least in this nation has instant access to nearly infinite amounts of information. While Lewis would maintain that this type of information gathering would be fairly useless, or trivial. I would agree. I believe that educational system should be used primarily as a means to introduce the masses to literature and the great leisurely pursuits but more as a supplement and leave the level of this type of education up to the individual interests of the person while having vocational training not seen as a negative but a positive and Lewis’s style of learning as a supplement to it so as to ensure that we do not end up with a society of well educated people who are useless in the real world nor a society where everyone works and no one thinks. Once again the middle ground is the only rational ground on which to stand.

Plantinga Chapter 1

In A Separate Peace there is a part where the main character as Plantinga put it “would wake up each morning with a rush of feeling so profound that it overwhelmed him”. He also said that a great many people would if pushed claim that they had felt something similar. I am not one of those people and Longing is something that is nothing but an abstract concept to me that I understand in meaning but not practically though this I fairly obvious I feel as I have used the word practically to describe it. Hope I feel a bit more confidence all be it not much in talking about because I believe that every human being has hoped for something. Especially as hope is a much wider and more encompassing term. It can range from hoping for good weather the next day to hoping for a day when all violence ends. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. However this definition is far too bland to encompass all that hope is, and unfortunately since I am incapable of describing a mere element or ingredient as it was eloquently put by Plantinga I cannot hope (ah ha pun) to put a definition on this either. These two things that I am not capable of describing or understanding are two of the most important elements of human life. We must long and hope for things or else there is no point to do anything. All things we do in life are towards some goal whether it is spoken or not and if we are to be good Christians then the most important thing we can do is long for God.

A right to Happiness?

I would like to be as straightforward as I possibly can be; we have no right to happiness. Now before I am verbally assaulted by the one or two people who read my last post I should clarify what I mean. We have no right to happiness. Now before I am verbally assaulted by the one or two people who actually read this I should clarify what I mean by this. We can debate the true meaning of happiness and joy all day long however this is not the focus of my argument. My argument focuses on the meaning of the word right. If you look up the word right in a dictionary one of the first things you would see is something about a direction relative to the person who is defining it, a little further down the list it would say that a right is that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles, etc. It is based on this the fact that a right is something guaranteed without fail to an individual. While some of our rights are under attack last I checked most of them were still intact especially the one that says we have the right to peruse happiness. Now everyone who is reading this already knows what that means but I would point out that this right is conditional and not infinite. Firstly it guarantees everyone’s right to work towards their own happiness. Secondly when it was written it was written with certain assumptions in place around it these are as follows, one: so long as the pursuit of happiness falls within all legal constraints, and two: so long as the pursuit of happiness does not encroach on or prevent another from their own pursuit of happiness. While this argument is fairly earthly or more accurately American something similar can be said of God. If you will notice in God’s word it clearly states that following him will not make one’s life better but instead we should be prepared for an even tougher life as a result of following him. If you look through the bible you will find this is clearly illustrated. So without happiness what do we have? Joy and that is something that although you can debate the meaning of it is something that we do have a right to or more accurately it is something we have been guaranteed.

Bulverism

Somewhere in the midst of Lewis’s essay on Bulverism he makes a comment about how the modern method of argument is to and I quote “assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly.” However the part that I find interesting is that there is a note that has been added in stating that the essay was written in 1941. As casual of a note as this might be I think that it is sheer arrogance on our part to assume that this “modern method” is a thing of the past which we have left behind us. I believe that if you read the blogs of other students as I have no one truly believes that this is something that we have left in 1941. In the people in our class who I have read use the same all be it more specific examples as CS Lewis about being in every political debate that they have ever seen. I must agree with my comrades in blog nothing has changed in debate or the political world (not exactly true cough WWII cough) since 1941 and politics at least in America is nothing more than a contest of whose wife looks prettier on television. There are studies out there that prove since the invention of television voters have chosen the president based on the looks of him or his wife instead of on their values. Along these same lines I came across a man on the street study during this previous election where a series of voters who had stated that they would be voting for Obama were asked a series of questions. The questions were something like is it (in reference to are you voting for him) his strong stances against gun control, abortion, his decision to stay in the war until we have won, or his choice of Sarah Palin as his vice president that made you want to vote for him, and most if not all of the people shown did not recognize that none of those things were his policies but those of his opponent. Though as I have gotten away from it my point is this just like in 1941 people do not listen to the actual argument anymore nor do they have actual arguments but instead attack the other side and hope that their voice is last or loudest. Finally we should not assume that whatever our way is better than the way of the past simply because it is newer if we do that we are bound simply to keep on repeating mistakes without moving forward.

Toolshed CS Lewis

While it is fairly easy to simply say that I agree with CS Lewis on this point that you have to look at everything from multiple perspectives in order to see the entire picture in any situation it does not make for a very interesting blog posting. Unfortunately though I cannot disagree with him on this point as I had already been thinking this way before hearing him say it in a way that I could not describe with equal eloquence; though I must confess that my own thought process on the matter was not nearly as complex as Lewis’s outlook and armed with his in addition to my own or in other words two perspectives on the matter (not quite what he had in mind when writing this I’m sure) I can comment on it with a much greater authority than previously possible. One point I might add however to what Lewis wrote is that this applies not only to the large questions of life and what one experiences versus what one sees but that it also apples to the very small instances with day to day problems as well. Not to say that I do not understand why he did not include this point as I think given the context it makes sense to omit it as it would distract from the main point he was trying to make however I see it as something I can mention when talking about it as here there is no such profound message just someone rambling on and hoping that there blog is around two or three hundred words by about this point. Since this is the case I will once again say that I do agree with Mr. Lewis and that I wish I could have had something more profound to say with the time given to me in this blog.