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Sunday, July 19, 2020

A reading of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, and a thought

Reading "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis has been an experience surpassing many of my reading experiences.  So many thought provoking moments when I just basically finish a paragraph and find myself looking into space in astonishment...or deep reflection...or just plain awe.  One such time was in the chapter called, "Two Notes".  If any of my few readers have read "Mere Christianity" you will probably also know that he would go back and show further thought on a previous chapter to  either clarify his reason for his intent or whatever.   Here is one of those instances.

And I quote:   
"I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me - which of these two errors is the worse.  That is the devil getting at us.  He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites.  And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse.  You see why, of course?  He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.  But do not let us be fooled.  We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.  We have no other concern than that with either of them."

Wow, again very thought provoking.  Errors, or evils, in the world abound.  We have same-sex marriage and cohabitation outside of marriage with opposite sexes.  We have extramarital affairs and emotional affairs, we have cold-blooded murder and abortion (which is also cold-blooded), oh the list just goes on!  We have tended to go for the "least offensive" and well actually we have on some things gone on to be accepting of both though the years.

Is there anyway to go backwards from here?  Can we backup this train and review the basics of our existence with God's natural law, and what is fruitful and natural and what is not?  What is full of grace and mercy and what is not?  What is constructive and what is destructive?

There is more pain and anger in our world today than ever before, I would venture to say.  And I would say that it is all due to these errors of which C.S. Lewis is talking about.  It seems too, that many cannot see the forest for the trees in these evils.

 

1 comment:

  1. We have a crass man who fights against abortion and a kind man who will deliver abortion on demand to the world.

    An interesting way of viewing it.

    ReplyDelete