,

Being Along the Way, the main point

2009-05-22T18:12:00.001-04:00

PART III We continue where we left off. The last two entries should be read, if you want to pick up where we left off.

"So let’s come back from the rabbit trail. I want to be fully present in life. I want to be. How? I keep coming back to Jesus’ command to abide in Him. So I’m going to read some Scripture but let’s do something before that. I learned a way to read Scripture as I was reading Passport by Tim Davidson.

"Let's take a moment and I want you to engage your imaginations. I want you to image yourself as a disciple of Jesus as I lead you through this sort of 'guided meditation' on the Passover celebration before Jesus went to the cross." The sun is setting on a cool spring evening. You are with your close companions. You gather in a large upper room. A traditional feast is prepared for you all. A feast you’ve had before many times growing up. It’s like any good holiday celebration. There is much commotion going on outside as thousands of people celebrate the very same thing. The smell of fresh cooked bread fills the room. Though you’ve celebrated this festival before, this time it is different. There is something in the air tonight. It is like all of heaven is watching your small group. Every word being spoken is going to impact all of history.

Though this is a uniquely special night your heart is mixed with feelings. The ONE you and your companions have followed faithfully has been longing to have this feast with you. Yet your heart is filled with anxiety and your mind confused. The ONE you’ve put all your hope in seems troubled. He is talking about dying, rather than living and becoming King like you had hoped. The Master whom you love is talking about going to a place where you will not be able to go to for awhile. You ask “Where?” “Why?” He gives You words of hope. Firm and true. This is not the end, but the beginning though you can’t see it now, you will soon, He says. The Teacher says to you and the group that He loves you and He is going to prepare a place for you all. He promises to come back. You don’t understand why he should leave in the first place. “How will we survive without You being here?” you wonder. “I will send the Helper. He will guide you and strengthen you,” The Teacher replies. He keeps talking about love. “Love me and love one another,” He commands. Your heart is heavy. Your mind is blurry.

Then Jesus says, 3 SLIDES

Jesus the True Vine

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. ²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. ³You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and becomemy disciples. ⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servantsany longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Now part of the exercise is to read it slow.

What does our Lord mean when He says Remain in me? When I ask questions like this I tend to first start from an individual context rather than a communal one probably because of the individualism we grow up with.

Remaining in Him certainly means talking, crying, listening to Him, having alone time with Him, worshipping Him, being obedient to His active voice, and reading the Scriptures. What else? Jesus was talking to a small group-community. In the center of this abiding command, Jesus continues to talk about love, loving one another. He commands the disciples to love one another over and over again. Abiding means loving one another. Serving one another and serving the world. The life of this abiding community in Christ was an active one. One of a heart for people, especially the least, last and the lost.

This whole abiding dialogue that Jesus is having has an ancient tone to it doesn’t it? It is like what is happening is a new thing in one sense but not new an another. What do I mean? Along time ago humanity did abide fully with God and He with them. We got our worth, love, and purpose from Him. Then we chose independence from Him. We rebelled. As a result of our choice to do things our own way we were alienated from God and each other. Throughout history God has been saying that He loves the world so much that He wants to abide with us again. We see His desire for this in the Last Supper as Jesus who is God says abide in me and me in You. God has made a way through Jesus to rejoin us back to Him. In a nutshell what it means to Remain in Jesus means death to my independence. Abiding in Christ means death to our independence and our desire for god-like control over our life and the lives of others. Jesus is saying choose dependence not independence from me.

But what does this all have to do with my desire to want to be fully present in life, to be? EVERYTHING. Abiding in the source of life and love, the ONE who is being, the One who created it all, the One who provides, has everything to do with living in the present fully. I will continue to remain the same anxiety filled trying to find my worth in accomplishments type of person if I abide in myself rather than in Jesus. I don’t like the results of abiding in myself. I don’t like the fruit of it. Abiding in myself hurts people and destroys me. But the fruit that Jesus desires us to bear from abiding in Him is going to last forever. That’s what I want! When we abide in Jesus we become like Him. That’s what I want! Don’t you?

I want to be fully present in this life along the way. I want to abide. I want to be. And when I look into the future or the past let it be because I am fully living in the present right now. And when I plan ahead may it be because wisdom is calling me to do so not anxiety. When I do stuff may it be not because I need it to feel worthy but because I am simply abiding in Him and His people.

May we not miss out on the present any longer worrying about the near future, or dwelling on the past. Rather may we discover the beauty, joy, and pain of daily abiding in Christ and with His people. May we discover what it means to abide in Him and to be today as we go on this journey of life along the way."

Where am I getting my worth from?

2009-05-09T11:02:00.004-04:00

So picking up where we left last time (You'll need to probably read April 25th blog, at least the part in the maroon red). Again below is me sharing what began to happen to me last spring and this whole idea of living in the Present, rather than constantly anxious about the future or dwelling on the past.

"This part of my journey that I’m sharing with you began back in early April. I was given a book to read called Ministering Cross-Culturally by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter. It was given to me by a guy from the Fort Collins Vineyard to help me prepare for the Jordan trip. This book is not just for those who go on foreign missions but for anyone wanting to grow. It has deeply rocked me to the core. It has convicted me of some of my unhealthy cultural tendencies and has invited the Lord to change me.

So what’s going on with me? Where is my mind much of the time? Why do I constantly worry about getting the next objective done and often see people as tasks? Why am I not fully present many times? Sherwood talks about how generally speaking Americans are task oriented people. Sherwood says on page 79 “Individuals who are task oriented find satisfaction in reaching their objectives and completing their projects. Their lives are motivated and directed by an unending succession of objectives. Frequently they aspire to complete a greater number of tasks than is humanly possible in the time they allocate; as a result, their lives take on a frenetic pace filled with activities. Many become workaholics, allowing tasks to so dominate their lives that other people are viewed as merely a part of their work schedule.” My life often takes this ‘frenetic pace,’ with an unending succession of objectives. It gets tiring.

Also I learned from Sherwood that the way we see time in this culture affects me often not being fully present in the moment. If I’m late five minutes for something I get upset. Or if someone else is late. I see time as something I am constantly losing. So if someone is taking too long I get very impatient. You’re messing with my TIME!! What is most saddening about my condition is I realized through this book that I find my worth often in how productive I am. How many objectives did I accomplish today? If I don’t accomplish a high amount I feel like I’ve FAILED. Sad huh? That’s why it is so important to understand where we get our worth from. That’s why it is important to take Sabbath regularly to remind ourselves that we are not machines and that God loves us, and places worth on us simply because we exist.

Where are we getting our worth from? I’ve started many of my days recently asking God this question out loud. “Do You love me?” Now you may say ‘Of course the answer is yes.” We could probably quote some verses from the Bible. Yes it is a FACT that God loves us. Why do we tend to turn the Bible into a fact sheet, into a dead noun? Isn’t it alive, an active—a verb? I’m not entirely sure. Why do I ask God a direct question to which I know the answer to intellectually? Because the God we serve is the Living God, and His word is living and active. So when I ask Him a question like “Jesus, do You love me?” a question which answer seems so elementary and basic what I am doing is inviting Him to let the truth spoken in the Bible come to life in my heart and mind. I’m inviting Him to make those words come alive. I’m inviting Him to actively answer me by His presence and any other way He wants to reveal Himself. He answers me in many different ways but all point to the answer of ‘yes I love You.”

You see if I don’t start my day that way I try finding my worth and love from many different places. In how many objectives I accomplish. How well I managed my time.

Another reason I ask God often the question, “do You love me?” is because it directly challenges my biggest insecurity and fear: “What if when I ask God do You love me? If He doesn’t answer or says no?” That is a fear of rejection deep down I have. Of not doing enough to please Him. But He drives that fear out when I ask that question, “do You love me?” because He responds with His love.

So try doing this with the Bible. When you read about God caring about the poor ask God “Lord do You care about the poor? Show me, use me this week for that.” Allow the words to become flesh and blood through you. Just as the Word became flesh and blood in Jesus and walked amongst us so now the church is called to be the flesh and blood, the skin. When you ask these questions you are inviting Him to work in and through you and the Scripture comes to life in your life."

We'll continue next time.

Missing the Present: The "where" begins to answers the "Why"

2009-04-25T15:14:00.008-04:00

Last time we ended on the below comments from Screwtape and Jesus:

“To be sure, the Enemy [God] wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow’s work is today’s duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present…He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do.” Pages 67-69.

And there is the crux of the whole matter as it always is: “where your treasure is there your heart will be also” (from Jesus of Nazareth).

So here again we come to the heart of the matter. Where is our heart?

I think we could really spend more time on living in the Present. Over a year ago I came to this realization: "I realized that for most of my life up until this day much of me has missed the present. There are huge pieces of myself that are consistently missing the moment. Missing the now. My body can be present but so often my mind is somewhere else. Why? Well Where is my mind so often? Busy trying to figure out how I’m going to accomplish the next objective, the next task, the next phone call, the next meeting because there is this fear in me that if a certain amount of stuff doesn’t get accomplished then I’ve failed for the day."

I was sad but a spark of hope was given to me. I felt Jesus begin to communicate with me that

"It doesn't have to be this way."

I would like to take you through the journey I've been on the next couple of blogs or so. Last July 2008 I shared the journey I've been on when it comes to living in the Present with a group of people. Again I think this is one of the most crucial things I've been learning thus far. Because

if we are not living in the PRESENT we are not living, we're

missing.

We are missing life. We are missing our purpose. We are missing God's invitations. We are missing the joys He puts before us. We are missing the people. We are missing...HIM...when we live focus on the future, a future that anxiety rules. To get what I'm saying and NOT saying chew on some of the things below if you have a chance.

"I work for the Vineyard Child Care now. About 10 or 11 days ago I had a break. I walked from Lakewaterford’s playground into the Childcare van to be alone. I was sitting in this van with AC blasting on a hot June Day, and I began to think about how God is a verb. This book “The Shack” I just finished reading reminded me of Exodus 3. Moses asks God His name so Moses can go tell the Israelites what God sent him. God responds with a word we pronounce as Yahweh. The word means in essence “To Be” it is a verb. God is saying I was who I was, I am who I am, and I will be who I will be. And I am not like any other god people have created. I am totally other. I am. To Be. God is Being. He is ALIVE.

God

verb.

So I sat in the van and all of a sudden I became aware. I realized that for most of my life up until this day much of me has missed the present. There are huge pieces of myself that are consistently missing the moment. Missing the now. My body can be present but so often my mind is somewhere else. Where? Busy trying to figure out how I’m going to accomplish the next objective, the next task, the next phone call, the next meeting because there is this fear in me that if a certain amount of stuff doesn’t get accomplished then I’ve failed for the day.

So people are often getting just a piece of me when they converse with me because I’m thinking about the near future, the next task. I’m thinking about some ministry thing, or the book I have to finish reading, or if so and so likes me, or if I don’t get the grass cut today then it’ll never get done and on and on. The task could be a chore or a person! And if an interruption happens during my planned schedule I get irritable. And even when I get to the next task and finish it there is another task waiting.

As I was sitting in the van I felt alarmed. I felt like I was missing out on the present, the now, the moment as I continually seek and worry about the near future’s tasks. I’m missing out. And there was this cry in my heart “God, just as You are fully present, I want to be fully present in life.” I want to be fully present when someone is talking to me. I want to be fully present as I’m at work. I want to be fully present at celebrations. I want to be fully present in the city and in the suburbs. I want to be fully present, my body, mind and heart. I want to BE. I want to BE. I want to see what God is doing in the moment, especially in the so-called ordinary things of life, in the so called mundane. “Lord, I want to be.” If I’m missing much of the now then I’m missing life. I don’t want to anymore."

We will pick up from there next time.

PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT!!! Live there

2009-04-20T10:17:00.000-04:00

Last week’s entry dealing with the truth about ownership, our schedules, and the illusion of "MY time" made me want to stick on this whole issue of living in the present moment. What does that mean? I've been on a journey the last 10 months trying to figure that out and slowly but surely things are changing. I've come to this realization that this is one of the most important things we must grasp in life in order for true life giving transformation to take place.

If we are not living in the Present we are MISSING life. I am sick of missing out on life, aren't you?

The demon Screwtape focuses in on their strategy to get us to focus on the Future. He continues his series of letters to his nephew Wormwood (oh and if you only have about 5 minutes skip down to the green quote, it is a juicy nugget):

“The humans live in time, but our Enemy [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole, in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.” (I added underlines).

Present, Present, Present!!! This is where we are called to live but we are so often being ruled by anxiety which focuses us on the very near Future. Worry leads us: “What will I eat for lunch? What will I wear tomorrow? If I don’t get this paper done now I’ll never get it done. I’ll fail. Then I’ll have to quit school. Then I won’t get a good job. Then I’ll have to live with my parents forever. Then eventually I’ll be homeless!”

Screwtape goes on to say how demons strategy is to get us to focus more on the Future and the Past then on the Present.

“Our [the demons] business is to get them [humans] away from the eternal and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the Past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice [Greed], lust, and ambition look ahead.”

Last week a good friend of mine reminded me of a quote from a book by Phil Strout called God’s Relentless Pursuit. It is this following quote and the conversation I had with my friend that made me want to continue to chew on this whole issue of living in the present:

“Gerald Sittser, the author of The Will of God as a Way of Life, explains his discovery of God’s will:

As I struggled with the issue of discovering God’s will in light of my own personal uncertainty, intense suffering, and in-depth biblical study, I came to a startling conclusion. The will of God concerns the present more than the future. It deals with our motives as well as our actions. It focuses on the little decisions we make every day even more than the big decisions we make about the future. The only time we really have to know and do God’s will is the present moment. We are to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Sometimes, we can make God’s will so difficult to grasp that we forget that there are simple commands God gives, us, enabling us to do His will each day. God is not trying to trick us—He wants us to get it.” (Page 139).

I think Phil’s commentary explains Sittser’s thought best. But what about planning for the Future? Isn’t there some wisdom in that? Screwtape continues:

“To be sure, the Enemy [God] wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow’s work is today’s duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present…He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do.” Pages 67-69.

And there is the crux of the whole matter as it always is: “where your treasure is there your heart will be also” (from Jesus of Nazareth). We’ll pick up on that next time.

MY life, MY Time MY Education...(PART 2 read April 6th blog first)

2009-04-13T17:56:00.000-04:00

The demon Screwtape continues on Page 97

“The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, >>page 98 under the real rule of wise counselors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

“We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog,’ ‘my servant,’ ‘my wife,’ ‘my father,’ ‘my master,’ and ‘my country,’ to ‘my God.’ They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots,’ the ‘my’ of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my Teddy bear, ‘ not the old imagine recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relations (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful), but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.’ And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘my God’ in a sense not really very different from ‘my boots,’ meaning ‘the God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit—the God I have done a corner in.’

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our father [the Devil] or the Enemy [God] will say ‘mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong—certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy [God] says ‘mine’ of everything on the >>page 99 pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it. Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE”

These thoughts helped me see my own shortcomings and the enemy’s schemes. At first as I read this I thought that God was just using this reading to ‘polish’ what He did in me last Spring in regards to my unhealthy cultural American value of being time and objective-oriented rather than relationship-oriented. Meaning, I’m always looking at the clock, always managing, frustrated at any kind of tardiness or me not being very early to meetings. I was so time-oriented that I would often miss the

PERSON

and what was going on with them and what God was doing with them right there. I was thinking about how much time I had left to study, or if I would have time to be able to write, or that it was time for me to eat, or I needed to have time to get to a meeting or time to plan for one. I realized how bad it was last year as God began to show me how I saw people as objectives on a to-do-list rather than PEOPLE who God loves just because, and that putting them on a mental to-do-list was NOT

respecting,and loving them

And

was

sin.

So I give all that background because I really went through a huge paradigm shift last year and thought that God, through this C.S. Lewis reading, was just re-affirming and polishing that change in me. But then I realized that He was actually showing me and encouraging the deeper work He currently is doing in me in regards to ‘my’ time with how much I study for school. The last two months have been extremely hard as I try to be obedient to His voice in regards to what I do with the time (‘my’ time I often say, now through this reading I’m realizing it isn’t MY time) I’ve been given. “How much should I study? I’ve got a test, and research papers, I better study for 5-8 hours on Saturday.” I’ll make plans like this a week in advance like I used to do but over the last two months God has been challenging me and ‘my’ plans and ‘my time management’. It is scary. It is risky. What if I do bad in school because I didn’t study enough? Oh all the fears arise. As someone who has been a straight A student in college (just one B first semester, which I hated) the thought of getting lower than Bs—even that used to disgust me—is scary.

This reading gave me a much needed perspective shift that I thought was already in place, but even as I’m writing when I say ‘my time’ I realize it is a perspective shift still much needed in me. It is not MY time. It is HIS time. So the question I’ve been asking myself is “Lord what do You want me to do with my time?” The question has had an honest motive and I think the Lord is pleased but I think He is helping me through this reading see that the question can change slightly but make a major difference in the way I see life, time management, and school:

“Father, what do You want to do with me with our time?”

I think Our is the right pronoun. At first I wanted to put down ‘Your’ time but recently my request to God has been to be united to Him and know Him relationally as a spouse and there is this union and partnership that happens with that. At the same time I know that the Scriptures have these theme guiding words, “Not my will but Yours be done,” and “Your Kingdom come Your will be done.” I WANT THAT. And I think that is what I’ve been asking for even when I said, “Lord what do You want to do with MY time?” and I think it is true when I say, “What do You want to do with OUR time?” I’ll have to chew on that.

MY life, MY time...Is this Reality?

2009-04-06T15:27:00.000-04:00

Now as to the rest of the letters that have impacted me today [this was in March] I was going to go through them systematically in numerical order, but I can see that the Lord has different plans. I was over Dustin’s house and he mentioned how much we value our schedules and time in America. How we protect it. That comment I told him immediately reminded me of what I read in the Screwtape letters.

It is the 21^st letter starting on page 95: “Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, >>page 96 therefore that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quit evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-a-tete with the friend), that throws him out of gear.”

Wow that quote couldn’t have said it better. This is so true of myself. Screwtape goes on

“They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own.’ Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”

Screwtape goes on to say that Wormwood shouldn’t try to keep this lie intact through a logical argument because there is no argument for it. It is nonsense. Humans don’t really ‘own’ anything. If God were to come down now in bodily form to the Christian and ask for all that man’s time for the day he would obediently comply, in theory he says. So the simple jargon “my time is my own,” will suffice and it, according to Screwtape, is better left covered completely in darkness never brought the front of the person’s mind, because it is ridiculous. If the man ever questions it the assumption “my time is my own’ will be exposed as it really is…ABSURD, says Screwtape. “The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels [an item of personal property]”

As I was reading I was convicted at how much I say "God what do you want me to do with my time?" I chuckled as I told Dustin about this. More to come...

Can I agree with someone's comment, "you are a good looking man" and still be humble?

2009-03-30T21:13:00.000-04:00

I want to focus on the latter chapters that for this moment have had the heaviest impact on me today. It begins in Screwtape’s 14^th letter on page 62 .

“My dear Wormwood,

The most alarming thing in your last account of the patient is that he is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of ‘grace’ for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation! This is very bad.”

BRILLIANT! So often we make and hear of "life commitments to God" and we have this tendency to make once and for all statements and think nothing else of it. Humility says, "I Need You God this day or I'll fall off the deep end!" and each day after humility leads us to Him.

So what does the demon tutor Screwtape advise the little tempter to do?

“I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility…If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.”

What is funny and interesting about the timing of me reading this was literally moments before I read this I went through that cycle in my mind. Being proud of being humble, realizing that this was being prideful, and then gong through the cycle for a minute and then silently chuckling about it. I thought it was pretty interesting to me how the very thing C.S. Lewis was describing about how the enemy tempts us to be prideful when we are being humble is something I was going through in the present.

Here is another quote, I mean the entire page or two, that blessed me starting on page 63:

“You must therefore conceal from the patient [the human person the demon has been assigned to tempt] the true end of Humility. Let him think of it, not as self-forgetfulness, but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying >>page 64 to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value a opinion for some quality other than the truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible. To anticipate the Enemy’s [Screwtape calls God the Enemy] strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of >>page 65 self love—a charity and gratitude for all selves including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created, and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.” (I added bold).

Ok that was A LOT. So now we can address the question that I had as my title

Can I agree with someone's comment, "you are a good looking man" and still be humble?

This part of the book answers that question:

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible. To anticipate the Enemy’s [Screwtape calls God the Enemy] strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.”

I do this. Whenever someone says that I’m a good-looking man I quickly reject the compliment for ‘humility’s’ sake. Or I often make comments calling myself ugly.
I try to be humble by believing something I don’t believe it, though I used to believe it years ago, and many others don’t believe. Am I allowed to believe that “I am a good-looking man”? Can I be humble and believe that or depending on context of course, say it? After reading this 14^th letter in the Screwtape letters I think I can. I feel free to. Now with that statement I also know that physical beauty of any kind is ‘wasting away’ and is temporary. It is one thing to know it, and another to put your trust in it. I don’t trust any degree of my handsomeness. I could be marred by a dog, get into an accident, or I could be in a culture that thinks my features are undesirable. Also I along with everyone will experience the slow decay of our bodies. But I feel free to believe that God has created me, and I am good looking. That’s it. Nothing more nothing less. Nothing to boast about b/c just as in money it is fleeting. But it does me no good as C.S. Lewis so eloquently pointed out to say something I don’t believe or that really isn’t true.

The quote continues in the 14^th Letter on page 65,

“His [God’s] whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man’s mind off the subject of his own value altogether. He would rather the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one.”

He would rather the man thought himself a great poet and then forgot about it, that’s it. I don't need to believe I'm a bad one writer in order to be humble. This is really freeing. I've never been able to say anything like this before.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

A few Appetizers

2009-03-20T15:01:00.000-04:00

To start and give you a taste of what I discovered in this short reading take a few minutes and read below.

Screwtape’s 6^th letter on page 28, “He [God] wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

In the 5^th letter uncle Screwtape is writing to his young tempter in training nephew Wormwood. Screwtape says, “And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.” Page 27.

The Fourth Letter on page 22-23, “I have known cases where what the patient called his ‘God’ was actually located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him…Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation__this real nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that>>page 23 the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There’s such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE”

These quotes are but a few of the many that really opened my mind to my own thinking and the enemy’s schemes/tendencies.