Filed under: In General
…because he is so much better at explaining things than any person I have ever met in real life. Mere Christianity is one of the best books I have ever read, and it played a large role in my willingness to accept Christ (because believe me, this was no easy thing to do, nor, in some respects, was it something I wanted to do… it is hard to come to terms with the idea that it isn’t going to be about you anymore; however, I was seeing truth revealed daily, and in that, God showed me that his plan for me was far better than anything I could muster).
“All that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” -Mere Christianity
“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad…Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of creatures that worked like machines would hardly be worth creating.” -Mere Christianity
“You can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say, ‘So there’s your boasted new man! Give me the old kind.’ But…you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people’s souls–of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggle? One soul in the whole creation you do know; and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.” -Mere Christianity
“You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.” -Mere Christianity
“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” -Mere Christianity
and what I was trying to say a few posts ago:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -Mere Christianity
I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to seriously consider the relevancy/reality of Christianity. In fact, go read Chapter 1 right now. It’s not long, and you’ll get the idea. He doesn’t even throw God into the mix when he sets up his argument. I’ve found that people whose minds are truly open will at least give it a shot. People who are content with their disbelief would rather not rock the boat of complacency (because it will). C.S., I should note, only provides a logical foundation — reading this book will not help you come to know God, but it will help you begin to want to. Logic was a huge piece of the puzzle I had been missing all my life, so when I found it (and it made sense!), I was ready to take the next step. I’ve done lots of stumbling along the way, but I pick myself up and try again, which is, indeed, one of the first things God has helped me toward. I have a track record of being a quitter.
Not this time.
“C.S. Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.” -Anthony Burgess, New York Times Book Review
Filed under: In General
So the hubby and I are the proud parents of a tankful of guppies. Ethel, the matriarch, disappeared a few days ago without a trace, but we still have Frank and their numerous (10 or so) babies, which come in a plethora of sizes. Well, I was feeding them today, and I noticed that we have a gimp! He’s not the smallest one, but his spine is arched in this odd scoliosis-esque fashion. Almost like a Z written by a kindergartener. He’s so cute.
I think I will call him Bender.
