Spirit Archives
May 03, 2007
C. S. Lewis - How to Avoid God, and how He will find you.
How to Avoid God
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167 (from Maverick Philosopher)
Looking for God
I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way round; He was the hunter (or so it seemed to me) and I was the deer. He stalked me like a redskin, took unerring aim, and fired.
From "Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: the gift of friendship," by Colin Duriez
And see the video for Johnny Cash's song, "God's Gonna Cut You Down"
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April 14, 2007
"God's Gonna Cut You Down" - Johnny Cash
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
. . .
Well, you may throw your rock, hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light
Complete lyrics from Metrolyrics
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December 24, 2006
"Why do good things happen to bad people?”"
The question should be not "Why do bad things happen to good people?” but “Why do good things happen to bad people?” If the fairy godmother tells Cinderella that she can wear her magic gown until midnight, the question should be not “Why not after midnight?” but “Why did I get to wear it at all?” The question is not why the glass of water is half empty but why it is half full, for all goodness is gift. The best people are the ones who are most reluctant to call themselves good people. Sinners think they are saints, but saints know they are Sinners.
"The Problem of Evil," by Peter Kreeft
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February 13, 2006
Free speech
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.
"Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion," by Christopher Hitchens, Slate, February 4, 2006
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November 25, 2005
God's love
We know that there is no pit so deep, that God's love isn't deeper still.
Corrie Ten Boom, survivor of a nazi concentration camp
Corrie ten Boom House, Haarlem, Holland
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November 22, 2005
Christianity and movies
The world does not need a "Christian cinema" so much as it needs Christians in cinema.
"What Is a Christian Movie? Connectedness, and the culture of life help. Whether it will sell is vital. But ultimately, it's all about the people." By Spencer Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi, beliefnet (an exceprt from "Behind the Screen")
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November 11, 2005
"Where are the Atheist's hospitals, or soup kitchens?"
They're state-run, supported by taxpayers....
Let's see, we have scores of Baptist Hospitals, Method Hospitals, Jewish Hospitals, Catholic Hospitals, etc., etc.. Each of these have 'outreach' programs both here and in the most dismal places on earth, staffed with dedicated medical doctors and nurses. Where oh where are the Atheist's hospitals, or soup kitchens? I, perhaps somewhat leaning to your ideology, am not so religious... but I am married to one of the most delightful, beautiful and dedicated Catholics on this earth. I delight in her absolute faith, her praying, her laughter, her zest for life, her acceptance of those of lesser faith (like me), her tolerance. All which seems so absent from the liberal atheist.
"Atheist Hospitals," an email to Jonah Goldberg, NRO, November 9, 2004
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October 12, 2005
"...human freedom is inextricably tied to a recognition of limits."
Part of what makes Kolakowski’s reflections on freedom and its vicissitudes so fruitful is his understanding that human freedom is inextricably tied to a recognition of limits, which in the end involves a recognition of the sacred. This has been a leitmotif of his work from the beginning. In The Alienation of Reason (1966), he criticizes positivism as "an attempt to consolidate science as a self-sufficient activity, which exhausts all the possible ways of appropriating the world intellectually."In "Man Does Not Live by Reason Alone" (1991), Kolakowski argues that "mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be ex-communicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone." He shows how the tendency to believe that all human problems have a technical solution is an unfortunate inheritance from the Enlightenment—"even," he notes, "from the best aspects of the Enlightenment: from its struggle against intolerance, self-complacency, superstitions, and uncritical worship of tradition." There is much about human life that is not susceptible to human remedy or intervention. Our allegiance to the ideal of unlimited progress is, paradoxically, a dangerous moral limitation that is closely bound up with what Kolakowski calls the loss of the sacred. "With the disappearance of the sacred," he writes,
which imposed limits to the perfection that could be attained by the profane, arises one of the most dangerous illusions of our civilization—the illusion that there are no limits to the changes that human life can undergo, that society is "in principle" an endlessly flexible thing, and that to deny this flexibility and this perfectibility is to deny man’s total autonomy and thus to deny man himself.
These are wise words, grippingly pertinent to an age conjuring with the immense technological novelties of cloning, genetic engineering, and other Promethean temptations. We pride ourselves today on our “openness” and commitment to liberal ideals, our empathy for other cultures, and our sophisticated understanding that our way of viewing the world is, after all, only our way of viewing the world. But Kolakowski reminds us that, without a prior commitment to substantive values—to an ideal of the good and (just as important) an acknowledgment of evil—openness threatens to degenerate into vacuousness. Given the shape of our post-Soviet, technologically infatuated world, perhaps it is that admonition, even more than his heroic demolition of Marxism, for which Leszek Kolakowski will be honored in the decades to come.
"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005
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August 19, 2005
"Young People's Prayers"
Goodies First has a few prayers for young people ... from 1945, but still relevant ...
"Young People's Prayers" by Percy R. Hayward may have been published in 1945, but it speaks to me still, despite my not being all that young anymore. But hey, with today's bratty, self-absorbed society, ideals intended for teens half a century ago probably still haven't sunk in with the twentysomethings and beyond of present day. Sure they're funny, but damn if they're not relevant to the sinners, complainers and obsessors of the world like me. This book is so out-of-control specific, there are prayers for nearly all of life's quandries such as I Have Lost My Job, Save Me from Hating People, On the Coming of Vacation and Save Me from "The Blues."
"prayers: when all else fails"
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