Reflections on God … Man … Life
I’m a Protestant. I don’t believe in Purgatory. Yet I want to read Dante, so what can I do? Well, first, one can read Dante’s second volume of The Divine Comedy as a treatise that applies to this life also—God purges sin from our lives and we must respond properly. The second thing that helps me in this quest is that Dorothy Sayers, a writer I love, undertook to make a fresh translation of Dante back in the 1940s-1950s. It… Read more »
This past Wednesday, while teaching my latest Narnia session at my church, something struck me in a way it hadn’t before. I’m currently presenting and discussing C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. We’re near the end (one week to go), and as I was reading aloud one of Puddleglum’s statements, the significance of what he said was more meaningful to me than ever. It was in chapter eleven, while the spellbound Prince Rilian is tied to the Silver Chair to… Read more »
Each morning, in my devotions, I’ve set aside some time to work my way through G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, which outlines the history of man’s beliefs as seen through mythology, philosophy, and then, finally, through Christianity—God’s direct revelation to man. Chesterton is quite quotable, yet all of those quotes that people love to use are embedded in larger contexts that require some real thought and meditation. That’s why I have chosen not to rush through this work. I… Read more »
One of the highlights of the coming year for me will be the Oxbridge Conference sponsored by the C. S. Lewis Foundation. I’ve never attended this particular conference before. “Looking forward to it” seems too mild a description for what I am anticipating. This will be my third Lewis Foundation conference and, as before, I will presenting a paper in the Academic Roundtable portion of the conference. The theme overall is “Surprised by Love: Cultivating Intellectual Hospitality in an Age… Read more »
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I do, however, conduct a daily assessment of God’s direction in my life. That, I think, should be the real resolution for all of us. Writing this blog has been a part of God’s direction for me for nearly twelve years now. The goal is the same as when I started it in 2008: dedication to Biblical principles in life, whether that be with respect to our personal relationship with Christ, commentary on the… Read more »
All of life, for a Christian, is a ministry. We are all called to different types of ministry, yet everything we do is to be done for God’s glory as we spread His truth. My ministry is teaching. I love to teach straight from Scripture, I love to teach things derived from Scripture (such as my C. S. Lewis classes), and I also love to teach in my particular field of expertise, which is American history and government. That last… Read more »
Love is such a misunderstood word. Every good thing that emanates from God can and has been perverted. Some expressions that we call love are just the opposite. C. S. Lewis gives us an excellent, and disturbing, example of this in The Great Divorce. In the fanciful tale of a bus trip from hell to the outskirts of heaven, Lewis lays bare all the roadblocks people set up that keep them from acknowledging God and His truth. One episode involves… Read more »