Category: The Christian Spirit

Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.

Diversity Properly Understood

  

Diversity is all the rage. It’s a word no one can escape nowadays, especially if you are on a university campus. We are told continually that there is strength in diversity, as if differences are inherently better than similarities. Perhaps it’s best illustrated by this graphic: I believe in diversity, but in God’s way. Notice that the wheel above makes no distinction between natural differences and those that are the result of choices we make. My ethnicity is a matter… Read more »

Only Two Kinds of People in the End

  

We love to talk about heaven. Hell, not so much. We get glimpses of both eternal destinations in Scripture, but not the full picture of either. C. S. Lewis is well known for perceiving both in imaginative ways. On the subject of hell, we naturally think of The Screwtape Letters, where in his preface he tells us, “We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance,… Read more »

Heavenly Reality

  

We imagine images such as the one above: ethereal, somewhat fanciful, perhaps. We really don’t know. We’re so tied to this world; our imaginations are so limited. C. S. Lewis described it this way in his Mere Christianity: Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to… Read more »

Reflections on #68

  

Every year I mark my birthday with some reflections on the life that the Lord has given me. Today I am 68, and that’s kind of hard to imagine. In my mind, I’m much younger. But I feel closer to that 68 number at the moment because I had some surgery last Friday from which I’m still recuperating. There’s nothing like post-op pain to remind one that life on this earth is temporary. As I reflect back on those 68… Read more »

A New Name, Known Only to the One Who Receives It

  

“Your soul has a curious shape,” comments C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. What does he mean? “It is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance,” he explains. And if that explanation leaves you scratching your head, he tries another analogy: “Or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.” Lewis is pointing to the uniqueness of God’s creation of each one of… Read more »

No Evil without Good?

  

Very few friendships last a lifetime. But when a young C. S. Lewis got to know a young Arthur Greeves, their friendship was one of those rarities. They corresponded almost until the day of Lewis’s death. We have all of that correspondence, and it’s filled with treasures. In 1933, not too long after Lewis’s conversion, Greeves had written in one of his letters that there can be “no good without evil.” The recently converted Lewis, rethinking all of his former… Read more »

On Influencing Public Opinion

  

In the Book of Common Prayer this morning, I came across a prayer called “For Those Who Influence Public Opinion.” Since that’s the very reason why I attempt to write this blog, I paid close attention to it and prayed the prayer for myself. I was taken by how the words spoke directly to what I seek to do. Here’s how it goes. Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we… Read more »