Reflections on God … Man … Life
Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.
C. S. Lewis abounded in friends, those with whom he could spend many hours enjoying their company. In one of his letters, he wrote, “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?” He also hinted at the value of friendship in an essay on Hamlet, when he said, “The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” He expressed perhaps his most penetrating… Read more »
Everywhere Finney went, revivals followed. Often, those of a different theological persuasion chastised him for believing Christians could actually work to bring people to a state of repentance. Seeking to put all the onus on God, they left out the agency of man in God’s plans. Conversely, others would be envious of what Finney accomplished in his preaching and teaching. He deals with both views in this section of his Revival Lectures: A revival may be expected when ministers and… Read more »
Last Saturday, in my weekly C. S. Lewis post, I quoted him on the subject of free will. He had quite a lot to say on that doctrine, and I like what he has said. Therefore, I’m giving him a wide berth today by relating a passage from Mere Christianity that makes the point even more forcefully than the quote I used last week: God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or… Read more »
When I teach, I try to impress upon students certain truths. I know that sounds impertinent to the ears of some. “What is truth?” they may say. I seem to recall a historical figure named Pontius Pilate who asked the same thing. Jesus, standing before him, had already made it clear He was the truth. So, yes, I believe truth exists. There are certain things I’ve gotten in the habit of telling students over the years, so last summer, before… Read more »
I’ve made pretty clear in my last two posts that I don’t think race had anything to do with the events on the night Trayvon Martin was killed. Yet we are now mired once again in racial tension over the verdict in that trial. America doesn’t need this. We’re already a severely divided nation; this only increases that divide. Unfortunately, there are some who want to foment unrest over the trial’s outcome. One of the premier agitators is the Rev…. Read more »
Continuing in Finney’s autobiography, I came to another instance of what God taught him about prayer that I think worth sharing. Here is how he explains it: The Lord taught me, in those early days of my Christian experience, many very important truths in regard to the spirit of prayer. Not long after I was converted, a woman with whom I had boarded . . . was taken very sick. She was not a Christian, but her husband was a… Read more »
The age-old controversy over free will continues to plague us. I have very settled views on the matter. Some of what I believe on this is enunciated quite well by C. S. Lewis in a couple of his works. For instance, in The Problem of Pain, he zeroes in on the one who is truly accountable for evil entering into this world: Man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not… Read more »