Life's End

The weight of glory: the problem and solution of delight

Aaron Radke — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:53:42 +0000

The problem and solution of delight

Lewis, in The weight of glory ¹, spills out a massive thought:

I can imagine someone saying that he dislikes my idea of heaven as a place where we are patted on the back. But proud misunderstanding is behind that dislike. In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised.
...
To please God ... to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness ... to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son-it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But it is so. ²

I have a hard time thinking that God would actually take delight in me. In fact, I have a sense if he took delight in me it would cheapen his value. I come with a perspective that I am a problem and continuing problem and God needed to provide a solution. This situation is true, yet only half the truth. A half truth can be as dangerous as a lie. I need to bask in some deeper truths.

It is awesome my problem is solved by the sacrifice of God's son, but wiping my slate clean is only half the problem. For several weeks I have been struggling and wrestling with the ability and value for God to take delight. My Dad takes delight in me beyond merely pity or duty. Envisioning this delight and fatherly care in God towards me is a position hard to sustain on my own. There is a heavy weight to feel not merely pitied but an object of delight.

I am beginning to see the solution to this portion of the problem is an extremely significant and utterly necessary portion for a life of wonder in the redemptive work of God. The problem of delight is solved by the perfect life of God's Son. God looks on me and sees his good Son! It awesomely solves the problem of delight. I am adopted into his family, I am a son ( 1jn3:1, 1 pt2:24) and I can now call him Daddy ( Rm8:15, Gal4:6)! My negatives are imputed to Christ solving one problem ( 1Jn4:10, 1 Cor15:3) and Christ's positives are imputed to me solving the second problem ( Rm4:6, Rm4:11, Phl3:9). This solution simultaneously displays God's holy goodness in both righteous wrath and abounding mercy. The second portion is the wonderful mix of divine delight. It is incredibly freeing and incredibly humbling. It is a foundational anchor to be part of a real ingredient in the divine happiness. "In Christ" carries massive weight to much to sustain.

Without this second component, I will begin to anxiously and pridefully depend on my self for the measure of right standing before God. With it, I can have gutsy courage to take otherwise risky radical steps getting close to scalpel sin.

What great confidence, what freeing joy to feel the weight of my guilt and then springboard to see the worth of what God has done. Without seeing this worth, I miss seeing the glory in the cross. For along time, I have been wanting to feel and savor the the cross in deeper ways. A truth I want to sing. It is not just past grace to even the score, but continued grace to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . Oh God, please heighten my joy in this truth the rest of my life and have it dig deep in my heart and drive me from sin.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in him, is mine;
alive in him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine,
bold I approach th' eternal throne,
and claim the crown, through Christ my own. ³

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. ( 1jn3:1)

No mere mortals

People are valuable because they have the capacity to know and worship God. This weight is an awesome transforming thought that opens flood gates of affection.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. ⁴

¹ C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory", Theology, http://www.doxaweb.com/assets/doxa.pdf , November, 1941
² Ibid.
³ Charles Wesley, "And Can It Be that I Should Gain", Hymn, 1739
⁴ C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory", Theology, http://www.doxaweb.com/assets/doxa.pdf , November, 1941

The Quest: A Journey Through Biblical Masculinity

Aaron Radke — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 04:41:50 +0000

It was a great opportunity to attend The Quest, a men's conference orchestrated by Sovereign Grace Ministries. Numerous times I just looked around and thought, "I am blessed to be here." It is also a great opportunity to stop and reflect over a few major areas of influence.

Humble mentor men

One pervading theme is the servant-hood shaping many of these men. Witnessing the married men, fathers and organizational leadership opened my eyes to the stark contrast of my life. The past ten years of study have caused my focus to be on a small sphere: two inches around my head. My conference room mates, away from their responsibilities, were expressing the strange feeling to worry only about themselves. This rare experience is how I live! It was humbling to be in the midst of sixteen hundred men including fathers and sons with the goal to be humbled servants before God.

I thank God for these examples. I aspire to be like these men. I want to be under these men, exhorted and encouraged.

Invigorating mortification motivated by God's glory

A highly recommended book from the conference was John Owen's Sin and Temptation ¹. A summarizing quote with a goal on God's glory is:

Sin untunes and unframes the heart itself, by entangling its affections. It diverts the heart from the spiritual frame that is required for vigorous communion with God. ²

Joshua Harris passionately pled,

"Men, what has sin ever done for us!"

Sin weakens our awe of God. The conference was a helpful call to see this weight. I want to build my awe for God. This weight is the heavy anchor or blazing center that keeps the planets in proper orbit ³. An entity extraordinarily big that makes the lesser fade away or seen for what they are.

Theology in living color

As a first time Sovereign Grace conference attendee, one of my primary goals was to experience, investigate and learn about the leadership structure and vision.

It is clear they desire a strong theological rooting as substantial grounding for the mind and correctly engaged hearts. The desire is hearts rooted in truth.

Real men read, yet meditatively apply:

But two things are very specially to be regarded on this topic [reading], which are these: First, that more depends on the quality of what we read, than on the quantity. Secondly, more depends on the use, which, by reflection, conversation, and composition, we have made of what we read, than upon both the former. ⁴

Physical form was put onto the rich Sovereign Grace terms such as "humble orthodoxy", and "humility as true greatness". Confessed sin is manhood. I witnessed some of it. I look up to these men.

The requirement to fight passivity and procrastination:

Although procrastination was not a major conference theme, the following quote did strike in a big way:

Attacking your hardest task of the day without delay will build your resistance to passivity. Waiting until the end of the day only reinforces your sinful tendencies toward passivity.
...
From term papers to tax filing, the man who is cultivating biblical masculinity will not allow these things to rule him. He will exercise dominion over them by doing them in a timely manner. ⁵

¹ Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen, Crossway Books: Good News Publishers, 2006
² Ibid.
³ John Piper, The Blazing Center: The Soul Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things, Desiring God, 2005
⁴ Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry, New Impression edition, Banner of Truth, 1980
⁵ Albert Mohler, "Show yourself a man", The tie: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 73, 3, Winter, 2005

The Writing Life

Aaron Radke — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:46:29 +0000

WHEN YOU WRITE, you lay out a line of words... You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. ¹

I have little experience with writing sentences, but I do have some experience writing mathematical symbols and carefully constructed algorithms. In Annie Dillard's wonder in seeking beauty and mystery by following the path of words, I found parallels for the beauty and mystery that I find in the path of mathematics and algorithms. Few others have ever described this feeling that I have found as an outsider riding along a path of wonder. There is only a faint idea where it is headed and how you may get there. The process is full of wonder and you follow along for the ride.

There is one uncomfortable aspect of the ideas in this book. There seems to be a wonder in following a path wherever it goes, even if it is purposeless. What gives guidance to forks in the road? What about the narrow path? This is the same concern that I had in her essay on Living like Weasels ². On one hand, I love the rare encouragement of finding what you do well and doing it with all of your might. Yet in the midst of it, there comes this notion that we should grab on tight no matter what it may be.

There were a number of impacting sections. Here she is encouraging me to write:

Writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick. ³

Here she perfectly paints the joy that I have seen in reading:

We are reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show. ⁴

Here is a quote expressing the feeling of an idea as a short and momentary flash of lighting:

Einstein likened the generation of a new idea to a chicken's laying an egg: "Kieks--auf einmal ist es da." Cheep--and all at once there it is. ⁵

Here she is admonishing me to not hoard ideas:

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now... Something more will arise for later, something better... Anything that you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. ⁶

¹ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, Harper Perennial, September, 1990
² Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Harper Perennial, September, 1988
³ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, Harper Perennial, September, 1990
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.

Till We have faces

Aaron Radke — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 01:22:31 +0000

As the gods would have it, I came away aware of my own sin and depravity after reading this Lewis book ¹. I was the bitter one. I was the one with the corrupted view that needed and continue to need correction. We see ourselves clearly in the presence of God. He answers all questions and humbles all without a word.

The god comes to judge Orual...
The air was growing brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one. But that is little to say; rather Psyche herself was, in a manner, no one. I loved her as I would once have thought it impossible to love, would have died any death for her. And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and oh, gloriously she did) it was for another's sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming.
...
I know now , Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words. ²

This is the experience of many of the characters within this book. They were locked in their own framework of thinking and could not see the profanity of their desires and rationales. They could not see, even though they longed for answers. They could not see until they felt the presence of the Divine. Then their questions were answered without a word.

This narrative causes me to be more and more aware that affections are the battlefield of life. The slightest lunge or movement can set in motion a wildly different course of action. Attention and thoughts that consume a mind is what it loves. It has given a heightened awareness that I have a great need to have God change my heart. We can question much and give all kinds of reasoning, but after God reveals himself ( gives you a face to see your sin) you can not see him. Give me a face.

Lewis's thoughts on his book

Though I had many thoughts and feelings throughout the book, I came away questioning what Lewis was trying to say. Many people conjecture, but the following are Lewis's own thoughts. It was comforting to find that the elements are intended to be straightforward.

An author doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of his own story better than anyone else, so I give my account of Till we have Faces simply for what it is worth. The 'levels' I am conscious of are these:
A work of (supposed) historical imagination. A guess of what it might have been like in a little barbarous state on the borders of the Hellenistic world of Greek culture, just beginning to affect it. Hence the change from the old priest (of a very normal fertility mother-goddess) to Arnom; Stoic allegorizations of the myths standing to the original cult rather as Modernism to Christianity (but this is a parallel, not an allegory). Much that you take as allegory was intended solely as realistic detail. The wagon men are nomads from the steppes. The children made mud pies not for symbolic purposes but because children do. The Pillar Room is simply a room. The Fox is such an educated Greek slave as you might find at a barbarous courts--and so on.
Psyche is an instance of the anima naturaliter Christiana making the best of the Pagan religion she is brought up in and thus being guided (but always 'under the cloud', always in terms of her own imaginations or that of her people) towards the true God. She is in some ways like Christ because every good man or woman is like Christ. What else could they be like? But of course my interest is primarily Orual.
Orual is (not a symbol) but an instance, a 'case' of human affection in its natural condition, true, tender, suffering, but in the long run tyrannically possessive and ready to turn to hatred when the beloved ceases to be its possession. What such love particularly cannot stand is to see the beloved passing into a sphere where it cannot follow. All this I hoped would stand as a mere story in its own right. But--
Of course I had always in mind its close parallel to what is probably happening at this moment in at least five families in your home town. Someone becomes a Christian, or in a family nominally Christian already, does something like becoming a missionary or entering a religious order. The others suffer a sense of outrage. What they love is being taken from them. The boy must be mad. And the conceit of him! Or: is there something in it after all? Let's hope it is only a phase! If only he had listened to his natural advisers. Oh come back, come back, be sensible, be the dear son we used to know! Now I, as a Christian, have a good deal of sympathy with those jealous, suffering, puzzled people (for they do suffer, and out of their suffering much of the bitterness against religion arises). I believe the thing is common. There is very nearly a touch of it in Luke II. 38, 'Son, why hast thou so dealt with us?' And is the reply easy for a loving heart to bear? ³

noteworthy reviews

A Great Gulf Fixed: The Problem of Obsessive Love in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces by Amelia F. Franz
Inspiration, publication, and insight
Wikipedia

¹ C.S. Lewis, Till we have faces: a myth retold, http://www.trentu.ca/ahc/materials/lewis-bib.html#III , Geoffrey Bless, London, 1956
² Ibid.
³ C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1966

Life's End

The weight of glory: the problem and solution of delight

The Weight of Glory: the Problem and Solution of Delight

The problem and solution of delight

No mere mortals

The Quest: A Journey Through Biblical Masculinity

The Quest: a Journey Through Biblical Masculinity

Humble mentor men

Invigorating mortification motivated by God's glory

Theology in living color

The requirement to fight passivity and procrastination:

The Writing Life

The Writing Life

Till We have faces

Till We Have Faces

Lewis's thoughts on his book

noteworthy reviews