I forgot to blog this last week for all of you non-Facebook people. Sorry. Here it goes:
Lewis gets to the heart of idolatry: men trying to "invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God." It is easy to throw stones at the list of consequences Lewis gives that result from trying to find substitutes to happiness in God: "money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery." I think I should be more concerned about the consequences of my own God substitutes. When I think happiness is bound up in people liking me, I am controlled (and often crushed) by the opinions of others. When I seek joy in things I am convinced I am "way good at," I get depressed when people fall asleep during the sermon or when my Hebrew instructor humbles me with my own ignorance. The answer, then, is found in the "shocking alternative." If I merely admire his teachings I can add Jesus to my shelf full of idols. If he is Lord and God, my joy in him is complete no matter how I perform in the pulpit, the classroom or in front of my peers.
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2 comments:
Don't you just love the poached egg quote? I have used this repeatedly. We can't have a Jesus who is in our hearts like Barney is on our underwear. "You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse... let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
From Caleb:
Okay, first off, I just realized that I've been a book ahead of this discussion so everything I've said probably isn't relevant to what you've been posting...so much for reading chapter titles in the heading :-p but anyway...
I definitely love the ending sequence of the chapter, in which Lewis completely polarizes his readers regarding the identity of Jesus...you cannot take Him as you want Him--you must take Him as He is, and when that occurs, you cannot remain the way you are. But the beautiful thing is, when you take Him as He is, and He changes the way you are, you learn to desire Him just for who He is...and nothing more.
Psalm 131:2 "But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me."
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