A Friend's Remark....

Sometimes I find my own desire to save memorable comments a mere fancy of selfish pride. However, I do mean to keep those posts or, in this case, a facebook dialogue that has illustrated a long lost point. Do enjoy.

Me:

Today I was listening to a podcast by Dr. Willian Craig. He made an interesting point in illustrating God's omnipotence. He said, "All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. I'm not saying that door's will always open in your life. Sometimes, through God, you need to break them down." Perhaps this is common knowledge, but it struck me in a very different way than what I normally hear. Any thoughts?

Yurchn Tlern :

The Israelites had to walk around Jericho 7 times, and I'm betting that was a lot harder and sounded a lot crazier than spending the time just breaking the door down. (Though the idea is the same as a closed door.) I think the church's version of "normal thinking" includes a lot of fear of our passions running away with us, and I think passionately pursuing a closed door falls into that category.
Is it always wise to break the door down? I can't say, but I know that God loves to break "normal thinking", and maybe by giving up when a certain door closes we give up an opportunity for God to show himself strong through our weakness. With that, I'm convinced that sometimes we can miss out on something wonderful because we waited for it to get up and walk over to us. What do you think?

Me:

I think you hit it on the head. In contrast to the normality of church teaching, we find that the God of the Old Testament was quite provocative towards action. For some reason or another, I think action tends to be subverted under the guise of pious contentment. Whereas, I would contend that the term contentment is action-oriented towards finding the fullness of what you already possess.

However, I suppose what made me really start thinking was the notion that what we presume to be closed doors are open insofar as we open them in Christ. When we think of the verses such as, "You have not because you ask not" and "We can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," I feel that we assume that if we see the door open then we are free to go through and if a door is closed that assumes we are not to go through. Instead, we should be asking, in light of Christ, ought that door be open or ought that door be closed. And if that door is open in contrast to Christ or closed in contrast to Christ, it is in those moments we ask for what we do not have and strive for what we cannot do.

Ever After...

 

          I just finished watching Ever After and I think fairy tales have always had it right when it mocks a vain woman. No man can long endure a woman who basks in his presence, worships the grounds he walks, or be enraptured by every comment he utters. What a true man will say, if you give him the time to be an honest man, is he looks for a woman who will do quite the opposite. He looks for a woman who will confound his presence, unsettle his grounds, and shatters the golden calves of his mind like spangles in the sky. What a man looks for is not a woman who is content with a simple shrine, but a woman who sees the vast cosmos as a wonderland of a unimaginable Temple.

 

 

Perelandra

"My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call "good," but I wasn't sure whether I liked "goodness" so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food ...itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played." - Perelandra, C.S. Lewis

What I really love about this quote is how it expresses the dichotomy of the Christian faith. Despite being a Sci-Fi book, C.S. Lewis has managed to "get on with it" and highlight a very real and very sensible notion - that our God is composed of both love, of which we all find comfort, and holiness, of which we all find uncomfortable.