On Life's Interruptions

"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life - the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time - ”

-- C.S. Lewis, in a letter to his lifelong friend Arthur Greeves, Dec 20, 1943

On Disinterested Choice

"My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question. My training was like that of the Jews, to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And I did not dream even of that. There are men, far better men than I, who have made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; but for my own part, I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subject at the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. I had been brought up to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested, and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will." ... “God was to be obeyed simply because he was God.”

-- C.S. Lewis, in “Surpised by Joy”, chapter 15

On Spiritual Efforts

"We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them. I am appalled to see how much of the change which I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary. The real work seems still to be done. It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appearance of the spiritual life with the life itself - to dream you have waked, washed, and dressed, and then to find yourself still in bed..."

-- C.S. Lewis, in a letter to lifelong friend Arthur Greeves June 15, 1930

On Gender Hierarchy

"More theologically, if we return to the Genesis text, we are astonished at the usual misunderstandings: Eve is inferior, it is said, because she is created after Adam. This superb logic makes Adam inferior to the great Saurians after which he was created. Creation is in fact an ascending act, and Eve, who is created last, comes at the climax as its crown and completion. Again, it is said that Eve is inferior because she is not made out of primal clay but out of a part of Adam. This is equally absurd reasoning, for Adam, who carries the name Earth, is made out of inanimate matter, but Eve, who carries the name Life, is made out of animate and hence superior matter."

-- Jacques Ellul, in “The Subversion of Christianity”, ch 4

Little Christs

p. 190
Men are mirrors, or 'carriers' of Christ to other men. Sometimes unconscious carriers. This 'good infection' can be carried by those who have not got it themselves. People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity. But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important. You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.

p. 191-192
And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians `being born again'; it talks about them 'putting on Christ'; about Christ 'being formed in us'; about our coming to 'have the mind of Christ'.

Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out - as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity...

p. 199
... This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects - education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects - military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden - that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose. It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him. I do not suppose any of us can understand how this will happen as regards the whole universe. We do not know what (if anything) lives in the parts of it that are millions of miles away from this Earth. Even on this Earth we do not know how it applies to things other than men. After all, that is what you would expect. We have been shown the plan only in so far as it concerns ourselves.

p. 200
What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ - can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father - that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begun to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning.


-- Excerpts from Book Four, Chapters 7 and 8 of C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity"

Haiti's first contact with Europeans

Haiti's first contact with Europeans

I found it very interesting and distressing to read about the first contact between Europeans and the natives (Arawaks) of the island on which Haiti is located. Last night, I was reading  part of Martha's AP US History assignment, from a book which tells the truth about US history that OUR generation was never allowed to study.

The island was referred to as Hispaniola when Columbus first arrived there. Out of the timbers of the Santa Maria, which had run aground, he built a fort, the first European military presence in the "new" world. His report to the Court in Madrid included:

"Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful... the harbours are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contains gold .... There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals..."

Columbus report of the natives:

"[the natives] are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone..."

He promised the Court in Madrid that he would bring them back "as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask." He promised this in the name of "God": "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

His 2nd expedition returned with 17 ships with the clear goal to bring back slaves and gold. His expedition in Haiti found almost no gold. In 1495, he collected 1500 Arawaks and put them in pens. They picked the 500 "best" slaves and put them on ships for Spain. 200 died enroute. The rest were sold as slaves. Columbus later wrote "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

In time however, most of the slaves died in captivity. So instead, Columbus enslaved them on the Island of Haiti and forced them to collect gold for him. He found, however, that the "fields of gold" did not exist. Each slave was given 3 months to collect a certain quantity of gold. If they failed, as most did, since the gold was not as plentiful as they imagined, their hands were cut off and they were allowed to bleed to death.

There are more horrific facts, too many for me to type here. My point is this... as I was reading the FHM newsletter, the day after reading these horrible things that OUR ancestors committed, I thought about how the Grace of God is allowing US to pay back just a small amount of the incredible injustice and evil our ancenstors did to the ancestors of our Haitian brothers and sisters. Thank God for his Grace, and for the proviledge to do his work and help undo the evil of the past and of this world.

that's my 2 cents, altho probably closer to a dollar :-)