Today marks the 113th year since C. S. Lewis was born, and his writing is still making a major impact on the lives of people throughout the world. PreChristians and Christians alike read and are influenced by his work while much of today's Christian writing and media does not engage the world. Why is that?
The first reason is that C. S. Lewis wrote for the world. He was not writing for the already convinced. He was not writing for Christian bookstores and Christian critics. He was writing to inspire the imagination of people who did not agree with him. He wanted to inform people who were skeptical. Too often today, our communication is aimed at the convinced. When that is the case, we take too much for granted, we assume too much prior knowledge from our audience, and we become combative rather than inspirational.
Most of Lewis' work first appeared in public media. He had to connect to an unbelieving audience or the paper would stop asking him for his columns and radio stations would stop giving him air time. Captive audiences inspire laziness and inhibit creative and persuasive thought. Good outreach, inspiration, teaching, and communication is most likely to happen when we are competing to be heard along with all the other voices in the world. Then we need to push our creativity, our ability to find common ground with others, and our ability to relate to felt needs and interests. C. S. Lewis became a master of this. The power of his writing comes in part to the fact that he wasn't singing for the choir.
Lewis also had a strong respect for the truth. He wasn't interested in propaganda. He wanted God to peel back the curtain and reveal to him what was real. In this, he was never guilty of a secular/sacred split. All truth was God's truth. This meant that he went to the Bible to understand who God is, who we are on a fundamental level, and what are purpose in the universe is, but he didn't limit himself to the Bible. He was a professor of literature and knew that art was a powerful tool to explore truth. He drew quite a bit from history and philosophy and, somewhat, on science. He had little patience for people who thought they could learn science, medicine, engineering from scripture. Scripture is the highest authority on those things that God directly addresses, but we are made in the image of God and are given other tools to explore the ordered creation that God has provided us with. This added credibility to his writing.
C. S. Lewis did not neglect his Christian learning, though. He once said that nothing he wrote was original. I thought this was just false modesty until I began to read the Christian classics. More often, than I would have imagined, Lewis is translating the thoughts of Augustine or Aquinas into modern language and applying them to our current situation. Lewis' grounding in the Bible and Christian thought was the bedrock of everything he wrote. Originality is highly valued today, Lewis applied originality only after he had walked the well trod path of Christian scholarship.
I think the most powerful tool that Lewis brought to the table was his imagination and love of story. It seems that most of our communication today reflects the cold logic of the modern era. The Bible is a story, Jesus conveyed most of his message in story, yet we tend to turn the dynamic story of the gospel into a set of philosophical principles. Lewis loved and respected logic, but he loved passion, story, imagery, and metaphors more. Logic points to truth that can be contained while story and metaphor speaks of mysteries that cannot be contained. It is the latter that inspires. I'm not sure how you can communicate the wonder of the gospel unless you love story. If you don't appreciate fiction or history I can't imagine how you connect with or inspire those in the world. I don't think C. S. Lewis could either, and I'm thankful for that.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Typewriter or Laptop?
Okay, let's have a show of hands. If you had to write a term paper, and you had access to both a laptop and a typewriter, who would choose the typewriter? Of course you would choose the computer. I remember the days of correcting fluid and carbon paper, of stuck keys, and old ribbon. Who would want put in all that work just to have one hard copy that was easily eaten by the dog?
Okay, I have a few friends that would stubbornly holdout for the typewriter, but that says more about their character, their desire to stand out just for the sake of standing out, their need for an excuse to fall back on when they don't complete their paper, their belief that suffering is an end in itself.
Where is the source of my strength? One of the reasons I follow Jesus is that he brings a computer to the table when life only offers a typewriter, but that does me little good if I just keep right on using the typewriter. Jesus brings more to the table regardless of how good my life may seem at the moment, but I must choose to pursue the strength he offers.
God's strength comes from three sources: Scripture, personal prayer and worship, and the Christian community. Scripture is the primary way that God's Spirit communicates with us, revealing his will, encouragement, and guidance. God shapes and molds us through personal prayer and worship. We get to recognize his voice and touch so he can guide us throughout the rest of our lives. And, surprisingly, it's through the gathered Christian community that God chooses to minister to us individually.
1 Corinthians 12 - 14 describes God's desire for dynamic communities whose members actively care for each other. Where we gather with gifts supplied by God to fulfill each need while others come with gifts for us. It is God's decision that he will supply most of our strength, growth, encouragement, and healing through each other. The God of love has decided that we will participate in his works of grace. In this way, we learn to love each other as we learn to love God. There was a day when we looked toward a place, the mountain of God, to see where our strength would come from. We still look to that same God, but now he no longer works from a distance. He works intimately through a combination of Scripture, prayer, and his community.
If we look anywhere else for our strength, then we have chosen the typewriter when God has provided us with a laptop. Of the three, I think the community is the one most neglected today, although all three are suffering as we choose politics, social engineering, culture wars, and peer pressure over God's guidance (I am speaking to Christians here). Among younger Christians we see the rise of nomadic Christianity, the idea that we can live our life apart from the church and still love God. This cuts them off from one of the main sources of strength.
I don't blame them too much, though. For many, church is an activity that is done once or twice a week. It is more a performance to be attended, a lecture to ingest, than it is an active time of interacting with each other. There should be times of teaching and community worship, but there should be more. A community shares in each other's lives, cares for each other, suffers through each other's mistakes and growing pains, shares each other's joys and suffering, doubts and insights. A community is dynamic.
If you are a follower of Jesus, community is not a suggestion but a command. Flee authoritarian, bitter, controlling communities, but don't give up on God's plan, on God's values. If you have been burned, then start with just a few trusted friends. If you go to church, then start with a few from within that group and begin to live the church. If not, then you better like carbon paper and correction fluid.
Okay, I have a few friends that would stubbornly holdout for the typewriter, but that says more about their character, their desire to stand out just for the sake of standing out, their need for an excuse to fall back on when they don't complete their paper, their belief that suffering is an end in itself.
Where is the source of my strength? One of the reasons I follow Jesus is that he brings a computer to the table when life only offers a typewriter, but that does me little good if I just keep right on using the typewriter. Jesus brings more to the table regardless of how good my life may seem at the moment, but I must choose to pursue the strength he offers.
God's strength comes from three sources: Scripture, personal prayer and worship, and the Christian community. Scripture is the primary way that God's Spirit communicates with us, revealing his will, encouragement, and guidance. God shapes and molds us through personal prayer and worship. We get to recognize his voice and touch so he can guide us throughout the rest of our lives. And, surprisingly, it's through the gathered Christian community that God chooses to minister to us individually.
1 Corinthians 12 - 14 describes God's desire for dynamic communities whose members actively care for each other. Where we gather with gifts supplied by God to fulfill each need while others come with gifts for us. It is God's decision that he will supply most of our strength, growth, encouragement, and healing through each other. The God of love has decided that we will participate in his works of grace. In this way, we learn to love each other as we learn to love God. There was a day when we looked toward a place, the mountain of God, to see where our strength would come from. We still look to that same God, but now he no longer works from a distance. He works intimately through a combination of Scripture, prayer, and his community.
If we look anywhere else for our strength, then we have chosen the typewriter when God has provided us with a laptop. Of the three, I think the community is the one most neglected today, although all three are suffering as we choose politics, social engineering, culture wars, and peer pressure over God's guidance (I am speaking to Christians here). Among younger Christians we see the rise of nomadic Christianity, the idea that we can live our life apart from the church and still love God. This cuts them off from one of the main sources of strength.
I don't blame them too much, though. For many, church is an activity that is done once or twice a week. It is more a performance to be attended, a lecture to ingest, than it is an active time of interacting with each other. There should be times of teaching and community worship, but there should be more. A community shares in each other's lives, cares for each other, suffers through each other's mistakes and growing pains, shares each other's joys and suffering, doubts and insights. A community is dynamic.
If you are a follower of Jesus, community is not a suggestion but a command. Flee authoritarian, bitter, controlling communities, but don't give up on God's plan, on God's values. If you have been burned, then start with just a few trusted friends. If you go to church, then start with a few from within that group and begin to live the church. If not, then you better like carbon paper and correction fluid.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Community, Strangers, and Old People's Snacks
I didn't like church as I was growing up, and it didn't grow on me over time. In fact, the tension grew until I could leave it behind.
I didn't particularly like dressing up on Sundays. I wasn't into sitting still for an hour or more while the adults participated in something I didn't quite understand. The music was strange, and the coffee hour was full of old-people's snacks.
But that wasn't what bothered me most. The biggest problem was spending time with people I didn't know. The only time we saw each other was on Sundays. Somehow, our paths never crossed during the week. There were no social calls, no shared events, no shared missions... except work day at the church once or twice a year.
The message was simple. The church meeting was important, but the people? Not so much.
The idea that the church could be described as a building is alien to the New Testament. A persecuted group doesn't hang a big sign outside a regular meeting place to advertise to the authorities where they can be found and gathered up for prison.
Equally alien would be the idea that the church was a denomination or a system of governance. Even a quick reading of Paul's letters shows that the early church was out of its depth and still trying to work through this new thing God had done.
In Scripture, the church is people. It is a group of people who have given their lives to Jesus, have been united by the Holy Spirit, and are called to love and serve each other as they work together to establish the Kingdom of God.
Today, we hear a lot about nomad Christians. An emerging generation who accept Jesus as their Lord, but have abandoned the church. This is a problem for at least two reasons (in fact, there are several more). The first is that the call to committed community is Jesus' idea. It is his intention that we come together to serve each other and serve the world in a cooperative fashion. To say that Jesus is Lord and then not follow him is a contradiction in terms. Jesus called us to reform our priorities and our way of life.
But another problem must be addressed. Are we the church or are we just having church? Many youth are walking away because their church experience looks a lot like mine did growing up. If church is impersonal, driven by activities that keep people busy without them connecting personally, divided up into small speciality groups (age, activity, interest) so that a larger community doesn't emerge, if it's all about information transfer instead of encouragement and a shared, personal journey then it will become impersonal. If the emphasis is on right doctrine, but there is no room to share doubts, struggles, or to question, then personal growth has taken a back seat to "getting a good grade" in church.
We have "focused on the family" when God asked us to focus on the community. Jesus told us that families would be divided because of their belief in him, but he came to create new community. Which is the priority then?
There is no Christianity without the gathered, connected people of God. "For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body---whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free---and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (I Corinthians 12:13) There must be a real, personal connection to the body. But we must ask two questions: First, am I really willing to respond to Jesus' authority and follow him? Second, has church become another activity and obligation like work or soccer practice, or is the church part of my relational identity, a group of people I work to get to know and love, people I've included in my larger life?
If the faith that Jesus established is still going to be influential for the next generation then these questions have to be dealt with.
I didn't particularly like dressing up on Sundays. I wasn't into sitting still for an hour or more while the adults participated in something I didn't quite understand. The music was strange, and the coffee hour was full of old-people's snacks.
But that wasn't what bothered me most. The biggest problem was spending time with people I didn't know. The only time we saw each other was on Sundays. Somehow, our paths never crossed during the week. There were no social calls, no shared events, no shared missions... except work day at the church once or twice a year.
The message was simple. The church meeting was important, but the people? Not so much.
The idea that the church could be described as a building is alien to the New Testament. A persecuted group doesn't hang a big sign outside a regular meeting place to advertise to the authorities where they can be found and gathered up for prison.
Equally alien would be the idea that the church was a denomination or a system of governance. Even a quick reading of Paul's letters shows that the early church was out of its depth and still trying to work through this new thing God had done.
In Scripture, the church is people. It is a group of people who have given their lives to Jesus, have been united by the Holy Spirit, and are called to love and serve each other as they work together to establish the Kingdom of God.
Today, we hear a lot about nomad Christians. An emerging generation who accept Jesus as their Lord, but have abandoned the church. This is a problem for at least two reasons (in fact, there are several more). The first is that the call to committed community is Jesus' idea. It is his intention that we come together to serve each other and serve the world in a cooperative fashion. To say that Jesus is Lord and then not follow him is a contradiction in terms. Jesus called us to reform our priorities and our way of life.
But another problem must be addressed. Are we the church or are we just having church? Many youth are walking away because their church experience looks a lot like mine did growing up. If church is impersonal, driven by activities that keep people busy without them connecting personally, divided up into small speciality groups (age, activity, interest) so that a larger community doesn't emerge, if it's all about information transfer instead of encouragement and a shared, personal journey then it will become impersonal. If the emphasis is on right doctrine, but there is no room to share doubts, struggles, or to question, then personal growth has taken a back seat to "getting a good grade" in church.
We have "focused on the family" when God asked us to focus on the community. Jesus told us that families would be divided because of their belief in him, but he came to create new community. Which is the priority then?
There is no Christianity without the gathered, connected people of God. "For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body---whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free---and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (I Corinthians 12:13) There must be a real, personal connection to the body. But we must ask two questions: First, am I really willing to respond to Jesus' authority and follow him? Second, has church become another activity and obligation like work or soccer practice, or is the church part of my relational identity, a group of people I work to get to know and love, people I've included in my larger life?
If the faith that Jesus established is still going to be influential for the next generation then these questions have to be dealt with.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
No More Bite-Sized Gospel
The gospel is not something you can explain in three minutes. You can introduce it in three minutes, but if you can explain it that quickly, your gospel is too small. I believe it is the practice of presenting the gospel as a small thing, to be consumed in bite-sized pieces, that partially explains why the church is losing so many youth as they move from high school to adulthood.
The Bible is more than John 3:16 and the twenty or thirty favorite stories we like to repeat. God has used this scripture to inspire great writers such a Dostoevsky, J. R. R. Tolkien, Annie Dillard, T. S. Eliot, and Waker Percy. It has shaped great thinkers such as Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and contemporaries such a Peter Kreeft. It has inspired great art and influenced the shape of modern science, medicine, and law.
A small gospel doesn’t seem to stand up well against worldviews that have been well thought through (they may contain error, but they have been given thought). The tragedy is God has given us so much more to chew on, has addressed all the great questions of life, and presented us with more than enough to feed and inspire us for a lifetime.
Real classes and teaching need to replace our short commercial moments for God.
I know the first objection, because I get it often. Youth have the attention span of a chipmunk. Really? Are you sure.
Several years ago I was asked to teach at a large youth retreat. I’m a college missionary, and I hadn’t felt comfortable with high school students. To make matters worse, this retreat included middle school students. I never thought I connected well with this audience, but I agreed to speak.
I brought some musicians and a drama team for a “hip” factor. I don’t do hip well.
I was given several 90 minute teaching blocks. 90 minutes? Even with music and drama, that still left me with over 45 minutes to fill. As the youth groups began to arrive, each youth leader pulled me aside. “Our group only has about a ten minute attention span,” they warned. I was polite, but inside I wanted to ask, “Then why did you give me 90 minute teaching blocks?”
I approached this retreat differently, though. I remembered my audience. I know what they talk about among friends at school. We tiptoe around topics that they talk about openly elsewhere, and it makes us sound naive and foolish. Worse, it makes God seem naive and foolish. I decided to talk to them like they were college students, to be frank and shoot just a little over their heads. I talked about things that mattered to them in straightforward, frank terms.
The result was that I had a group of middle school and high school students that were engaged and focused throughout the long teaching blocks.
Content matters. If you have a few that don’t engage, then create something else for them. But don’t keep aiming for the least interested. You will lose the majority for the rebellious few. Reward faithfulness and you will create faithfulness. Focus your best attention on the slackers and the message is clear: slackers mean more to you than the faithful. Find a way to reach both, but give your best to the faithful. That’s Jesus’ model.
If the idea of diving into these topics deeper, of reading the great theologians, or wrestling with the big questions just makes you feel tired, then you don’t really believe in the life-giving qualities of God’s truth. Devotion to God is... well, devotion, commitment, taking the place of the students before we simply cover our preconceptions with religious trappings and present it to the world as God’s truth. That may seem harsh, but if we treat God like a hobby, then we will have little to offer.
The Bible is more than John 3:16 and the twenty or thirty favorite stories we like to repeat. God has used this scripture to inspire great writers such a Dostoevsky, J. R. R. Tolkien, Annie Dillard, T. S. Eliot, and Waker Percy. It has shaped great thinkers such as Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and contemporaries such a Peter Kreeft. It has inspired great art and influenced the shape of modern science, medicine, and law.
A small gospel doesn’t seem to stand up well against worldviews that have been well thought through (they may contain error, but they have been given thought). The tragedy is God has given us so much more to chew on, has addressed all the great questions of life, and presented us with more than enough to feed and inspire us for a lifetime.
Real classes and teaching need to replace our short commercial moments for God.
I know the first objection, because I get it often. Youth have the attention span of a chipmunk. Really? Are you sure.
Several years ago I was asked to teach at a large youth retreat. I’m a college missionary, and I hadn’t felt comfortable with high school students. To make matters worse, this retreat included middle school students. I never thought I connected well with this audience, but I agreed to speak.
I brought some musicians and a drama team for a “hip” factor. I don’t do hip well.
I was given several 90 minute teaching blocks. 90 minutes? Even with music and drama, that still left me with over 45 minutes to fill. As the youth groups began to arrive, each youth leader pulled me aside. “Our group only has about a ten minute attention span,” they warned. I was polite, but inside I wanted to ask, “Then why did you give me 90 minute teaching blocks?”
I approached this retreat differently, though. I remembered my audience. I know what they talk about among friends at school. We tiptoe around topics that they talk about openly elsewhere, and it makes us sound naive and foolish. Worse, it makes God seem naive and foolish. I decided to talk to them like they were college students, to be frank and shoot just a little over their heads. I talked about things that mattered to them in straightforward, frank terms.
The result was that I had a group of middle school and high school students that were engaged and focused throughout the long teaching blocks.
Content matters. If you have a few that don’t engage, then create something else for them. But don’t keep aiming for the least interested. You will lose the majority for the rebellious few. Reward faithfulness and you will create faithfulness. Focus your best attention on the slackers and the message is clear: slackers mean more to you than the faithful. Find a way to reach both, but give your best to the faithful. That’s Jesus’ model.
If the idea of diving into these topics deeper, of reading the great theologians, or wrestling with the big questions just makes you feel tired, then you don’t really believe in the life-giving qualities of God’s truth. Devotion to God is... well, devotion, commitment, taking the place of the students before we simply cover our preconceptions with religious trappings and present it to the world as God’s truth. That may seem harsh, but if we treat God like a hobby, then we will have little to offer.
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