Living in a fantasy world?

We're reading through 'That Hideous Strength,' the final installment of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, purported to be a modern fairy tale for adults, one of those impossible books that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Why am I fascinated by fantasy and fairy tales?  Why can I write nothing but?  Why is my soul not satisfied with modern, realistic fiction?  Why do my favorite books, if not fairy tales per say, smack of that genre even so?  Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien all delved into the genre, trying to discover why it so enamored themselves and people in general, and the only conclusion that can be reached is that they are true.  No, I do not believe there are evil stepmothers lurking in the woods with magic apples, do not be ridiculous, rather there is Something beyond the thin veil of what we call normal and reality and everyday, something bigger, bolder, and more startling than we can imagine.  It is at this very Thing that the stories hint and tease, they skirt the corners, lift the flap, nibble around the edges, but can never get to the very heart of the thing but they excite in us an eagerness, a hope, a joy, an anticipation hardly to be believed in such 'worldly' and 'mature' people as we consider ourselves to be.  Like Christmas or a starry winter night, it is 'deep calling out to deep.'  The closest we muggles will ever come to true magic this side of reality.

That's why we love sunsets and the ocean depths and butterflies and never tire of new life, why music in a minor key haunts our oldest and dearest memories.  We are a haunted race, we are living the dream but longing to awaken to real life, we know there is something more to existence and reality than this thin layer of biological, physical, and temporal real estate we occupy.  That's why the most radical man and greatest teacher in history always spoke in parables, his stories could seep into places cold, hard facts and reality could in nowise touch, that childish, yearning soul at the heart of even the most intelligent and coldest man.  Indeed, 'eternity has been set in the heart of man,' we've yearned for it unutterably since Eden fell, even our origins are spoken of in fairytale language, as is the end of mortal days, read The Revelation and tell me it isn't a fairy tale too!  Anything that whispers of it or hints at bigger things beyond our myopic vision, inexplicably fascinates us.

But we need not live like materialists, thinking 'this crude matter' is all there is, shutting our hearts and minds to the greater mysteries of the world and beyond it.  For that greatest fairytale of all is True, and it tells us how to live now, so when the Prince comes back, He'll find his bride ready and waiting, but we won't ride off into the sunset at the end of the tale, nay, it will be but the beginning of a greater tale that will never, ever end.

Let the dead bury their own dead

I went to a funeral yesterday, our community choir was asked to sing, so I went.  I sat through most of it rather in fidgets, not knowing why.  I've been to dozens of funerals, that's what happens when you are a pastor's wife, and I've never been that antsy and disquiet.  It wasn't that I had a problem with death or anything in the service in particular or was particularly acquainted with the deceased, but I was anxious in an atmosphere that should have been one of quiet rejoicing, mournful joy, peaceful hope.  I've been through funerals for a 21 year old suicide victim and a thirty something father of four killed in a tragic accident, while those were difficult in their own way, this was something entirely different: I felt it a mockery, a parody, a satire, not of the dead, that was all handled quite appropriately, but as if I was in a movie mocking the Christian burial rites or reading an obituary in 'The Onion."  It had nothing to do with those particular people or that particular service, but rather the denomination in whose building I sat and to whose prophets I was listening.  While I live in a very backward and ignorant part of the country (at least as judged by the political and academic and cultural elite of our day), the apostasy of this particular variant of lutheranism hasn't left us untouched.

We are twenty, if not thirty, years behind the social mores of the rest of the nation.  This particular church is still very conservative, at least compared to the rest of the denomination, but it is still part of that denomination.  Let's just say it took them three years to find a replacement pastor, several of their previous candidates were vegan or climate warriors, not a great fit when the local economy is based on oil and beef cattle!  And those aren't even the major issues with this particular denomination, whose more 'enlightened' and progressive elements have strayed into things such as goddess worship, universalism, denying the death and resurrection of Christ, and determining that humans are rather misunderstood and ignorant than sinful.  They wonder why true believers are jumping ship like so many rats?  Paul himself said 'we of all men are most miserable if Christ be not raised.'  I believe that is what was troubling me: here we had all the banners and stained glass and a cross on the wall and all the right words, but there was no Hope, though we are bidden 'grieve, but not as those without hope,' we had lost just that!

If people want to embrace paganism, the divine feminine, the full spectrum of sexual experience, universalism or whatever, by all means that is their choice and right to choose thusly, but why do it under the Christian banner?  If Christ be not raised, what is the point?  Or rather, why are we, mere mortals and created beings, choosing to become God's counselors?  That question was rhetorical by the way, it was not meant as a challenge to modern skeptics that they might 'improve upon' what God hath wrought.  Either God created Man, Man screwed up and broke the world, Christ came (God in the flesh) to pay the Price we owed for our own stupidity and evil, He died and rose again and conquered Death and is coming back, or He is not.  If there is no such thing as sin and evil, why did Christ come and die?  If there are no eternal consequences for our evil, why did He come?  If He is too loving to do such a thing (either to sacrifice His own Son or condemn men for their evil) then he is no god at all, simply a blanky left over from childhood to comfort us in moments of stress or grief or terror.  If man is not broken and creation not ruined by the Fall, where then is our Hope?: if this is it, and we are so intrinsically miserable, how can we ever find Joy?

That is what breaks my heart, we broken and wretched creatures telling God that He is not Love, cannot be Love by such actions, that either sin is not a problem or its cure is too costly and heinous even to be considered possible by enlightened minds.  You take away all hope, you have willingly entered Dante's Inferno whilst ye live: 'abandon hope all ye who enter here!'  For to make God small, to say He is not What and Who He has said He Is, is to utterly doom humanity to eternal darkness and despair, for who can now save us from such wretchedness?  To say that His revealed Word is full of errors and misunderstandings and oversights and misinterpretations and superstitions and yet say it is the basis of your faith is madness: is it or is it not the infallible Word of God, something upon which we can stake our souls?  If it is not, give me an unabridged dictionary or the works of Jane Austen or something equally wise, let me not base my life upon a fallacious document that must be picked apart and scavenged like a carcass nearly picked clean!

They want a small god when it comes to sin and judgement, one that will not hold them accountable for their actions as long as they cling to that much abused word called 'love.'  But they want a big God when it comes to justifying their own good deeds and virtuous thoughts (as defined by themselves), when it comes to punishing those who disagree with the popular social gospel of the moment, when true trials and evils and sorrow and terrors and death assault them, but you cannot have it both ways.  Either God is Who He says He is, or he is not.  Either sin is a problem and God has offered us a cure, or it is not and there is no hope for humanity, either in this age or in the one to come.  As I sat there, the rainbow in one of those beautiful windows mocked me, for in the old story, the rainbow was established by God as a sign that He would not again destroy the world by water, the fate to which the ancient world was condemned for its evil.  Now they wave it about and claim it as their emblem, as if evil itself has been abolished and one may live as one likes as long as it is 'love.'  Little realizing that while God's promise will hold true, the world will not perish in another deluge, evil has not yet been utterly cast into the abyss and the world itself is reserved for fire.  In Noah's day they were eating and drinking, being married and given in marriage, until the flood was upon them and carried them away.  So too is it in our own day, we embrace the promise of Eden's serpent and laugh with him and ask, 'did God really say?!  Are we not gods?'  But such an attitude has ever only earned humanity wretchedness and death, be it the flood or being cast from Eden or finding ourselves cast into the outer darkness upon the very eve of a new and glorious Dawn.

People want authenticity and real and natural, etc. in this day and age, why can we not be honest about our beliefs and worldview as well?  If you embrace Christ and Him crucified, then be so unashamed.  If you cannot handle that, why keep waving that particular flag?  Embrace or reject the tale as it is told, do not reinterpret a classic to fit your opinions!  You know making a beloved book into a movie or remaking a classic movie is always fraught with disaster and the result is often panned as ridiculous by comparison to the original, how much more so with The Story!  Embrace it wholly or toss it out as thoroughly flawed, do not cut and paste the most palatable parts and ignore the rest.  Do not seek the comfort of Christ in death but reject His precepts whilst you live.  Do not demand God's love and acceptance (on your terms) but reject His laws.  Either He is Creator, Lord, Master, Savior, Judge or he is a myth, let us have no more feel good wishy-washy nonsense of an all loving god who is too weak and tepid to discipline his creatures or set any sort of standard for their conduct or pay the terrible price to rescue them.  We would not respect any human parent of that sort, how much less our Heavenly Father?

Good article!

Jane Austen fans click here.  As for the rest of you, why are you here?  Go read some Jane Austen and come back an addict!

The ultimate pursuit of pleasure!

This article was rather refreshing for me: Boldly Seek Joy!  I was raised in a home where the best I could hope for was not to be yelled at, criticized, shamed, or scorned for the indecent act of living, my mere existence was an offense to my mother and she could never see me enjoying anything without finding some fault, some chore, taking the object of my transitory happiness and giving it to another or destroying it, or otherwise raining on my pathetic attempt at a parade.  That is the biggest struggle I've had with this thing called Christianity: a big, bold, impossible God who actually loves and blesses His children.  I just don't get it!

There's that passage about 'as one escaping through fire,' the guy who just barely sneaks into heaven with his burned and ragged clothes and nothing else, yeah, that's me, or what I've always assumed.  Me, the kid who feels guilty for having a birthday and necessitating a present (socially required else she wouldn't bother) from my begrudging mother.  Then there's the greater cultural mentality of 'pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps' and 'the self-made man,' at least for those of us who aren't waiting for Uncle Sam to bail us out.  My family isn't going to do anything for me, everything depends on my own effort, and how good can that be, if my own mother can't love me?  So I hide in the bushes, waiting for everyone else to go on ahead, and then at the last possible moment slink forward to the next place of concealment, waiting for all my betters to have their turn and chance, picking up the crumbs and bits of trash discarded along the way to survive.

And into this wretched little life came a rather impertinent proposition: you have value, you are loved, you are not outcast or forgotten, you can't earn love, you don't need to be ashamed!  Paul says we of all men are most wretched if Christ is not risen, so why do we intentionally live like that?  Either He's risen or He isn't, and if He is, death, sorrow, darkness, evil and all those horrid things have no claim on our immortal souls, we should live lives of Joy, not slink about like a defeated and scattered army.  Why can't I get that through my ridiculous head?  If I believe what I believe, why don't I live like it's true?

The path is difficult, fraught with shadows and trouble, but we walk it not alone, and He Himself has promised us Joy upon the journey, a down payment for that waiting at its end.  C.S. Lewis calls the little pleasures of this life comfortable and refreshing inns along life's often weary journey, to be enjoyed in their turn, but not an end of themselves.  Just because some people live for nothing but pleasure, does not mean the things in themselves are to be utterly scorned, rather don't let them become gods, for jumping off one side of the bridge is little better than falling off the other, rather walk down the middle as was intended!  And everyone is welcome to walk that path, even me!