!! Course Assignment – Koinonia Institute – Mere Christianity !! KWL Responses !

On my way to the next course for my uThM program at KI, I stumbled onto a new course they just released, Mere Christianity, based on the book by C.S. Lewis. It is a book I’ve already wanted to read but never really had enough motivation to actually read it…until now. This post will contain all of my assignment responses for the course.

As a reminder, you can find all of my course assignments for the uThM here.

So, let’s get started….

What Do I Already Know?

I don’t know a whole lot about C.S. Lewis or about his theology. I’ve actually heard about some of the criticism leveled against his work, concerning his watering down of important theological ideas. Likewise, there appears to be a movement within evangelicalism known as “mere christianity” that boils down the gospel into a humanist attempt to broaden and make shallow the narrow gate of Christ crucified. I have seen the three Narnia movies, and though they are well done and interesting (and entertaining), I’m not sure how much theology is decipherable there.

Mere Christianity has been on my “to read” list for several years. I’ve had various copies of the book in different forms. There was also a free course on C.S. Lewis offered by Hillsdale College, but it goes beyond just Mere Christianity, into Lewis’ struggle with doubt, conversion, and covers more of his writing. It might be prudent, if I like this course at KI, to move on to that course as well, while the information is fresh in my mind.

I’m not certain what C.S. Lewis means by “mere christianity.” If he is referring to a faith that is unencumbered by human dogma, without the bindings of denominationalism, or a journey that is less informed by tradition than it is by direct experience with Christ in the genuinely transformed life of an individual wrestling with the truth of God’s message (the Bible), then it might be something I can embrace. If, instead, it is a means to water down the gospel, to placate the fence-sitters so they can have “a form of godliness” but at the same time “deny his power” an deny the risen Lord, or allowing them to live a life of worldiness and debauchery and perpetual sin, then it is really no different than mainstream Christianity of today, with its seeker sensitive sermons, it’s addiction to capitalism, and its incessancy on being relevant in a fallen and debased world.

I would not argue for a Christianity that is founded on philosophy or tradition or denominationalism. Rather, I would argue for a Christianity that is supernatural, for God did reach into my life, he did turn me from the path that I was one, and he did so with no pastor or preacher or evangelist or Bible teacher. I sat essentially alone in a room in the middle of the night, a Gideon Bible in my hands, and that word reached out and snatched my life from me and replaced it with a life for Christ. I, being a free man in denial of God, afterward became Christ’s slave. For the things I wanted to do I could no longer do. The things I wanted to believe I could no longer believe. But, in his mercy and in his grace and love, God replaced all of those faulty and futile things with an abundance of thirst for his Word. It is that thirst for Christ all these years that has driven me deeper and deeper into desolate places, that I might glimpse, that I might taste, that I might know more of Christ and savor in the sacrifice he offered for me.

I look forward to finding out first hand just exactly what C.S. Lewis believed about God, about Jesus, and how he approaches the Bible.

What Do I Want to Learn?

How does Lewis approach the Bible?
What is his overall view of theology?
What is his understanding of the cross and salvation?
What is his view on gifts?
What is his view of sin?
What is his view on Gen 6:2?
Why is this book so popular?

Book One – Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe – What I Learned – Comments

So I just finished the first part in Mere Christianity and I’ve come away a little underwhelmed so far. Much of this section proposed and discussed at great length the idea of a common nature of humanity, and seems to have assigned God to that nature, or, at most, has insinuated that it will eventually get to that point. So far, Lewis keeps stating that we haven’t actually arrived at this point yet. All we have done is establish that there is this common nature that drives people, that speaks to people, and that there his an unseen force or power behind that nature. I would disagree, though, with the entire premise. Either I do not understand his point, or Lewis seems insistent that there his a streak of good inherent to man, a universal moral ethic that permeates the human core. This smacks at the notion that humans are born either fundamentally good or fundamentally neutral pertaining to their proclivity to sin.

Yet, we know from the Bible that it is quite clear: all are born into sin (Ps 51:5) and are born into the image and likeness of Adam (Ge 5:3), having lost both from God. Paul states, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Ro 3:23). As he quotes David, “there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Ro 3:10-12).

But, let’s address the notes I took while reading the first part of the book, and look at all of this in greater detail.

Lewis writes: “[the greatest] service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”

I agree. Though, I think Lewis would be hard-pressed to actually find very much that the church universal has agreed upon throughout church history. In fact, even a cursory exploration of the different epochs of the church will show that most periods are quite different from each other, even to the point that someone like James White today (a Calvinist) could state that Calvin or Luther during the Reformation would most likely have excommunicated White for the beliefs he holds today, if not sentence him to death. This kind of disparity can be felt between so many diverse groups who all claimed Christ in one way or another. Even today’s polarization within Christendom is no pronounced, so hostile, no explosive, that few would extend the right hand of fellowship to anyone other than those most like minded of themselves (of course, there are those who will extend fellowship with just about anyone as well, which is a whole other travesty).

Lewis writes: “Our divisions should never be discussed exception the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son.”

I disagree with this to the extent that putting on such a pretty face of the church is exactly what modern evangelical leaders are already doing today to hide the predominance and prevalence of sin that seems to saturate modern churches today. How many “pastors” (a completely unbiblical title, position, and profession) are mired secretly in pornography, in illicit affairs, in luring children into sexual encounters when they are 15-16 years old and continuing in such destructive and abominable activities for years behind closed doors? The Catholic Church is no better, with their parade of pedophiles and countless priests and monks who carry on relationships with the opposite sex, with the same sex, with children. For a time it was well known for the Pope and for cardinals to have secret families and such was considered commonplace.

I would rather we air all of our dirty laundry. All of our squabbles. All of our black eyes. It is the only way that we can show we are genuine people and it is the only way to be genuine toward ourselves. This whitewashing of the walls for the sake of those outside, to put on a clean face, is a thing of the cults. The mormons and the JWs. The Bible writers did not hesitate to show all sides of those they wrote about. All the dirty deeds, all the sinful acts. I don’t think we should pretty up the pig. We need to recognize and even embrace the fact that we are all sinners saved by grace. We are not beyond the temptations we are tempted by. We need to not only protect ourselves from ourselves, but we need to be honest when we fall victim to our own sins. Personally, I think denominationalism was inevitable. So was the split between Catholicism and Protestantism. Soon, there will be an impassible chasm between biblical Christianity and the rest of the religious that claim Christ but deny his power and efficacy to save them. They will rather satisfy their itching ears with empty platitudes and elicit emotional responses in ecstatic festivals (Sunday Services) rather than in the truth of the cross.

Lewis said: “There are questions at issue with Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer.”

I agree wholeheartedly with tis statement. There are so many more questions than there are answers that we simply have not been granted access to. Whether it be privileged information, trade secrets, or parts of the supernatural reality that God really would rather we to know about (I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t). All I can surmise is those answers that we have yet to receive have been withheld simply because knowing is not faith and faith seems to be the central theme to this redemptive narrative of God’s. He is continually, insesently calling us to trust him, to lean on him (Pr 3:5) in and for absolutely everything. Everything in my life has been lost for the sake of Christ. My hobbies, my pastimes, my job, my relationships, they have all been given over, surrendered to the will of the Father, conformed to the image and likeness of Christ Jesus (Ro 8:9). The very highlight of my daily existence has become, even just recently, the time in which I spend every day talking to him. Sharing with him my concerns, asking about things that have happened in my life, arguing with him concerning the convictions he’s placed on my heart, the burdens he’s laid on my soul. And I believe and have believed all these years, despite most of my questions going unanswered. God has hedged me in. He has protected me from my myself. He has protected me from others. All so I will rely on him and only him for everything.

Lewis writes: “objections have been expressed against my use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity.”

I would argue that this is not enough to be a Christian. Though, I would not necessarily adopt the term Christian to identify myself at any rate. It was a derogatory term first used to denote those who were “followers of the way,” those who belonged to that Jewish cult that claimed the Messiah had come but instead of freeing the Jewish captives had been killed by those who he had come to save. To simply accept the common doctrines of Christianity means nothing but you have adopted a religion with its outward rules and practices while the inward soul is largely left unchanged. To be a “biblical Christian” is to be one who is reborn, who has been transformed, who has from the inside out been altered. The “I” that entered the hospital room in the middle of the night and subsequently sat in my chair where I had been keeping watch over my sleeping girlfriend, was not the same “I” that left the next morning. I was supernaturally changed. And I can’t even describe exactly what took place, or how that transformation occurred. It was not a willing process. There was certainly no informed consent. It happened to me. It was something that I experienced in such a profound way that the very next day I return to school declaring that I was now a Christian with certainty. I don’t know why I would say such things. In fact, I lost friends over it. I lost followers who were listening to me teach about Buddhism at 17 years old. Certainly, if it had not been for Christ and my rebirth that night, I would have gone on to start a Martial Arts school or a Buddhist temple or monastery. I would have possibly gone on to college and sought graduate level work in such knowledge and would have infected so many with such great a poison. But God changed all that. He took it all away from me, against my will, and I had no idea why or how or what I was supposed to do next. Christianity, to me, has never been about accepting doctrines or embracing certain teachings. It’s about an intimate, deep-welled relationship with the creator of the universe and the one who knitted together my bones and formed me before I knew anything or anyone and fashioned all the days of my life before I had lived any one of them. Christianity is a death to the world, to the flesh, to the will, and it is life reborn, not on earth but in heaven, in a kingdom not of this world.

Lewis wrote, “the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.”

I would argue that the word “Christian” has already been spoiled beyond redemption. It is already too broadly and loosely used to have much meaning at all. For there are Christians today who can deny the work on the Cross, who can deny the divine inspiration of the Word, who can argue against the direct interaction of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, and yet they can with great confidence still claim the Christianity title. I typically today feel a necessity to distinguish “biblical Christianity” from all that which is other than “biblical.” To be a biblical Christian is to be one who holds to divine inspiration, who has at least attempted to model his life after the instructions found there within. It is to be one who seeks to walk in the Spirit, who listens intently to the Sprit, who seeks sanctification. It is not a social group. It is not a welfare system or a social justice movement. It is radical, but not in the way they would like it to be. It does not claim rights based on the wrongs of the past. In fact, it strips the believer of every right they have in this world, rendering them a slave to their God and King, to their fellow man, to their enemy. Biblical Christianity is the antithesis of everything that the world stands for.

Lewis writes: “…men not exactly obedient to any communion.”

It is always confusing to me how people conflate religion with Christ. Being obedient to a religion or a dogma is in no way being a follower of Christ. Jesus disregarded the religion of his day. He healed on the sabbath, he overturned the capitalist tables in the temple. He criticized the scribes and pharisees. He corrects their twisting of Scripture. He condemns them for their hardened hearts. He holds them responsible for the time of his arrival and he prophecies their ultimate destruction and the destruction of everything they hold most dear.

I do not currently have fellowship with any modern, organized church. Though, such is not out of objection to the concept of “assembling ourselves together” or because it interferes with my worldly affairs or my favorite sports (which I have none) or so that I can go and shipwreck my faith in all manner of wine, women, and song. I have sought out fellowships and found them entirely wanting. They are shadows of the Christ I know. Their teachings are geared entirely for individuals who rarely if ever crack their bibles that sit perpetually on the shelf. Their programs are geared, not to build up the body of Christ, but to entertain, to babysit, to distract.

I can’t say I have a solution. KI has been part of that solution for myself. It has served as genuine fellowship, edification, and encouragement in what would otherwise be complete isolation (which I’m not opposed of). So, in a sense, KI has been my local fellowship over the last several years. While brick and mortal churches are boxed up and sold off to become office buildings and youth centers, I’m able to find fellowship with other believers from all walks of life and from all over the world. It is with KI that I have my communion. Not because Dr. Missler is a god-like teacher or leader, but because he preached the word, even in all his faults, regardless of feathers that were ruffled. His work is but one component to the ministry that is still active in my life and in the lives of those I interact with every day.

Lewis wrote: “some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to do so.”

So, if Lewis is referring to different doors of religion there is one argument to be made. If he is referring to differing doors of Christianity, there is an entirely other. “no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). There are not many roads that lead to a saving grace, to redemption of the soul.

I am the one who immediately finds the door I’m looking for. Or even the door I never knew I wanted to go through or that it even existed or even where the door would lead me if I went through it. That was my first experience with Christianity. I simply had no idea what I was getting into, and it wasn’t myself getting me into it. Rather I went through the door kicking and screaming, desperate to get back to my old life, back to my Buddhist life, back to the joy I had for years received from studying the martial arts, from meditating. Some people I’ve met since had apparently made a logical deduction toward Christ. They knew that they did not want to burn in hell and even the slightest chance that they might was enough to send them. Others I’ve met were raised in the “culture” of the “church,” yet really were no different than anyone else in the world. In fact, I would say the majority of those I’ve met in the last 30 years who claimed some kind of Christ were not actually referring to the Christ I’ve come to know. Whether it is the word-faith, name it and claim it Christ, or the watered down Baptist Christ, or the absent Christ of the mainline denominations, few, I think, have experienced an actual transformation from who they had once been to who they have become in him.

But, I cannot for them define who Christ is. Just as no one can tell me that the Christ I have come to know is a counterfeit. I’m sure he is a counterfeit to many if not most. In fact, my Christ has offended many, has driven people away from me. He seems to repel more than he attracts. But why wouldn’t he? Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it” (Matt 7:13). There are many on the board road, moving through the wide gate. If there were not, it would be narrow. As he has said, “many go by it.” So it is not a surprise that there are different doors and people spend varying amounts of time in the hallway debating, defining, considering which door to go in. Some never really stay to choose a door at all, but leave by the same way that they came into the hallway in the first place. And, as Jesus often quipped, “they have their reward.”

The idea that all these different doors within the Christian faith are valid (after all, Jesus makes it clear that any other way to the Father is counterfeit – “All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved…” (John 10:8). Paul was likewise convinced that all the rest of the world’s religions were demon worship (1 Co 10:20). This notion that there are many paths to God that the Pope or even Billy Graham believe in is erroneous. Jesus was quite clear and one day he will make certain that everyone is aware of his singular authority over both heaven and earth, “Every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess” (Isaiah 45:23; Ro 14:11).

Lewis wrote, “[our assessment of a Church] should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here?”

I would go further and state that our assessment should also include, “Am I able to serve here both Christ and the church? Would my presence here benefit believers or only cause additional strife and division? Is the leadership of this place biblical, or are they driven by compromise, by secrecy, by the imperative to protect their professions, by doctrines and traditions of men and demons? In my twenties I spent much of my time trying to serve one church or another. Yet, every congregation I found I quickly realized they were strangled by those things listed above and so much more. Many reflected the world around them clearly, with no distinction. Many “pastors” held a tight grip on their programs and their systems so as to protect their money making schemes.

That is not to say there have not been a few hidden gems throughout the 30 years that I’ve known Christ. There have been house churches. Fellowships in the back of tire shops tucked away in tiny towns. But, those glimpses have been occasional and quite rare. Too rare. Today, I’ve spent significant time looking for a church in my local area without success. They are too often plagued by unbiblical ideologies, infected with the current madness of a fallen culture, or have so strangled the Holy Spirit with their traditions that whatever constitutes their “assembling together of yourselves” it is ultimately dead and rotten fruit on the vine.

Lewis writes, “What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?“

This is an interesting question he poses, though I think he has addressed it incorrectly. His notion that there is a universal Right is at the heart of his error. Again and again, the same phrase shows up throughout the biblical text, “there is none who does good” (Ps 14:1, 3; 53:1, 3). So important is the concept that Paul quotes it again in Ro 3:12.

I’m not certain I understand where Lewis derives this idea of a universal good. A universal right. The example he provides is likewise incorrect. The Americans were not Right in their fighting of the wars against Germany, and neither were the Nazis in the atrocities they committed. In fact, the good and right that Lewis speaks of was prevalent on both sides of the war. The Americans certainly thought they were doing right to defend “freedom” and to help rid the world of fascism and the Third Reich. But the same intensity and sense of right was found in the Germans who sent their brave young men off to war, many to die in countless numbers. Once the war was over, what then? Who was right? Who was in the wrong? How can we tell? Americans certainly did not kill millions of Jews in concentration camps. But we certainly barred minorities from establishments, from transportation, and imprisoned Japanese in concentration camps of our own, on our own soil. We Americans, we Westerners are not nearly as innocent of wrong-doing as we like to think. Might does not make right, and make no mistake, it has been brute might that has kept American culture on top for the last 100 years. Not morality. Not our so called “christian” culture or foundations (which if one actually reads the writings of the Founding fathers you quickly realize that they were not advocating for a “christian” or “biblical” country or society, but for a free society where everyone from every faith could be unencumbered in their religious and economic pursuits).

Currently, in the US proxy war with Russia, we blast Russians for invading a sovereign country like Ukraine, yet it seems to fall on deaf ears that we have spent the last 20 years in two wars where we invaded and simply never left. And for no reason at all! In fact, the last three wars we have fought in the last century have resulted only in death and carnage on all sides, and the only net gain has been the enrichment of the war mongers and military industrial complex.

There is no “right” in war. There is only wrong. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes it is unavoidable, as as Ukraine’s fight against the Russians. Their lives are forever changed now. Gone are the days of just six months ago, a year ago, when their children were born in safety and peace, where their young women and young men paired off and started raising families and fostered hopes and dreams. Now all there is are graves and split blood, and people cowering in bunkers and atrocities at the hands of – men. That’s all they are. They are just men. Mortal men. Incapable of doing good. And even those that find a way to do good, they do so with blood soak hands, with hands contaminated by the sins of their youth, by the sins of the flesh, by the sins of their fathers. Aside from Christ working in the life of a man, there is no hope for any of us. There is no hope aside for the hope we have in the resurrection. Paul states that if we have this hope in this life only, in that there comes a day when we all realize that no resurrection is to come, that we are the most pitiable of men. But I disagree with him. Regardless of the realization of the resurrection (of which I am utterly convinced), the change in the biblical believer is better for him and the world. It is better for him to die in the hope of Christ who never raises him than for him to die with no hope at all. Or, would it be better, with no hope, to fill our days with debauchery and all manner of sin, where we abuse and mistreat women, where we are drunkards and preoccupy our time on this earth with futile things like sports and entertainments? I argue that a life lived for Christ is far better, regardless of its eventual validity. For, if one dies in Christ, with the hope of Christ and the hope of resurrection, he dies with that hope. If there is no resurrection, he still died fully convinced and believing that the resurrection was to come. He will never know that he was incorrect. He will never experience disappointment. His memory of it may even endure long after he has died, spreading hope to other men who will in turn die fully convinced. Yet, I still fully believe that my hope in the resurrection will not return to me void. I am convinced that “he who has begun a good work in me will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

Right and wrong are relative terms. They really don’t mean anything on earth. Right in heaven is whatever God determines within his own mind to do. To think. To make occur. If God were to change his mind tomorrow and wipe humanity from the planet, we would have no recourse. No standing to object. God made us. He fashioned the earth. He has allowed us to continue in a state of existence that we were never intended to exist in. God is within his prerogative to change his mind about the lot of us. In his purging of the earth, he could even decide that humanity has no hope, that even in Christ there is no means of rehabilitation. He could decide at any moment that we are not worth the trouble, and toss Hades and all the disembodies souls entrapped therein, into the Lake of Fire and he would be right and just in doing so. Yet, Christians throughout the centuries have repeatedly argued that God’s moral compass must match our own. God must cater to our own insecure sensibilities. Our own self-importance and our own concept of individual autonomy. So says the spider in my house right before I kill it with my shoe. I have no qualms about causing the death of this poor, helpless creature. It is quite possible that God has already dispatched countless prior creations before this one we find ourselves in. There is no way to know. But how arrogant to think we have any say in the matter.

Lewis wrote, “Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or fo ur. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have an y woman you liked.”

This kind of thinking has actually been proved false. Men take what they want. They take the women they want and rarely do they apologize for their actions. This universal moral right that Lewis speaks of is responsible for countless marriages being destroyed because a man thought he wanted another man’s wife and simply made her his. He went out of his way to steal that which did not belong to him. Countless women have done the same. Out of boredom, out of disillusionment, out of lust, out of greed and wanton for material things, countless women have gone after another woman’s man, wreaking havoc in their wake.

Lewis makes it seem as if men have acted with a sound mind and sensibility when it comes to love and sex and marriage. But nothing could be further from the truth. Men have not differed on how many wives one could or should have. Man has what he desires. If he desires to have but one wife, then that is what he strives for. If he desires instead to have a harem, then next to nothing will stop him. No argument, no justification, no theology, no appear to a higher power, will keep him from his task. And most often than not, such a man will, indeed, find himself numerous women who are more than willing to share him with another.

Likewise, to say that men have agreed commonly that they would not simply have any woman they like is speaking, obviously, without referring to history or to the modern era. Maybe there was such a prohibition ingrained in most men back when Lewis was alive, but such is not the case today. Our western society today has come to the consensus that certain men will have the lion’s share of available women, while the majority of men will go without. Between dating apps, and social media, many if not most men now find themselves unmarketable to the opposite sex. And many women seem more than willing to share these alpha males with the rest of the women in his unofficial harem. Because that’s what is actually taking place. It is not a free for all, but a free for some and nothing for most.

Now, I do not say any of this as a man who has been left out of the party. After my divorce, I made the decision then that marriage was inherently too risky to pursue again. Because of my faith I was prevented in seeking a casual relationship with someone of the opposite sex. And despite several women making it known that they were interested in such over the last 13 years, I have been successful in turning a blind eye to their advances. My experience on dating apps lasted exactly 2 weeks, with short conversations with 3 women. One said I was too wholesome for her (this made me laugh because it was true). The others two I never gave the time of day to before I quickly deleted my profile, knowing full well I wanted nothing to do with this new system our culture has concocted (when I met and courted my wife there was no ubiquitous internet, no smartphones, and no social media to get in the way).

Men of the world do what they want and follow after the lusts of their flesh. Unregenerate men can only do this, and as God concluded back in the very beginning, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Ge 6:5). Men only are in agreement concerning one thing – the proliferation of their own sin.

Lewis wrote, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the sameman going back on this a moment later.”

This is true of the man who denies the existence of many kind of moral law and one who is himself without Christ. But such is driven not by a universal moral good, but out of a personal self-interest. It is the unspoken rule for thee but not for me that is at work. They never, truly, want to take their anarchy to is full conclusion. If they did, they would end up facing me. If Christ has not interceded in my life when he did, before I was ever released from my parent’s control and limits and before I had grown in confidence and had a chance for the rage and anger that was brewing within me from a young age to fester into adulthood, if he had not taken from me those pieces that drove me back then, I would have ended up being a serial killer.

Ted Bundy was interviewed just before his execution. He recounted his childhood as being nearly ideal. He was raised in a very loving, Christian home. He had never been physically or sexually abused. But, the sin nature within him had been exposed to pornography at a young age, and that exposure was given the fertile soil of a young man’s mind and heart. He claimed that it was that exposure to pornography and then the subsequent increase of its use later in his teen years and young adult life that ultimately awoke within him the monster that did horrible things to young women in his reign of terror.

I had not been exposed to such pornography as a child, and, yet, I recognized at an early age a drive, a thirst, a propensity to hurt, to want to see others in pain. It was not the whole of me, certainly. It was not much or most of me. But it was part of me. And that part was nurtured by interaction with everyone around me. Every wrong. Every slight. Every rejection. Every abandonment. It all fueled the monster that was growing within me.

I, personally, imagine, if God had not removed Buddhism and the Martial Arts from my life when he did, if he had not replaced them with an insatiable thirst for his Word, to consume his word, to devote much of my idle time to the study of his Word, it would have taken only the failure of a first marriage to have sent me spiraling out of control, to the point that the monster within me would have been released.

Instead, when my first marriage ended, I had God with me, within me. I was able to take up his yoke and give to him all my pain and all my hurt and all the abandonment and all the betrayal. He stood by me in those dark times when I couldn’t think straight, when I was struggling to put my life back together again, piece by piece. If he had not been there during those times, I am certain I know how I would have dealt with those emotions and the pain. Rather than today writing stories and novels about such things, I would be living them in secret. I would be collecting. Preying. Hunting. Receiving my pound of flesh.

But the man who does not have supernatural intervention by his creator is left with only a marred and sickly human nature. He does not want to think that there are people out there like me, how would hurt for the sheer pleasure of it if not for God holding them back. Monsters in human form. So they cry for freedom from judgment or criticism as long as that judgment and criticism continue for the other. But, if liberals and pro-choice supporters ran their logic to its natural end, they would recognize that to claim the right to end an unborn life is theirs to make, I, too, would have the same right to end their life. They claim the unborn child is a burden on their freedom, on their lifestyle, on their careers. Agreed. Raising children is truly a difficult task. But my burden was not children. It was humanity. It was humanities’ very existence. It was my interaction with humanity. With individuals. They were a net negative on my freedom, on my lifestyle. So, by transfer, I can claim the same argument that I can murder and cause mayhem at will, wreak suffering to my heart’s content because I simply have the right to do so.

Soon we will see this argument spread into hurting children (we actually already see it now), just as they did in Ancient Rome. Anarchy is, for these people, in theory only. They do not want the logical outcomes of their arguments.

Lewis wrote, “at human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that t hey ought to behave in a certain way”

I think this is the fundamental flaw in the reasoning behind his entire argument thus far. There is no idea of how we out to behave. There are constantly competing ideas, competing forces. The elites believe they are chosen by fate, by the powers that be, to rule over the masses. The masses are tired and broken and just want peace and distraction and reprieve. Those in the middle only what what will perpetuate their own lifestyle or will help one day propel them to the ranks of the elite. Few if any willingly step down a caste level or two. I did and have loved that choice. I went from making a lot of money (which is relative since what I think is a lot is still a poor man’s wage) to making next to nothing, yet I freed myself from the monotony of enslavement. I now have the leisure time I’ve always wanted so I can dedicate the bulk of my energy, not to a company or a career or a job, but to the study of the Bible, to reading books and stories deeply and often, to writing and to exploring philosophy. I now have double the money I need to live on, own my house outright, live in paradise, and am captive to few vices (sugar, processed food). Up until recently, I had everything I could ever want. And even now, I have Christ, so those things that he has returned to me that are uncomfortable, they are nothing against to the grace and the power and the peace of Jesus my King.

Lewis wrote, “But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away.”

I disagree. The only time I’ve found this to be the case was after Christ had transformed my life, that I had been reborn supernaturally, that the Holy Spirit had taken up residence in my soul. That third thing Lewis refers to here is not present in the mind of any lost man. Sometimes men do good things and sometimes they do bad things. The nature of that thing they do is relative to some extent. When my wife abandoned our marriage, when she violated her vows, it was a net good for her. She got what she wanted. She was free of my pointing out that something was wrong. She knew there was something wrong the whole time, but she did not, could not dare address it, because it would risk her very sanity if she pulled on those psychological threads too hard. And I think, even if only subconsciously, she knew the kind of marriage I wanted she could never provide. Her choice was to set fire to us so that she could escape unscathed. As for me, in the end she left me to burn. I remained in those flames, maybe even for the last 13 years. So, there is no easy formula to human will. It is a mess within. There are not three, but a myriad of conflicting impulses at work in the mind and soul of an unregenerate individual. In the mind and soul of a follower of Christ, there is, indeed, a voice within that rules over them all, if we actually allow the Spirit his rightful place to lead. If not, he is but one small voice more often than not being drowned out by the cacophony of other imposes and voices in our heads.

Lewis wrote: “the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.”

Actually, the reason we do not execute witches for the active of witchcraft is due to the dominate materialist view of western society. The reality is, before that view took hold, we actually did execute witches. There are actually witches and there is actually witchcraft. The craze and panic it caused in the 1990’s in America is credit to that fact. Deep-seated, though, in our cultural psychological is the disbelief that there is a supernatural or that the supernatural can hurt us. We have relegated such things to entertainment. We no longer believe in what goes bump in the night.

Lewis wrote, “we could not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”

I find this an interesting proposition, since perception is quite deceiving at times. Did the man stop setting the traps because he had good reason to believe there were no mice? Maybe they stopped setting off the traps. I can attest, I stopped setting my traps in my house because the rats stopped coming in. But I don’t know for sure that there are no rats in my house. It has been years since I’ve found one. Another reason, though, that I stopped setting the traps was they were not big enough to instantly kill the large rats coming in. These rats were enormous, black, ghastly creatures. Yet, despite their horrible physical appearance, I detested the torture these creatures went through, dragging the traps around my kitchen, unable to get free, unable to die. On several occasions I had to get up and grab my grass sickle and dispatch them myself. It was godawful work.

But, to my surprise, the creatures stopped (or presumably stopped) coming into my house. I attribute it to a rise in stray cats who do not get fed, but are living off the rat and mice population in and around my house. I occasionally hear the cats dispatching their next victim in between the houses at night, or even under my floors. The cats have left random body parts on my front step, which I simply ignore and within a day those random parts are scooped up as food for some passing by feline.

Lewis wrote: “A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame t he second man and do not blame the first.”

I’m not certain I understand this statement. Why are you, the individual being wronged, interested in saving seats on a train? Why are you blaming anyone for anything on public transportation, when all the seats are first come first served? I neither make a habit of riding public transportation, nor do I save seats if I ever do. It is a fools errand because you are dealing with the public. I understand he’s trying to paint a picture with this example of the innate sense of right and wrong, but it simply does not hold up in my mind. The wrong, at least in my opinion, is in the faulty example itself. I’m likewise doubtful if someone would move a stranger’s bag to take their seat. They might certainly take a stranger’s bag, but despite it being theft to take such a bag, it was the fault of the bag owner for leaving their bag unattended in the first place. I likewise do not make a habit of leaving bags unattended in public places. Nor do I make a habit of, once I’ve taken my seat on public transportation, getting up for any reason until I’ve reached my destination. If such things have been Lewis’ experiences in the real world, he should cease frequenting those kinds of public transport. The caliber of people he is riding with is substandard at best.

Lewis wrote, “Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you can not have any real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair,”

I really don’t know what kind of society Lewis is living in, but I can attest, there is nothing about western society that is fair or happy or safe. People find themselves in jackpots all the time. Few if any could actually describe themselves as being happy. Nothing is fair. In fact, society, at least today if not throughout human history, has been rigged against most people. Privilege is extended to those who are wealthy, to those who wield power and influence, and to those who are willing to cut corners and act immorally within the unspoken rules of the system. Members of the US Congress are utterly and completely corrupt, and are allowed to do things that if I did would land me swiftly behind bars. Yet, for them it is both ethical and legal, simply because they are the ones who make the rules. This is fundamentally unfair. The slanted social system in the US today is unequal. Promiscuity has not leveled the playing field, but has shrank it, and left only a few at the top and the rest abandoned. And this is not just an American occurrence. Because of the 1 child policy in China and their unofficial male preferred culture, today’s young males in China are finding it more difficult than ever to engage with the opposite sex, let alone find a woman who is willing to settle down, marry, especially those in rural areas. There is nothing true in Lewis’ statements, especially about the world that operates under the influence of the prince of the air. There is simply no universal good within humanity, and I’m not certain I know where he’s getting this from.

Lewis wrote: “and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently.”

People by and large do not act decently. The proliferation of casual sex, pornography, and serial divorce illustrate this fact. Likewise, the very definition of decent is wide and vast. What a biblical Christian would define as decent behavior is much different than what a cultural Christian would, and both would define it differently than a non-religious. If, for example, I have two women to choose from as a wife. One woman is an atheist and has no interest in the Bible or in living a godly life. The other woman is a biblical woman, and would be a godly wife to her husband. The differences between these two women is as stark as night and day. The atheist man might definitely view the worldly woman as the best mate, since she will drink with him, carouse with him, may even do some sexual things with him that the godly woman would never once even consider. The biblical man is actually limited by Scripture on which woman he could marry, and rightly so. If he married the wayward woman, he would quickly find himself fighting an uphill battle that never ends. He will struggle to get his wife to do the dishes let alone take responsibility of the home or pray for him or even pray with him. Yet, in the biblical woman, he finds rest, a true help for his soul, a woman who dedicates her days in the home, toiling in prayer for her husband and their family, in the raising of their children, in true spiritual, emotional connection with each and every physical touch.

To behave decently is motivated by a multitude of stimuli. It could be concern for how they might be perceived by others. The impetus that has driven much of my behavior over the last 13 years has been God’s perception of me, his opinion, whether or not I find favor in his sight. I could care less what human opinion is of me, good or ill.

Lewis wrote: “Why ought I to be unselfish?’ and you reply ‘Because it is good for society,’”

This is categorically false. First off, people rarely ask this kind of question of themselves. Most people are driven almost entirely by self-interested, by selfishness, and self preservation. Rarely do they rise above their own innate needs or wants and consider the well-being of the other. Certainly, if the question is ever even asked, they never answer as Lewis claims here. People do not act unselfishly because it is “good for society.” Often they act unselfishly in order to later selfishly claim their unselfish act to deem themselves righteous. Jesus said, “when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will himself reward you openly” (Matt 6:3-4). Yet, rarely if ever do people, even Christians, do unselfish things in such a way that it can’t be easily traced back to them. In fact, the entire unbiblical tithing system in modern christianity is predicated on receiving earthly credit (also allows the professional clergy to better cater to those who give the most).

Lewis wrote: “Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there.”

Romans 1 addresses this. because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:19–21).

Man has not wondered about the universe or its origin. Rather, he has actively and consistently rejected what is knowable about both. He willfully denies the existence of God. He arrogantly devises fanciful myths as alternative explanations.

Lewis wrote: “There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God fort he last hundred years. That is not what I am offering.You can cut all that out.”

I couldn’t have agreed more with Lewis on this one point, if on no other point in the first part of the book. Much of if not most of what comprises Christianity today (and the past 100 years) has been nothing but feel good positivity, nationalism, and capitalism mascaraing as religion. Much of protestantism and especially evangelicalism serves the god Mammon rather than the God of the Bible. It is simply a means for profiteers to trade their wares, to gather together a captive audience, for pedophiles to groom unsuspecting children into licentious relationships, and for power hungry Nicolaitans to lord it over the sheep.

The shallow doctrine propagated in most churches today is abysmal at best. It is designed to keep people placid, satisfied on milk alone, engendering no one seek out meat form the word. In fact, most sermons are geared specifically for people who rarely if ever pick up or read their Bible at all, is often filled to the brim with empty platitudes and useless stories that have really no bearing on God or Christ or the cross or what it means to be truly transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I would have to say, after the first part of this book, I come away dismayed. C. S. Lewis has been hailed as a genius, his work as a masterpiece. But I find the arguments having little to no weight. The premise of a universal human nature or universal moral ethic is unfounded in both Scripture and in daily, practical life. No one is driven to the good universally. There is in man no inherent good absent Christ. All we inherit is immorality and decay, a nature stunted and atrophied by the actions of the first man, and can only be completely replaced by the actions of the last man, Christ. Man is otherwise, inherently, irredeemable.

Book Two – What Christians Believe – What I Learned – Comments

Lots of interesting information here in this second part of Mere Christianity.

Lewis writes: “the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort”

I would agree with this to an extent. Lewis is much closer to the biblical description of Christianity than modern Evangelicalism is, especially with its rampant positive psychology that seems insistent that if you are not always “happy” as a Christian then you’re doing something wrong. There is, in my experience, an “unspeakable comfort” in my faith, on account of my faith. Though, I would disagree with Lewis in that this comfort was not present in the beginning. It was. It was for me immediate. Faith. Comfort. Peace. All these things manifested despite me knowing nothing of Christ, nothing of the Bible. This is, I can only assume, because it was a supernatural transformation that pre-dated the gaining of knowledge. I couldn’t help but believe. Couldn’t help but accept. I didn’t want to. I had no desire or reason to. But I was nonetheless compelled. The comfort was one of God’s gifts to me, alone with certainty (at times). Today, 30 years later, God is still comforting me. I don’t think it is the comfort that has increased in that intervening time, but my capacity to feel it, my sensitivity to it’s presence. Likewise, my need for it, as I draw further away from the flesh, from the things and the behaviors and habits that I’ve depended on for so long to satiate my cravings, my desires, my proclivities, how much greater the need to accept that comforting from God.

Lewis writes: “If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.”

I would wholeheartedly disagree. Paul is quite clear that the beliefs from other religions are nothing more than doctrines of demons or doctrines of men. They are a lie. This was brought up often in my discussions with my would be wife when we first met at work. We would spend the whole shift talking about God, about the Bible, about her religion, Wicca. I gently introduced her to the reality that Wicca was a lie perpetrated by the devil. That, in reality, one might as well just be honest and become a satanist than waste their time on other religions that have mythic worldviews with gods who are either deaf, blind, and dumb, or are actually demons in disguise. Their power ultimately originates from the Father of Lies. This idea that merit can be found in other religions flies in the face of Jesus’ “he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber” (John 10:1). There is no redemptive power in any other religion. In fact, as Peter stated, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Lewis writes: “As in arithmetic–there is only one right answer to a sum”

I found this reference quite interesting and wonder what Lewis would think of the current debates in the field of mathematics, or, more specifically, in the field of education (which really is now just indoctrination) which states that it is not the actual answer that is correct but the effort behind trying to arrive at the correct answer. If student A thinks the answer to 1+1=3, that student is just as right as student B who thinks the answer is 2. What we are seeing today is simply the fulfillment of Isaiah 5:20 with those who call evil good, and good evil.

Lewis writes: “the majority, who believe in some kind of God or gods, and the minority who do not.”

It is possible in Lewis’ day that this statement would be correct. It is not in the current age in which we live. But, I was surprised to see the actual statistics: 81% in the US believe in “god” while 17% do not. Only 42% believe God hears their prayers and actually intervenes on their behalf. 85% of the world’s population has a religious identification. Of those people, 31.5% are Christian, 23.2% are Muslim, 15% Hindus, and 7.1% Buddhist.

But, all of these statistics are misleading. Of that Christian group, included are 50.1% that are Catholic. 36.7% Protestant, 11.9% Orthodox, and 1.3% identify as something else entirely. Another fascinating statistic, 26.7% of the overall global Christian population is Charismatic. This means you can half that number of actual Christians since 50% of the world’s population of Christians are Catholic. That leaves about 3 billion as some kind of Christian other than Catholic. That’s only 42% of the world’s population, and much less than what Lewis suggests. I would also argue that this certainly includes groups like Mormons and JWs, which would need to be subtracted. To remove also the Charismatic “believers” you would have to subtract at least 20% from that same total = 2.4 billion. There are approximately 24 billion in the mormons and JWs combined. It would reduce the total number to 2.2 billion. But, we would have to reduce this number even further by subtracting the majority of main line Protestant denominations along with all the modern evangelical cult-like groups that place a heavy emphasis on shallow, sentimentally driven “activities” rather than on biblical study. I would reduce the total number to 1 billion. Much, much smaller number than Lewis claims.

Lewis writes: “things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story.”

I’ve often pondered this idea, that we are nothing more than a story being created in the mind of God, that the physical universe, this reality in which we exist, is nothing more than God’s mental faculties at work. If at any point God ceased thinking about us, we would in turn cease to exist. This thought makes me extrapolate to the stories I make up in my own head and eventually write down in novel form. Are the characters I create real? Are they as real as I am? Do they live to the extent that I give them action and being through my mental processes, through my fantasizing about them. I can think on and ponder and piece together stories over the course of months and years. Are these beings existing independent lives from the original inception I created? Are stories that we read from other writers real as well? Are the characters existing in a different reality, a different dimensionality, than the one I exist in? Or are they purely make-believe and have no consciousness and are not self-aware. When we stop reading do they cease to exist, freeze in time until I begin to read again? Are they aware of this pause in their reality? How can we qualify that our reality and our existence is any more or less real than the existence of those other book characters?

Lewis writes: “God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”

I chuckled at this statement. Is he really insinuating that God desires humans to rectify what Adam broke? If so this is in clear violation of Romans 5:12, “just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.” (Romans 5:12, 15).

This is not something that humanity can fix with good efforts or morality. The very best we could ever offer would be a pittance of what is required. The objective of Satan was not to make it difficult for humans to redeem themselves and escape their imprisonment, but that it would be impossible. The problem with humanity could only be resolved by God himself.

Lewis wrote: “a fish would not feel wet.”

This is interesting. I think fish can feel wet. At least, I know when I am dry. I know when I am clean. Though these “things” are somewhat cultural, as there have been times in human history where it was inappropriate to bath very much if at all. Some people lived their whole lives without getting “clean” as I would describe it with a shower every day, running water, indoor plumbing, etc. There are also large parts of the globe that view hygiene much differently than we do in the west. Some places it is routine to take a shower multiple times a day, simply because of the excruciating heat. Some places, because of a lack of water, do not shower but take baths with a bucket. Other places it is still customary to bathe and wash clothes in the closest river or stream.

Maybe a closer comparison would be the fish being wet to humans breathing. But fish also breathe, they just do so differently than humans do. Humans use air as a medium to access oxygen, while fish use the medium of water to acquire oxygen. I would imagine the fish certainly do feel their “wetness” as being correct and immediately feel incorrect when they are yanked out of the water and tossed onto dry land. Certainly the more immediate issue is their inability to breathe in air and their impending death looms large. But if they were hooked to a tank or managed to figure out how to breathe in air, they would certainly, I assume, feel the dryness of their scales. Every time I step into the shower, I immediately notice when the water hits my skin and I become “wet.” Humans are versatile enough that we enjoy getting wet on a daily basis. We have showers, bathtubs, hot tubs, swimming pools, and even enjoy the occasional dip in the nearby lake. It’s not indistinguishable from being normally dry. I would imagine it is the same for the fish.

Lewis wrote, “Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong,”

I argue against the idea that we know that the world was good at one point. I’ve never witnessed the world being good. No one save Adam and Eve have seen the good world God initially created and it was, presumably, much different than the world we see today. It might be more accurate to say he world had been good rather than the world is good. It is no longer good because it went wrong.

Lewis wrote: “have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad.”

Lewis is here stating that even bad people are bad simply to get something that is good. But, if a Satanist makes a list of individuals from a phone book or just people he does not like (or even people he does like) and uses that list and prays to Satan, praying that those people’s marriages will break up, that their children will have harm come to them, that they will get sick, or that they will lose the things they value, the Satanist is doing so not so that he might gain something “good” from his endeavor (yes, Satanists actually do this). He is praying simply for bad to happen because he is submitted to and enslaved by his Lord, Satan. Right or wrong, correct or incorrect, he’s not trying to short-circuit a good system.

As for myself, my tendencies toward evil, I think, are quite similar to how Lewis describes. They are a shortcut to “good things,” things that are corrupted by the flesh, that could be “good” in the right context, but such context carries with it so many additional responsibilities an obligations to render the thing nearly unattainable (or possibly not worth the original good thing). In the context of marriage, the disciples certainly came to this conclusion when they said, “If this is the way it is with a husband and his wife, it is better not to marry.” I could desire some form of power or the feeling of having power, and yet the fleshly desire is to seek such power through illicit means. I might seek gratification, but through shortcuts, through superficiality, through shallowness, through objectification.

In this sense Lewis is correct. But I do not think it is universally so. Additionally, I think there are contexts in which people do intentionally do bad things simply because they are bad things, with no other motive behind it.

Lewis wrote: “You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.”

The first part of this statement I would argue is simply not true. While I suppose it is technically possible, I disagree that it is ever realized in this manner. People typically do not do good for the sake of goodness. They do good for a myriad of reasons, typically selfish reasons. Even good deeds – feeding the poor, giving to worthy causes, random kindness – is all a cloak for the dopamine hit that arises from doing things you like or for feeling as if you are a good or worthy person. It all originates in pride and puffs up. Several notes pertaining to this from the text really seem to have Lewis attempting to paint humans as fundamentally good or good seeking. This negates the resolute message of the Bible that humans are, by their fallen nature, reprobate, irreversibly evil, wicked, and prone to violence. They are, in essence, antipathy toward God. It might be discouraging or uncomfortable against a Christian’s personal moral sensitivities, but it is a reality that we must come to terms with. If we continue to prop man up, keep trying to paint him with a broad brush, we will never clearly see the underlining reason for Christ’s sacrifice to begin with.

Lewis wrote: “Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers.”

This does seem to be the consensus within modern Christianity. That somehow Satan is equal in power and authority to God, and to Jesus Christ. That his dominion was not all but eradicated on the cross, that, as John puts it, “the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that his time is short” (Re 12:12). The judgment has already been made. The sentence has been rendered. The remainder of this time now is the interlude between that sentencing and it’s final disposition.

The war is definitely happening and I do appreciate Lewis’ allusion to earth being behind enemy lines, territory controlled by the devil and his angels (or his demons or both), and that we are, as Dr. Missler often states, “both the pawns and the prize” of this multi-dimensional battle. Though, there is even more peculiar things happening behind the scenes. It at least appears as if the society or kingdom established in the supernatural realm has a war-like culture. Descriptions in the Bible often use military jargon, and the few glimpses we receive of that other world are either vast numbers of supernatural beings in battle array or those same (or similar) members gathered in a feudalistic hierarchical court. Yet, nothing really further is extended to us, no background, no elaboration, no concrete descriptions, no origin story whatsoever. We are essentially left in the dark when it comes to this empire – what it is, where it’s from, why it takes the form that it does, what it’s stated goals are, or how our destiny coincides with this kingdom reign (and what exactly does it reign over besides the supernatural realm and the physical universe)?

Lewis wrote: “when you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to pre vent us from going.”

This is utterly incorrect. There is nothing biblical about modern evangelical practices. The Sunday sermon. The role of the “pastor.” The lack of a plurality of elders. The capitalistic spirit that runs rampant through leadership. The reduction of “walking with Christ” to being “plugged into” the program of a particular congregation. None of these things have much at all to do with living or walking by the spirit. Few if any modern, organized churches are doing battle in a covert war. The partitioners often have little to know concept that there is even a battle being waged. They have no biblical literacy (something I know Dr. Missler has spent his life trying to assuage). To simply assume modern evangelicalism is the church the Bible refers to when it says “church” is anachronistic.

Now, the church that Jesus refers to can often be found within these social groups of today. The individual members scattered throughout theses human led, human driven, human devised organizations are often brutalized by leadership, left isolated and confused, bewildered, and often without any kind of hope of being built up in the knowledge of Christ or toward any genuine kind of work of service.

The two simply are not the same. They are not equivalent. One is often found in the other, but the presence of the members of God true church does not equate to that earthly organization being that church spoken of in the text.

Lewis wrote: “an evil power has made himself for the present the Prince of this World”

I’ve never actually heard it described like this before. I think its quite fascinating that the whole war itself is, as Lewis states, a civil war against the legitimate authority and ruler (God) by a usurper (Satan) who in no way equals God in either power or authority or legitimacy, but somehow has got it in his mind that he can replace God (or at least be equal to him). As finite as we might mistake this world to be and existence therein, the state of things as they are now and as they have been for the last 6000+ years is only tempoarary. There will come a time, a day, when Christ will return and the things of this world will come to an end. The earth itself will end, and quite possibly the entirety of the physical dimension we know as the universe. The old things will pass away and the new things will come.

Lewis wrote: “free will is what has made evil possible.”

This, again, is erroneous. Lewis seems to be under the mistaken notion that humans are responsible for everything and God is simply sitting by and watching. We are not the cause of evil. We did not create it. Evil was created by God, “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). Why exactly God found it desirable or necessary to do so, remains unclear. But we really have no sense of the limitlessness of his sovereignty or the veracity of his autonomy or his self-determination. Personally, the longer I pursue my God, the more convinced I become that there is no such thing as free will. God has formed us and formed our days before we ever existed. It is not in our capability to know the beginning from the end, to know God wants from us, or to even bring it about even if we did. But, God is willing and eager to walk with us, always by our side, as he shows us the things he has prepared for us to enjoy and to embrace and to walk in.

Lewis wrote: “A world of automata–of creatures that worked like machines–would hardly be worth creating.”

I don’t know about this statement. As we approach the cusp of the end of human powered progress in society and begin the descent into artificial intelligence and ever-increasing automation, I can see the temptation to create a world in which we have no need to rely on messy, autonomous people and rely instead on mindless automatons that are programable and vastly more reliable and predictable. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and erase from existence every human alive right now and replace them all with artificially intelligent robots to grow my food and provide all my labors, I would be greatly tempted to do so. We are already finding men in Japan and China falling “in love” with life-size dolls simply because there are not enough women to go around in their society. There are also AI systems available online for anyone at any time to log on and chat with what appears to be another person but is really just a computer. You can tell the difference almost immediately, and can tell the machine is not a living being, but what happens when technology advances so much that you can’t tell the difference at all? I think there will actually be a very large segment of the population in the not too distant future that will willingly replace all content with human beings for contact only with these automatons Lewis speaks of.

Lewis wrote: “Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

It is not because of free-will that I find myself loving others, but Christ in me compels me. It was by sheer force that God steered me from my own predilections at an early age. It was by predestination that God deemed it favorable for me to be burdened with the thoughts and cares of others. If such things were actually left to my own self-will, my own self-determination, I would have none of it. I would seek my own, I would isolate myself, and I would be about my own business. It is not because of free-will that love and goodness and joy are worth having, but it is because of God that we have any of these things in the first place. Despite my singleness in this life all these years (or maybe because of it), God has blessed me with great contentment, with unsurpassable and indescribable joy. I’ve been able to experience the love of God, which surpasses any human kind of love with its selfishness and frailty and tendencies to seek after its own. Christ’s love has enveloped me, and I cannot find the words to express the purity, the emancipating power such a love possesses. In those moments, especially in the moments that I find myself wounded or hurting, God becomes to me inescapable.

Lewis writes: “you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source.”

Actually this is again incorrect. If you take a river with a spring at its source, and that river is blocked at some point along it’s route, the water will continue to back up and fill the given space of the terrain as long as the spring continues to flow. If it is a boxed canyon with steep walls, it is entirely possible that the water will rise above and cover the source entirely. What was once higher than the river itself has now become lower. The water from the spring continues to flow, but now it flows into a newly formed lake instead of a river, the landscape now having been entirely transformed.

As to the original point of the notion. God, by his inherent nature, cannot be wrong. He is the definition of right. Righteousness is fundamentally defined by the actions and thoughts of God. He can in no way be wrong, for whatever he decides, whatever he chooses to do is, by the sheer act, considered righteous. If we have an issue with the motivations of God concerning this world and his decision to allow sin to continue or for suffering to occur, or for perceived innocence to be subjected to suffering, our issues with him had no bearing on the rightness of those decisions. When a child dies from cancer or is killed in a car accident or is murdered at the hands of an adult, this is God’s will. We either must accept this and accept all that is God or by not accepting we are denying God altogether.

Lewis wrote: “The better stuff a creature is made of the cleverer and stronge r and freer it is–then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.”

Again, Lewis is mistaken. There is nothing “good” within man, especially the unregenerate man. He stands condemned, without hope. If he is a vessel of wrath, then his position is even more disastrous, since there is no means in heaven or on earth by which he might reconcile himself to God. But, nor would he want to.

We do not do right because we are made of “better stuff” than the one who chooses to do wrong. Nor is our ability to do really right or really wrong measured by the quality of the “stuff” that we are made of. Humans are, by their fallen nature, destitute from birth, poisoned, corrupted, condemned. We have a pre-existent condition from our very first breath toward sin. The defining valuation of how right we act in our behaviors or how wrong we act is gauged not by our natures or our “stuff” but by how closely we are to Christ in everything. If we walk by the spirit then we will do what is right. If we walk in the flesh, we will do what is wrong. And this is moment by moment, thought by thought, second by second, choice by choice. If I am in the flesh and I try to choose right, I might be able by sheer will to choose right once. Maybe even twice. But on the third time, the flesh will exact its price and we will fall to sin. But if we are walking by faith and not by sight, if we are heeding and surrendering to the spirit that resides within us, then there is no decision between right and wrong. There is no option for sin. Not that we are strong, for truly I am beyond weak. But the spirit intercedes for us and in that intercession God provides a way of escape, a means by which we can endure the temptation.

This is something I think that should be talked about (often is not), but we cannot truly know it until it is experienced first hand. For the longest time as a believer, I had no idea what it meant to walk with God or to walk by the spirit. But in my surrendering to him in everything, in my petitions, in my begging, God began to gently take those fleshy temptations from me. And sometimes I would grab for those temptations, try to get them back. Because they were familiar, they were often comforting to me. But God remains ever faithful.

Lewis wrote: “Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly.”

If this were true, it would mean that no one could repent since there is no good person. First it is God who gives us the ability to repent. Then it is us who walks in that repentance. It is a gift of God, not of works. Often I’ve found that I’m walking in God’s will without realizing I’m even doing it (though there is an argument that states every path we actually take is within God’s will). Doing good is not merited based on our intrinsic worth. It is based on Christ’s finished work on the cross, and how indwelling by the Holy Spirit, and the extent to which we surrender to his will and he endeavors to draw us and comforts us to the body of Christ.

Lewis writes: “Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest of de ath and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy, creatures.”

Share in his death, yes. Find a perfect fulfillment, as if this new state feels like the state we were always intended to exist in, making the human, fallen, mortal state grotesque in comparison, yes. Happy? I find this doubtful. This is not really a biblical or realistic term. It is a superfluous term created by a fallen world to exacerbate sin. It is quite similar and just as futile as the concept of emotional love being a warm feeling that permeates the individual for the object of their affection. Happiness, just like emotional love, is fleeting and wanes over time. It is as if one built his house on sand and then is surprised that his foundation is crumbling, the ever shifting sand unable to support the home’s weight. There are simply too many examples of beings being unhappy in the supernatural realm: satan, the angels from Genesis 6:2, the obvious second event like those fallen angels after the flood. In fact, a third of heaven was cast to earth with the devil, ejected from heaven, unwelcome and unwanted because they were somehow, some way, discontented with the status quo. Happiness is fleeting. Commitment, honor, loyalty, these are the hallmarks of true service.

Lewis wrote: “People often ask when the next step in evolution–the step to something beyond man–will happen.But on the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.”

Well, the new man is appearing. He has already appeared in hope of the resurrection, but he has not actually taken possession of the object of his hope yet. This will occur at the revealing of the Sons of God, when all is said and done, when we are transformed form earthly, mortal bodies to immortal ones. When we put on eternity like a garment to be wrapped around us, to clothe us. But, from an earthly perspective, how can we ask for the next step in evolution when no initial step has ever been recorded? Where are the intermediate steps in the fossil records? Where are the elusive transition animals? Where is the hippopotamus with three legs instead of four? Where is the ancestor of the golden plover while he was learning to fly to Hawaii each year? Oh, yes. He is at the bottom of the sea because he drown. There is no next step in humanity because humanity as he currently is was the first step. Unless you want to consider Adam and Eve as a different species than modern man, or any single man after them. Though, even as different species, they are all the same kind, and are even included in the same kind as the angels (since we can cross procreate). The reality is, there is no evolution. Salvation is not a process by which we incrementally become a believer. We are made “a new creation.” We are not adapting to our environment to become something different.

Lewis writes: “a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it.”

First off, I would agree with Lewis in that we can lose our salvation. There are simply too many references in the Bible to losing one’s faith, to believing in vain, to having one’s faith shipwrecked, to turning away from the truth or the faith. But, his statement here poses a fascinating question. If the “Christ-life” was put into the man initially, how can he subsequently lose it? Why is there effort required to retain that which no effort was required to acquire? Or, are we looking at it in error? Is it possible that this that we acquired without effort (or salvation) was predestined for us to acquire it? That, in fact, regardless of any of our choices on this earth, if we had chosen to go left instead of right, we still would have acquired it. All I can really do is speak for my own experience. Never, since I was touched by God at 17, have I ever pondered the loss of my faith. Never have I questioned the veracity of my faith or the truthness of the statements my faith assert. I would almost be convinced that I in no way question the security of my salvation because, to be completely honest, I don’t think I could stop believing even if I wanted to. There were, in fact, times when I did not want to be a believer. There were many times, in fact, that I wished for death rather than to take on the task God placed before me. Yet, it never negated or placed into question God’s existence or his power to raise me from the dead or that he actually created the earth and the heavens just as described. There have been countless times when I questioned my worthiness to attain that age and the resurrection from the dead. Certainly many times I’ve wondered at length and in great confusion why God chose to spare me, to save me, to grant me mercy upon mercy, when so many others have no compulsion from the Lord one way or the other. And ever so right I am. I am not worthy to be counted as his son. And yet, here I stand in full faith and with utter surety of mind that I will one day be raised from the dead and will then be raptured up to God. But, as for the Christ-life, I never asked for it. I never initially believed it was beneficial or something I desired. I was a happy Buddhist. But, it was thrust upon me, it was given to me regardless of my own opinion. And such has been my life in it’s entirety. Yes, now I can look at my life and I am so very grateful and thankful for what my God and King did for me all those years ago. My appreciation and debt to him knows no bounds and I count myself a slave of Christ, indentured to him for life. Put the awl to my ear at the doorpost. I accept the life of service to my Master willingly, joyfully, in much hope and with the greatest satisfaction. He has been like no other all these years. He has been the only one to never have betrayed me. Never to have lied to me. He is truly the only love I have known in this miserable life. My one and only true friend. But, still, it was not my choice, and I would not have chosen him if I had been given the ability to choose. I don’t think such a weighty obligation can so quickly be dispensed with.

Lewis writes: “Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.”

First, I do not share in Lewis’ view of unfairness concerning our individual predestinations. Paul clearly describes how, when, where, and why. There are those who were created as vessels of mercy and those who were created as vessels of wrath. Those who have not heard of Christ cannot be saved and, thus, they are vessels of wrath. It is clear from John that, “No one can come to Christ less the Father draws him” (John 6:44). The simple reality is, countless souls have been born, lived, and died without ever hearing the message of the gospel. Is it possible that those individuals will be spared? It is not likely. Is it possible that when Jesus went to Hades immediately after his death that he preached the gospel to those who had never heard it before? It’s possible, since every single person who had had ever lived and died was present. But, such hopeful scenarios are silent in Scripture. We simply do not know. But, we likewise do not need to know. If you have issue with this, you are placing your own logic, your own rationale higher and more just than the God of your creation. Such things are pride.

Secondly, we are certain that only those who know Christ can be saved. We are told this clearly by Peter in Acts 4:12, “no other name.” There is a difference between not knowing and not accepting it.

Lewis wrote: “people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world don’t quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world.”

Oh, only let it be so! What is so terrible about the end of this miserable, godforsaken existence? I agree with Lewis that few people really understand the full weight of what they ask for. All of their loved ones, all of their friends, their coworkers, acquaintances, their neighbors, even their enemies – everyone they’ve ever known who does not confess Christ and believe in his resurrection, they will all in the end stand before the throne and will be judged based on their works, on everything they’ve ever said or done (and I think every thought), and none of them will find their names written in the Book of Life and will one by one be cast into the Lake of Fire for eternity. But, even before that dreadful fate, the earth is not going to simply cease to exist. The Wrath of the Lamb is going to be poured out onto this planet, onto what the Bible calls “the earth dwellers” in the last days. They will hide in the crags in the rocks and beg for the rocks to fall on them and kill them because the terror out in the open is beyond compare.

Personally, though, every night I pray for God’s judgment to be poured out onto the earth. I pray for God to hasten his return, that Jesus might come back with all the fury and all the might he would desire to bring. I pray for the rightful justice to be brought onto the people of earth, the liars and the sinners and that this world and everything in it would burn with fire beyond imagination. Why do I wish such ill onto innocent people? Because they are not innocent. Because they were created for such a day. Because in order for the correct order to be reinstated, judgment must descend. And I say this without any certainty whatsoever that I will be spared this horrific fate. It is entirely possible that I will, in the end, not be saved. Certainly there are not only a few modern evangelical pastors or leaders who would agree with my assessment. They would (and do) quickly jump to the conclusion that because I do not attend an organized weekly meeting, that somehow I am condemned. And that is okay. We will all be judged according to our deeds. Everything I do I do in full faith. Not because I want to forsake the gathering together of believers, but because I truly cannot find a gathering of believers. When I reach out to modern churches they either never respond or they go out of their way to not welcome me. Personally, I think God is sparing me from the heart ache they would bring. Or, it’s also quite possible he is sparing them from the likes of me.

I wish more Christians prayed for the end of days. I wish more people wanted Christ’s return more than they wanted the simple pleasures of this world, the riches, the material possessions, the gratifications of the flesh. I do wonder of myself, if God truly is preparing me for a future wife, and if, indeed, he does actually bring a woman to me one day, will I change my views and my prayers on this subject? Will I suddenly do an about face, and instead of my prayers being that Christ would return quickly that I would pray that God would allow me to live for as long as I can with the wife he gave me? I hope I would not. I hope my wife would be inline with me and we could pray in unison and in complete agreement that how good it is that he brought us together, but how so much better it would be if Christ would return and we could be transformed, even if it meant the end of our marriage here on earth. I believe this is the exact sentiment Paul was referring to when he stated, “the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none” (1 Co 7:29).

This is the end of the second part of Mere Christianity, and my views so far remain unchanged. He is clearly in the free-will camp, that there is an underlining, universal goodness to man that is inherent from birth. Scripture simply does not bear this out. He seems also to be under the impression that man created evil through his proclivity to sin. But the Scripture is clear, God created sin when he created the good. He created both Michael the arch angel and Lucifer the adversary. Being omnipotent, God knew exactly what was going to happen before it ever got close to happening. He knew before the foundation for the cosmos. So far, I’ve been quite disappointed and underwhelmed by the content of this classic text. I hope the last part will change that opinion.

Book Three – Christian Behavior – What I Learned – Comments

Lewis wrote: “Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.”

The reality is much different, especially in the modern age, in our current crumbling culture. There is no single ship being steered, or, at least, if there is, those on board are in the process of staging a mutiny against logic, reason, and decency. It is a death cult, where they sacrifice their unborn babies to Moloch, demand either compliance with their agenda or the burning down of everything around them. There is either a new morality being formed or morality itself is being sacrificed in the name of inclusion and the demand that sin be worshiped and celebrated.

No one is demanding fair play or harmony between people. In fact, many on the left and right both are crying for civil war, for the disbandment of the union, to divide the states between liberal and conservative and to allow no descent or compromise otherwise. There’s no desire to harmonize that which lurks within to a moral standard. And, as already stated, there is no one at the helm.

Lewis wrote: “When people say in the newspapers that we are striving for Christian moral standards, they usually mean that we are striving for kindness and fair play between nations, and classes, and individuals;”

Again, I would have to disagree. When people call for “christian moral standards” it is usually in an attempt to put into force of law that which is an aberration. It is to enforce a cult-like religion on the entire populous, such as when Christians attempt to legislate against abortion. We are not called to heal this world. We are not being asked to bring about a “christian nation.” No one in the world is truly striving for kindness and civility. If politicians really wanted to solve such things, they would do so, rather than talk incessantly about doing it.

Lewis wrote: “many Christians have the idea that, provided you are ‘good,’ it do es not matter being a fool.”

I’m not sure where Lewis get’s this insistence that humans are to do good, that Christians will be judged on what we did or did not do. I pray that this is not the case. It is not a moral standard to which I am held, but it is to a faith standard. I am judged innocent (because of Christ) even though in reality I am evil and wicked. Being good has nothing to do with Christianity or salvation. The lost, on the other hand, will be held to account based on what they do, both good and bad, and I think also what they think. But, everything they ever do and ever think will be considered evil by God and they will be cast into the lake of fire for everything they’ve ever done, whether we consider it good or not.

But, there is something to this statement he makes. Doing good, while a natural outpouring of genuine faith is all that is needed, and the Christian can be considered by the world to be a fool. I certainly have been criticized in my life for my Christian faith. When newly saved, all those who sought me out for guidance in Buddhism abandoned me. In their words, “So you’re a Christian now? Well, I’m certainly not interested in that.” Women have looked down at me for my belief and convictions. Some have been rather surprised that I had no interest in dating them like the world does (sex, then learning their names). And they certainly were not interested in pursuing a courtship toward marriage. I’ve even had Christian women (so called) tell me, “I don’t necessarily want a husband who knows more of the Bible than I do.” It is statements such as this, the actions when they’re trying to lure you into their beds, that screams of where their loyalties lie. I have, for the last 30 years, been a fool of Christ. I accept that the world will never understand me. When I speak of being celibate and single for most of that time, the initial response from the world is always the same: “Oh, you’re gay.” To which I can only chuckle, because they have no concept of what it means to sacrifice such a thing for Christ. To leave your hopes and your dreams at his feet. Paul put it perfectly, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Lewis wrote: “If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are em barking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.”

I find it amazing that anyone would willingly choose Christianity. I suppose if one were raised in the modern church that there would be a temptation to remain there, where you are comfortable and everything feels familiar. For me, it was never a choice I would have made. I would never have left Buddhism if given the chance. But, having that choice made for me, I can attest to the veracity of his claim. It does take all of you. It takes every dream or aspiration you’ve ever had. It takes my thoughts, my desires, my needs, and it subjugates everything to the Lord.

Lewis wrote: “anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.”

If someone is trying to be a Christian I would imagine they are attempting something that is impossible to try. My ex wife was one such individual who, upon my profession of faith, she became the chameleon and was able to mimic all the right words and say the right things. She made promises that she later admitted she had no intention of ever keeping in our marriage, and basically admitted to building our entire relationship on sand. She learned over the course of those years we were married how impossible it truly is to fake a relationship with God. Eventually it became too much and the threat had to go. When she ended our relationship, she provided no explanation, no justification, no biblical provision by which she should abandon me. When I begged and pleaded for her to help me with our relationship, she refused. When I begged her to get counseling throughout our marriage, she again refused. Her brief comments as I packed my things was clear, “If we’re not compatible, we should find someone else. You need to marry someone in the church.” It was quite clear what had happened after the fact. She had lied. She had betrayed me the first day we met. She had torpedoed our relationship before it had even begun. You cannot fake being a believer. Trust me when I say, you would not want to. It is an impossible task.

Lewis wrote: “An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things fo r special reasons–marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, o r looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

This is simply not borne out in the Scripture. Marriage is clearly shown in the Bible to be inferier to being single and celibate. According to Paul the celibate state is much preferred (even better) than the married life. In fact, he instructs the married to act as if they were single.

Likewise, a cinema (or the movies shown there) may not inherently be evil, but when they are akin to pornography, when they are full of fitly language, or when they blatantly pervert the object in question (such as sacrificing meat to a god and then selling that meat at the market), it is required that godly men stand up and say the truth. There are times and situations when external things are actually evil. There is nothing redemptive about a ouiji board. There is nothing redemptive about an explicitly pornographic movie. There is, in fact, nothing redemptive about a modern organization designed to sell products substituting itself as the church in the Bible. Evil is a real, tangible essence of things in this world. Certainly, not everything is evil as the gnostics would have us believe.

Lewis wrote: “We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic”

I would agree. The biblical account of the church is much, much different than what we see of modern christianity today. The modern expression of the church today are modeled after secular corporations, powered primarily by capitalism rather than but the spirit of God. Much of Jesus’ teachings and Luke’s account of the early Church in acts paints a very communal, almost socialistic community. In the west, this is simply ignored.

Lewis writes: “if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.”

This is an interesting point he makes. For if we have all the creature comforts of those in our same economic standing, then we are not giving, or, at least, we are not giving as Jesus described which we should take as an example – “this poor widow has put in more than all; 4 for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had” (Luke 21:3-4). I do not give unless I am moved to do so. I have given in the past, of which I will speak more in the next few statements. But, taking the advice of Dr. Missler, in that we should consider our giving as an investment into the Kingdom and should treat it like a regular portfolio, I have come away quite disillusioned with the state of the world, the culture, Christian organizations, and those who consider themselves Christian but are really so in name only. I have literally found no worthwhile cause in which to support a pledge, no organization doing God’s work, no individual in genuine need. I would rather dig a hole and bury my money than give it to a local church organization, so terribly mismanaged they all are. The last church I engaged with (online) turned out a year later, the pastor was fired for misappropriating funds. Millions of dollars gone. As needs arise, I give. Someone who pulls into the gas station on empty but has no money to put gas in her tank. A family whose vehicle breaks down on the side of the road, I sign over my car to them and they get back on their way. Trying to help people with their rent or groceries or school supplies for the kids. Most things, though, are simply not a need but a perceived need. Most people have food or have access to food for free. In fact, most of the poorest among us are now provided for by the governmental safety net and often fair better than those who did not use or do not qualify for low income assistance. For the truly homeless, most are addicted to drugs or alcoholics or are mentally ill, in which I am not equipped to help any. My not giving is not from a lack of desire to give, but a lack of legitimate outlets in which to give.

Lewis wrote: “those who really need our help.”

Yes, I have tried my hand at this kind of work. I tried to help people who needed Christ. They resented my efforts. I tried to love my wife and her children, and in the end, I was accused of treating them like a project. I tried to help a family out of distress and get the father away from alcohol and drugs, but to no avail. I paid rents. I paid electric bills. I paid grocery bills. I paid for school supplies for their kids. In the end, they turned out to be lying all along, just dragging me along for the ride because I was funding it. In the end I was accused of horrible things, none of which did I ever do. They ruined ministry work at a local church (which the pastor was so well pleased about). They truly betrayed me and took advantage of me, and then turned on me. But, through all of it, God protected me and would not allow them to harm me, regardless of all their fuming and racket. I now know, though, the difference between true need and habitual choice. I have actually never seen “true need” before. But there is a lot of habitual choice wandering around with “need” painted on it.

Lewis wrote: “Most of us are not really approaching.the subject in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.”

If I were to stick with my “own party” I would have remained a Buddhist or would have rejected Christianity within a few months (especially as things became difficult) or would have merged the two so I could “be a christian” while at the same time could meditate, practice Zen Buddhism, and could study the Martial Arts. But, I can look back on it now, and I can see why God decided to force me into a faith in the first place: because if left to my own devices, I would 100% of the time chosen Buddhism. Instead, he predestined me to be saved, even saved against my will. Why he did that, I have no idea. I’m certainly not a worthy enough specimen to be saved or for him to bother any of his time on me. I certainly have not been called or risen to the occasion of being an effective individual in ministry. Work with the local churches failed in my 20s. House church work in my 30’s likewise failed. My marriage failed. The only thing that really succeeded at all with any consistency has been a solitary life, and that has been more hermitic than eremitic. More misanthropic than monastic. Yet, still, throughout the last 13 years, he has continued to bless me beyond words in my solitude. He has provided me great peace.

There is no measure in which I could be construed as trying to get Christianity to conform to my own camp. I would not want to do any of this. My life, as it is, is one of failure, disillusionment, confusion. Occasionally he will hit me with a conviction in which to follow. And he is always accurate, straightforward, and ultimately true. In fact, I can’t recall a conviction he gave me that didn’t turn out exactly as he predicted. My salvation at 17 was certain beyond comprehension. My move to the coast. The purchase of the kayak. Some things seemingly mundane for everyone else, but quite significant points in my life. Even when I wanted to remain married, God chose (for whatever reason) that it was okay for me to lose everything I had in a divorce. Now, after 13 years of living a single, solitary life in peace and contentment, and fulfillment, he has once again disrupted everything and placed within me a desire to be married, and has given me a command to prepare for a future wife, even though there are literally no prospects, the prospects I was able to cobble together have all run immediately for the hills, and anyone else that has ever shown interest has either gone away or is automatically disqualified as a non-believer. So, it leaves me with no options, no means, no ability to bring this conviction to fruition. But, that I think is the point. He does not want me to do it. He does not want me to seek out a wife. He has not said to seek one out. He has said that I should prepare for one. That’s it. Nothing else. He has (I assume) given me a timeframe that I will be married by or before Sept 1 2022. That 9 months later, we will have our first children and name him Isaac Christopher Veach. That, when he does present me a wife, it will be unexpected, will come out of nowhere, and we will both be certain and under that same true conviction that we are being called to a union before God with one another.

How can I argue with all of that? My soul is certainly divided. I can quickly come to realize that this is ludicrous. There is no possible way this could happen. Yet, I simultaneously can’t help but believe that God has actually spoken to me, has actually convicted me, and that he will bring all this to pass for his glory and for our mutual benefit.

In the end, he either will or he won’t. Just like in the fiery furnace. In the end, it will come to pass or it will not. There is no way to be certain. I must rely on faith. But, even still, it is not something I wanted 6 months ago. I can still make the argument against marriage, even now. I can still feel the desire to remain unmarried and unattached. Yet, at the same time, a new feeling, a new conviction, a new desire has either been given to me, or has been quickened back to life that since my divorce had long been dead. Not only is marriage not what I want, it is not something I would choose if it had not been for God giving me the desire beforehand, and given the word that I needed to prepare. And now I’ve compelled to remain here at my house in town, to work on cleaning it up in preparation of my wife being presented to me, even though I had fully intended on working on the shelter this summer, on spending the summer at the lake. There is no reason to do it, and I really don’t want to stay here, but I can’t help but comply. This is not the behavior of someone who is seeking to wrap Christianity around what I already want. Because what I want I am not getting. But I am also able to recognize that what God wants for me is so much better than I could ever even comprehend.

Lewis wrote: “A Christian society isnot going to arrive until most of us really w ant it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian….we should never get a Christian society unless most of us beca me Christian individuals.”

I’m not certain why people think there is a Christian society on the horizon. There is nothing good here on earth, and the forces in control would never allow a Christian society until they are forced to in the millennial reign of Christ. The world is sliding into its delusional position, where it will welcome the anti-Christ. Why would a society ever want Christian ethics or parameters when the culture is sliding further and further away form Christ’s teachings and toward fanaticism? What makes individuals think that things are getting better when, in reality, they are getting worse and worse. God’s plan is for all to be saved, but there are those who are predestined to wrath and will not be saved. But history proves, a Christian society on earth that is in charge of our laws and our wellbeing would be an atrocity beyond biblical proportions. What is coined in modern society as the church should never be given such power over people. They will only abuse it and add even more misery into this world.

Lewis wrote: “morality claims to be a technique for putting the human machine right,”

I’m not certain I understand his motivation in being able to “right” the human machine. Why does he insist that there is a fundamental rightness possible for people other than in Christ? The entire point of Christ’s first appearance and death was to pay the price necessary to redeem man from his sin and his sin nature. Without his, there is simply no hope for humans, and, left to their own devices and their own judgment, they will eventually extinguish life on earth and everyone who has ever lived would be disembodied and held captive in Hades for eternity. Death would have final sway over every single human in existence.

But, because Christ died and paid the price for our sin, God is able to raise us up at the last day, to follow Jesus in the resurrection, and only then is the human machine righted. Morality on earth, no matter how lofty, cannot bridge the gap between our former position (Adam’s place in Eden) and our current dilemma. Regardless of how much Lewis wants to claim it, there is no redeeming character in man. He is hopelessly lost without Christ’s direct, individual intervention.

Lewis wrote: “However much you improve the man’s raw material, you have still got something else: the real, free choice of the man, on the material presented to him,”

This has always puzzled me. I’ve never been one to accept “free-will” as the end of the discussion, if for no other reason than my own personal experience had no free-will involved in my turning away from paganism, or now to my acceptance of a desire to be married, or the conviction from God that I need to prepare for a future wife. None of these things were my choice. All of these things violated what one would describes as my own personal free-will. I can see possibly free-will involved in my surrendering to Christ about a year and a half after the initial forced conversion from a karmic worldview to a theistic one. After surrendering to that forced conversion (the replacement of worldview) and in combination with a year and a half of studying the Bible (on my own, no churches or pastors involved), I came to the realization one day in my barracks room that I was both ready and wanting to surrender my life to Christ, surrender myself and all that I was. I knelt down with my Bible in my hand and asked Jesus to make me his disciple, that I would profess him (had been professing him for almost 2 years to anyone who would listen) as Lord before men, and that I believed wholeheartedly that God raised him from the dead. I asked for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and for the work that he began in me to be finished by him.

But, even this might not have been under my independent volition. It’s entirely possible that God ordained both of these events long before I ever existed. I just walk in them and by doing so, from my perspective, they only appear to be derived from autonomous free-will. I gather from passages such as Matt 10:30; Luke 12:7; Eph 2:10; Ro 9:22 that there actually is no free will but only predestination. Free-will is only a delusion we perceive because of our limited perspective.

Lewis wrote: “taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this centralthing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.”

This turns the source of the transformation of the individual, his or her sanctification, from God to man. Lewis here is stating that man is the author of his own sanctification, even though Scripture clearly illustrates God is the author of our sanctification (Phil 1:6; 2:3; Ro 8:28–30; 2 Th 2:13). The determination between heavenly or hellish creature, is deceptive. They are, in actuality one in the same. Human. Humans are both destined for hell and destined for heaven. That determination is hardwired in their DNA, even deeper, in their soul. There are two, distinct, determinations for man. One, he is created as a vessel of wrath. This is, I would argue, most likely the majority of humanity. Second, he is created as a vessel of mercy. This would include all types of saints (OT, NT, Tribulational). This determination is selected before the individual was ever created, and it is selected entirely by God. Man’s effort, his works, his deeds, his thoughts, have nothing to do with this selection. God knows, while creating these creatures, what kinds of things they will do once they are let loose onto the world, simply by their selection. The object of his affection are the vessels of mercy. Because of his love for those individuals, he suffers with the existence of the vessels of wrath to bring about his will. God is playing the longest of games. Six thousand years so far and counting. Untold number of years before creation, when he devised his plans and set everything in motion.

We are not in control of these things. We cannot resist our predetermined course, nor would we really want to. I would argue that the atheist has the very same conviction not to believe that I was given to believe at 17. He most likely could not really explain the conviction adequately. But, he can’t help but find fault with God. He can’t help but embrace his disbelief. He was engineered to do so. There is no free-will. Everything he has ever done or said or thought, and all that he will do in the future, has been intricately preplanned before he was ever born. The hellish creature is truly an abomination. The heavenly creature is actually not much better (in my view). But he is a vessel of mercy, and receives the grace of God, a freely given gift, that he might walk in new life, that he might choose right over wickedness, not because of his fallen nature, but because of his new nature that wars within him, the new spirit that has indwelled him, the new heart that he has received from God. It is possible for him to do good, but only moment by moment, walking in tandem with Christ, seeking for God’s will, for his strength, for his leading. To do good is not something that we can do under our own strength, by our own volition. As Paul states, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). These activities of good, works as the Bible calls them, are preordained before our existence and we simply “walk in them” (Eph 2:10).

Lewis wrote: “Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

The state is predetermined. It is not being established moment by moment. It is like a play being acted out on the stage of life, on the stage of earth. God has the script. He knows what we will say, what we will do, where the story is going, and how it unfolds. He also knows the beginning from the end. Though, we, as the actors in the play, do not know consciously the lines to the play. We don’t know what we are to do. We don’t have the script memorized in our heads. Rather, the words are given to us as we need them. They are communicated to us through direct communication with God. Or, quite possibly, the words are engendered by each of us based on our own predestination, by the framework from which we are made of. A vessel of mercy is sometimes going to do right and sometimes will do wrong (on account of the flesh) but he will more times than not surrender to the spirit within him and be led by the spirit. Likewise, there are supernatural guideposts for each person, moving them along throughout their lives, keeping them on course. We cannot see the guideposts. Yet our cognition, our intellect, our physical bodies, the spirit within us perceives these guideposts along the journey and they are used as catalysts to move the individual along the predefined path in life. Doesn’t God tell us this, “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground part from your Father’s will. But the very hairs on your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt 10:29-31).

We are intimately and intricately known by our creator. On the individual level. On the molecular level. The atomic level. On the sub-atomic level. He knows not only what we are made of, but also how we were made, and also for what purpose we were made. Vessels of wrath are, by nature, creatures who do not seek God, do not seek good. They are the otherwise entangled by the world, by design. They are the proverbial cautionary tale. And, in the end, that example will bring about condemnation and hell fire to prove the point God has been making all along. He is proving a point to those vessels created for mercy, to “show his wrath and make his power known” (Ro 9:22).

Lewis wrote: “old, or old-fashioned, people should be very careful not to assume that young or `emancipated’ people are corrupt whenever they are (by the old standard) improper;”

Yes, but, there is a progressive nature to the slide toward debased behavior and futile thinking. The world is destined to once again become “like the days of Noah” in all of it’s ramifications. Disbelief will be rampant. Evil will prevail over good. The gene pool will be contaminated. Good all be called evil and evil good. While it is true that the generational differences are or should be viewed as just that, there is a certainty to the slide in theology. It is a slide away from the God of the Bible. Young people predominately do not accept Christ or will only accept him within their own framework of morality. The raising of “nature” or the “environment” above God has been disastrous. It is now, currently, destroying the American and global economy, and will continue to wreak havoc for at least two more years. If the elections in the US are once again stolen, if the populous has slidden too far and a democrat is again elected, it will be the end of democracy, the end of the economy, and it will result in widespread famine and death and destruction of individual lives. A well placed electromagnetic pulse over the skies of the US, just on either coast, will send the nation and her people back to the Stone Age for generations, leaving America out of the following shift of world power and determinence. God is already being abandoned by the next generation. Cultural shift is not toward a morality of God but a morality of man. High on the agenda is equity of outcome, subjective tolerance, fanaticism, environmentalism, and sexual promiscuity that is quite different from the promiscuity of generations past. Gone are the mores of a biblical distinction. In newer generations, the guiding principle is self-determination, extreme forms of self-autonomy, of self-identification. People by and large define themselves as nothing more than mere animals, ruled by instinct, with no moral responsibility other than to the self they perceive to be the “real them.” Right and good are subjective to the observer or the participant. Sin is an outdated and discriminatory term.

Granted, again, Lewis did not have at his disposal when he wrote this 70+ years ago. Society was not nearly as degraded as it now appears. The slope of its descent was not as well appreciated as it can be seen now, in retrospect.

It is fool hearty to hold 2022 people to 1950 culture, especially when it is culture and not Biblical truth (i.e. men can’t wear shorts, women can’t wear pants). While these examples given are examples of culture and not biblical truth, the biblical truth would be men should dress conservatively, not in fancy clothes, not without prudence, and always considering the other over himself. Likewise, the woman should dress modestly, with propriety, humility, and in submission to her husband or her father. A woman wearing a pair of pants does not necessarily indicate that she is in rebellion to her husband or her father. But, her actions will certainly betray her true motives over time.

Lewis wrote: “the Christian rule is,‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence.’”

This is correct. This is the rule within the Church, pretty much universal, though in today’s culture it is not really taken seriously. Then again, it was not really taken seriously by most within Church history, especially the popes. Common man Christians see sexuality as a need, something that would be and should be overlooked if dalliances are committed, if for no other reason that because of the more previous belief that the individual committing sexual sin is, after all, a good person at heart. Sex is often viewed by religious and non-religious alike as a human right, a human need. Though it is actually unlike the other base needs such as breathing or eating food because, in actuality, the body nor the psyche actually, truly needs sex to survive. Without temperance, without self-control, without the ability to cast all the pain and discomfort and uncomfortableness onto the Lord, a life without sex might seem much like a slow descent into hell. But, as Jesus stated, “not everyone can accept this (life without sex), only those to whom it has been given…He who is able to accept it, let him accept it” (Matt 19:12).

Sex has been hard wired into human beings (as well as into other living creatures and animals). It does appear as it was designed as the mechanism to bring about new life, God’s choice in populating the earth, in replacing those who have since died and disappeared. It has been given to lost and saved alike. It is something that appears functional and accessible regardless of marital status. Even strangers can engage in it. There are even instances where sexual experiences are not limited to encounters with the opposite sex. Both genders seem just as content (maybe not as content) as experiencing sex with same sex partners as with the opposite sex.

But this is not the way of Christianity. From the Biblical account it is clear: sex is only given to couples who are in a binding union. Though, this does not always have to equate to our modern view of marriage. For there are different definitions culturally that depict marriage in differing light. In today’s society two people are viewed as married if they have gotten a license from their state government, and performed some sort of ceremony performed by a licensed officiant (wedding ceremonies are quite diverse). In Biblical times, though, especially in the early parts of the OT, we do not see ceremonies as such, but we see the “fulfilling of her week” as a determination of a marriage union being struck. If a man takes a woman into his tent, and he lives with her as man and wife for a week, then they were considered married. In fact, with the statement in Genesis 2:24 “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” marriage could be defined as the sexual experience itself. If I have a sexual experience with a woman, in God’s eyes, I might very well be married to her from that point forward. If I have several sexual experiences with multiple women, I might technically have multiple wives. Solomon had 1000.

What is clear is there are two types of sexual experiences in the Bible. There is the illicit kind: fornication. And there is the licit kind: married. Prostitutes do not count and are certainly illicit. Even looking at a woman in such a way that you lust for her is not allowed (which I would include pornography in this category, though I do wonder if looking at an image of a woman is the same thing as looking at an actual woman – also what about looking at depictions of women who do not actually exist in real life).

In fact, sexual contact, interaction is forbidden for the Christian outside of the context of marriage (whatever definition you use). Several years ago, a woman at my work made it rather clear through her actions that she was interested in having a physical relationship with me. While I ignored her advances, it was a source of turmoil for me, especially later on. Personally, I was attracted to her. She appeared to be conservative, we had a lot in common, we were of the same generation. We got along well. Our two states of life that we currently found ourselves in lent easily to a relationship that was somewhere in between marriage and dating. We could be monogamous, yet still retain our independent residences, finances, and mutual space. Neither one of us really wanted to be married. I had gone through a horrific divorce. She had lost her husband to cancer. Yet, I did not reciprocate her affections and she eventually withdrew and we have never spoke of it in the years to follow.

Yet, I continued to struggle with the idea of this potential relationship. Could it be legitimate in the eyes of God? I thought most likely not. But, marriage as a modern institution was not biblical either. The constraints placed on men and women in marriage are antithetical. Actually, the singular constraint God places on marriage is even worse as the disciples attested to in their, “if this is how it is with a man and his wife, it is better not to marry.” But, this potential relationship seemed to cut through all that responsibility and risk so often associated with modern marriage. We would not be cohabitating, so there would be no common-law declarations. We would not be commingling finances, so there would not be trust issues to arise. It would have to be monogamous (or I would not be involved). If I took her as my wife (in spirit if not in a legal sense) would God disagree? If we were faithful to each other, even loved each other, would this not be a marriage in every sense of the word, just of a different kind than is typical (or maybe more common than I suspect)?

I concluded that I was correct. This could work. It had the potential to be exactly what I needed or really wanted (I had no idea what she might need since this was all an exercise in my head). But, then Paul comes to rescue me from my own selfish thinking. A woman (I would argue he here would include a man, too) is bound to her husband for as long as he lives, but if he dies, then she is at liberty to marry whomever she chooses, “but only in the Lord” (1 Co 7:39). Just four simple words destroys my entire argument. I finally concluded, after much wrestling and hand wringing, that it was not my definition of marriage that was the issue. It was not that I wanted us to keep a separation in our living spaces, in our finances that was at issue. It was the fundamental fact that she was not a believer (which I actually thought she was until just before my thought experiment). In fact, I later would discover, every woman that in the last 13 years who had shown interest in me or who had wanted to date or become involved in a physical relationship with me – none of them had been believers. Even the high school sweetheart who would appear every few years wanting to rekindle our relationship, who would readily claim her Christian faith, actually turned out to be not a biblical Christian but some kind of amalgam between deism, Buddhism, and new age wokism (she did not last very long when I approached her about a possible relationship in the future – she could not stand biblical Christianity any more than I could stand her lack of faith or right doctrine).

For me, at least until very recently, complete abstinence has been the preferred choice for me. In fact, I’ve gone 13 years (since my divorce) without any inclination or desire to seek a relationship with a woman. Yet, I have been physically, sexually tempted. But this was always clearly seen for what it was – sin. I have been tempted to start a relationship with my coworker I spoke of before, but only for the physical gratification that it could bring. Lately, in times of spiritual distress and emotional upheaval, I’ve considered escorts regionally, or even planning vacations to other states where brothels are legal, just so as to sate the physical appetite. But, praise to God, each and every temptation was worked through in much prayer, in fasting, in wrestling with my own carnal desires. As of late, even my means of sating such poor impulses have been called into question by God, and in his direction to me by clear conviction to prepare for a future wife, these mechanisms have been painted off limits, even though for 13 years not a word was said against them by God.

Personally, I do not want a wife. I know how difficult marriage is, especially when it is with the wrong person. And I cannot fathom a path in which God could or would bring to me a helpmate who is truly comparable to me. But, along with the conviction, he has either inserted into me (or requickened what was rendered dead) a newfound love for another, for someone I don’t even know yet, for someone who may not actually even exist. So, I now find myself, after living the majority of my life a single and celibate man, contemplating, and preparing for a future wife (that may never actually materialize). I don’t know what will come of it. I simply obey his command.

I personally agree with Lewis. For the biblical Christian, it is all or nothing. It is either a life devoted to selfless sacrifice in devoted marriage, or it is selfless sacrifice in devotion to God. Death to self is key. As Paul states, “each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that” (1 Co 7:7).

Lewis wrote: “either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong.”

I have wondered about this for some time. As someone who has a rather active sexual appetite, I’ve wondered if maybe that was God’s way of telling me that I should be married. But, for many years I told myself that this was not the case. After all, despite the appearance that Paul seems to consider this the main reason to get married, I don’t see sexual gratification or the healthy handling of a high sexual appetite as a justification to enter into the institution of marriage, with its myriad of additional troubles. In my mind, this is an instance of the cure being worse than the disease. Rather, a man should learn through the spirit to control his flesh. Not marry so he has an outlet for that appetite.

A better sign I found in the last several years that I was called to a solitary, single, celibate life was the absence of desire for a helpmate. I had no desire to cohabitate with someone, no call to share in a co-laboring effort for Christ. I was plagued by neither loneliness or emotional wanton, as I often see many plagued with in life, without or without Christ. Yet, now, with this newfound call, all this has changed. I’m still not lonely. In fact, I can still feel the surpassing contentment that God gave me all those years. I can still feel true fulfillment and peace being alone, being without the comfort of a physical or emotional relationship. Yet, simultaneously, there is something else now present, something new, something that before at least remained undetected if not absent altogether. But, it is absent no longer, this conviction, this desire to share my life with someone. I don’t believe it is a conviction that originates from with me, for I have tasted and have known for many years the sweetness that Paul talks about in being single, “I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord – how he may please the Lord” (1 Co 7:32). But, whatever of it, is God’s and not mine. Just as it was up to him to save or sacrifice Isaac and just as it was up to him to save or sacrifice Daniel’s friends at the fiery furnace – God will do one or the other for me as well. He will either present to me a biblical wife at some point in the future, or he will not and he will call me to continue in my singleness, in my celibacy. I am ecstatic either way. For I knew each is from the Lord and he gives good gifts to his children.

But, of the question, is our sexual instinct wrong today? This would, if true, need to trace back to the fall of Adam. Would the instinct and the actual act itself be fundamentally different if Adam had never fell? It is unclear. Personally, there is quite a lot of evidence to support Lewis’ claim. So many Christians struggle with sexual perversion. They struggle, even in marriage (which I’m actually amazed occurs) they are prone to use pornography and masturbation rather than the gift God has given them in a wife. Is it possible that women, by and large, do not have the same appetite as men, and likewise do not see their obligation before God to provide for their husband? God has certainly given the obligation for men to provide for their wives in this way. Why is there a disconnect (if there is one)? Is it because modern women are predominately confused about marriage itself, seeking romantic and emotional connection that the world seeks after over and above the foundational commitment and obligation that Biblical marriage is? Are men so compromised by the lurid nature of the lost world that they see their wives as instruments of self-pleasure rather than the spiritual, emotional, and physical soul that they are to love and cherish in ways that are so beyond mere physical intimacy? Are women finding the emptiness of modern, physical sex repellant and men finding the reluctance of their wives to engage in such empty acts frustrating, driving them to wrongly seek gratification in porn rather than seeking a solution in the Lord?

Porn is easy. Seeking God’s help is difficult and often uncomfortable, and at times soul crushing. In marriage, both participants must be present and actively participating, 100% engaged in the pursuit of health, healing, and self-less love in order for the marriage to mirror the relationship between Christ and the church. Anything less and marriage becomes a very dark and isolating road to be walking on.

Lewis wrote: “before accepting sexual starvation as the cause of the strip-te ase, we should have to look for evidence that there is in fact mor e sexual abstinence in our age than in those ages when things lik e the strip-tease were unknown.”

I’m not certain I know what he is referring to. There has always been the strip-tease in society. Wether for men with money or for Kings. It’s even in the Bible. I do not think there is a point at which men did not lust after women in history.

There are, of course, a growing tendency to consolidate sexual partners now for certain men. The “alpha male” as it is known has utilized (often by happenstance) technological advancement to the point that they are in control of a vast networked harem at their disposal. Modern women, too, seem to be under this same or similar spell, more than willing to gratify their urges with promiscuous sex rather than through committed, monogamous relationships. This is leaving many, if not most men out of the “loop.” They are no longer viewed as desirable by the opposite sex and are forced into the incel camp of the unwilling celibate. Many men are finding the current cultural processes so problematic, they are “walking away” altogether from interactions with the opposite sex, especially given the alternatives available to them through porn and prostitution. An even greater threat is on the horizon, as technology advances to the point that life-like robots will emerge on the market that marvel any human woman alive. Imagine a mail-order humanoid, who looks just like the woman of your dreams, who smells wonderful all the time, who skin is supple and perfect, who has all the anatomical features of a real woman, but who does not demand anything from you, does not argue, does not deceive, cannot have children, is willing to pleasure you in any way you like, and could easily double as a house maid (dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc). But, once the chores are done and the sex has been had, the humanoid goes off to the closet and powers down, leaving the man to do as he pleases with the rest of his day.

This is a threat to everything on earth. It is a fundamental threat to the very existence of mankind. Unless technology can replace procreation with test-tube births to keep up with the death rate (or solve the death rate and the aging process) there will come a time when we outstrip the new and the population collapses. It will take several generations before that happens, but when it does, humans will have no idea how to make a genuine connection with another human being. We will literally die off in our isolation.

Lewis wrote: “that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven”

I was actually quite surprised to see Lewis here break from the traditional view that everything and everyone in the supernatural realm is somehow ethereal, having no form, essentially spirit only with no body. But, this is not borne out in Scripture. God appears to have a body. Angels appear to have bodies. Humans certainly have bodies. The only creatures that do not have bodies are humans after death and before the resurrection, and demons.

This is, of course, only one element of a massive body of biblical knowledge that is either ignored or actively repressed by whatever is deemed orthodoxical Christianity by a given society.

The church fathers did a great disservice to the body as a whole (throughout time and space) by rendering “spiritual” as “ethereal.” the Bible is quite clear about the bodily form of God and the other beings inhabiting the supernatural realm (as well as our future selves) if one is willing to take off their demonational orthodoxy for long enough to read the text for what it says.

Lewis wrote: “There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us.”

If, indeed, our sexual appetite is inflamed, I can see why it would be healthy to dampen its flame within the confines of a healthy, monogamous, biblical relationship, or even better, through prayerful, sober, and contemplative walking by the spirit through a celibate life devoted completely to the Lord and serving his purpose.

But, I fundamentally disagree. At least to the extent that the sexual appetite of general man is inflamed. I would certainly agree that an individual who has been heavily influenced by pornography or illicit sexual gratification through illicit or random or superficial encounters with individuals or even worse strangers, does indeed have at least a warped sense of what sexuality is or is intended for or in what context it is to be experienced. The case I most often am reminded of is the woman who is on a particular dating app, is propositioned by a male online, the two agree to meet at a motel. Obviously, sex is the main component for which they are meeting, and in meeting they get right to work. It is a mutually pleasurable experience and before long they have both received their desired aims. Afterward, the woman excuses herself and goes to the bathroom. Only a few minutes pass, but by the time she gets back to the bed, the man with whom she had just shared intimate relations with is already back on his phone, searching through the dating app, looking for his next conquest. This example is wholly and horribly disastrous for both of them.

But, in my situation, I became sexually interested in the opposite sex at about the age of 10. It was not incited by sexual abuse, by pornography (such was not easily available back then), or illicit displays on the television. It was a natural desire. I was not raised in a Christian home, and certainly already by this time, the school system was in such a state of indoctrination that both sources of authority were teaching me that sexual desires was good and healthy and masturbation was a perfectly fine means of sating sexual desires that was not appropriate for actual intercourse at my age. I remember sex classes in grade school.

Throughout school and into the first 10 years of adulthood my sexual appetite remained rather constant. It still was not influenced by harmful images or individuals. By the age of 15 I had had my first sexual experience with my girlfriend, and went on through high school to have similar experiences with a handful of girls who fancied it worthwhile enough to spend time with me. Most of these experiences were not really great, a few were, but the relationships ultimately ended disastrously (not surprisingly).

By the end of my senior year, I had the most singular transforming experience of my life, an experience that would stand even 30 years later as still the most profound I have ever experience. As I went into the military with my newfound or newly gifted faith, I was by context of my spiritual formation celibate, and remained so through the entire four year enlistment. After the military, I spent the rest of my 20’s celibate and single, serving the churches as best I could. At 29, God brought into my life a woman I thought was to be my wife for the rest of my life. 5 years later, though, that marriage imploded due primarily to her trauma from sexual abuse in childhood, and ultimately out of my failure to love her as Christ loved the church. After my divorce, I committed to a life of singleness and celibacy and this lasted up to today, 13 years of blissful singleness with not even a hint of loneliness or desire to enter into marriage again.

Throughout that span of time, my sexual appetites had not grown or decreased. They remained the same, and I was able to adequately sate those desires, though it was sometimes a struggle, and not a few temptations from non-believers who wanted to pursue physical relationships.

I don’t view my sexual appetites as being inflamed, since they have remained rather static throughout the last 37 years. In fact, it was precisely this non-change, no “burning with passion” in combination with the lack of any loneliness or feeling of loss to be with another person that convinced me that I was truly called to the celibate life, more so to the solitary life in Christ. Add to it references to sexual temptation found in the desert fathers (such as seeing demons coming to them at night to entice them, and even hermits being caught with actual women hidden in baskets in their cells) I actually considered myself blessed to have less appetite than apparently many of them.

I would still be fully embracing my solitary, single state of life if it had not been for the recent conviction to married life that I’ve already talked about. Part of me actually hopes that I was somehow in error in interpreting that conviction, that God did not want me to prepare for the married life as much as he was preparing me for a deeper relationship with him, as part of my sanctification, so that I can at some point weather this season of internal turmoil and emerge on the other side tempered by God’s grace, able to handle my body toward God with honor and temperance. But, there is an argument to be made that God has not taken my sexual appetite specifically because I have not been called to be single the rest of my life, but that I am later in life to be married. I don’t know. While it is not often like him to make me suffer simply for the sake of suffering, there may be a reason to make me carry this unrequited desire. I have no idea why. God always has a reason for everything he does.

But, I don’t see the sexual appetite in humanity as being inflamed. I see that it can be unhealthily inflamed if that desire becomes a preoccupation. If the individual cannot exercise self-control, especially in the context of married life. The individual who is vexed by addictions to pornography and even worse illicit affairs while also married is a curse man, indeed. May God have mercy on him.

But God calls us to honor and self-control, not fornication.

Lewis wrote: “What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to over come them.”

If only it were so! I think when I read this it was worth reading the whole book for just this one sentence, this one idea, that God is not looking or focused on perfection in the individual as much as he is focused on the will and the sincerity and perseverance we exercise toward perfection. It is true that the Christian must cease from sin, but the realization of this, regardless of our efforts, might not manifest fully until the end and we are transformed into the image of the Son. In my personal experience, I see this pattern clearly at work. By the spirit I walk, I endure, I am led. The things that I think cannot be done I am able to do when I relinquish all control, all purpose, all will of my own, and allow God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit direct my every step. But this last only so long. When disenchantment comes, when a setback arises, when an emotional pain surfaces, when doubt takes root, I quickly degenerate back to the flesh, back to my own devices, to shortcuts, to mechanisms that I’ve relied on for much of my single life. But, in my failure, I trust in God who forgives (for he died on the cross before I had committed even my first sin), the power of the cross, the power of his shed blood is effective enough to cover even the worst of my sins, even those sins that I have yet to commit.

If we are judged on our intention rather than on actual outcome, I should be okay. I might actually find favor in the sight of my God and King. If, instead, he demands right action along with right intention, I am doomed beyond the greatest of sinners.

Lewis wrote: “It is easy to think that we want something when we do not really want it.”

I know I do not want to be married and yet, within me is this newly formed foreign entity, this desire to share my life with another. Not just any other, otherwise I would have shacked up with one of the several who had shown interest over the years. Certainly I would have done so with my childhood sweetheart (though I’m certain it would have ended in disaster). Surely I would have with the coworker who is actually a perfect fit in between celibacy and married life. But, none of these are even an adequate fit to the desire God has rekindled within me for the helpmate he has asked me to prepare for. Just like with my first wife, if I had gone into a relationship with one of these other women, I would have had to sacrifice quite a lot of that foreign desire (for a genuine biblical love and union). I would have had to give up the full spectrum of connection that I seek with another. I would have had to give up the emotional with my wife, for she was completely severed from her emotions, from her ability to connect with another human being. Despite the physical connection that was already there in my marriage, at least on my part (not sure my wife was capable of this as well – so not sure how much of an authentic connection it was or how much of it was simple delusion), I certainly would have had to sacrifice the spiritual connection that I now seek. In fact, I desire not just one or two of these, but all three of these and simultaneously in the same experience. In all the experiences I have with a spouse, wether it is just sharing our life together or intimately, physically. I desire a spiritual connection with them above all else. How can I be satisfied, how can I be in a healthy relationship if these must be sacrificed?

No. I now understand, as much as God has allowed me understanding, that I would rather spend the rest of my life alone, celibate, sacrificing my physical appetites, my emotional needs, my desires for spiritual connection with another human, if these things were not present or even possible in a marriage. I become the disciples but I think for rightful reasons, “It this is the way it is with a man and his wife (i.e. there is no spiritual or emotional connection, just the physical) then it is better that a man does not marry.”

Do I really want to be married? No. Do I really want to be single? Yes. But at the same time, these answers are just as valid reversed. I actually want and reject both simultaneously, for the real relationship I desire is a relationship with my Lord. The real intimacy I seek is that with my King and savior. And, at this moment, all of this is merely academic. I do not have an object for my affection. I may never receive the object that God has placed in my heart to seek. And, if that is the case, God will make a way, he will provide a provision in which I can carry this desire for union with another even though he still calls me to the single life. There must certainly be something within this longing and lack thereof of fulfilling that longing that I need to learn. If nothing else, may I be able and willing to open myself up to whatever it is God might want to teach me. Whatever it is, it will certainly be for my benefit. And it will be leaps and bounds better than any relationship I might be able to cobble together in the flesh.

Lewis wrote: “there are three reasons why it is now specially difficult for us to desire – let alone to achieve – complete chastity. In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, a nd all the propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so `natural.’ so `healthy,’ and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the i dea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humour. Now this association is a lie.”

I am not certain of this statement. It is no more difficult today than it was 1000 years ago to remain chaste against the world. For it is against the world that we wrestle for the world is led astray by the devil and his schemes. All the things Lewis cites here are, indeed, true, but as Paul states, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

This temptation of the world has remained the same, a temptation, since Adam and Eve first fell. Yes the world tries to convince us that sexual gratification outside of marriage is healthy and not harmful, that it is expected and good. But the world has been calling evil good and good evil since the dawn of time. It is no different, though they are braver and more exploitive now than ever before. Man does not need pornography at his fingertips to tempt his sin nature into self-gratification. He does not even need it to tempt him into treating his wife as an object, or worse, as an implement of his selfish gratifications. He is more than capable of coming up with these things on his own.

But, first, celibacy and especially chastity are given as a gift from God. They are not to be taken on lightly and it is not something that should be thrust upon an individual against their will. Likewise, it is self brutality to attempt such abstinence without the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort and to whom we can relinquish control. Man was not made naturally or especially in his fallen state to abstain from sexual experience. It is hardwired in his DNA to procreate, to seek out sexual gratification. To deny such, to sacrifice such an appetite naturally given, would be akin to murdering your self or tormenting yourself beyond what you can bear. But, God, in his infinite wisdom, has deemed some to be such, eunuchs sacrificing their sexual appetites for the sake of the Kingdom of God. How? Why? That must be between them and God. It is a mystery. For I can attest, as one who has lived much of his life with such a call, I know when God is moving in my life. I can discern it. But I have no faculty to describe what is actually happening. No means of communication that will accurately capture what God has done and is doing and will most certainly continue to do in my life.

I can feel, abruptly, suddenly, without warning, the ability to do that which I could not up to that moment do. Yet, to do so suddenly becomes so easy, so effortless, so supernaturally serene. It makes as much sense to me as it would to a stranger watching it. For if I make the intention with my mind, eliciting the help of the Holy Spirit, I can accomplish all that I set my heart on, that which pleases God, I find myself doing. And moment by moment, second by second, thought by thought, I remain in the spirit of God, I am enveloped by him, I am nurtured by him, I am endeavored by him. Being in the spirit is like being a sail caught in a strong wind. As long as I remain true to course and do not deviate, do not try to pick up the oars and power myself forward or to one side or the other, as long as I allow God full control, then he will direct, he will guide, he will empower. This is entirely separate, entirely distinct from that fraudulent claim of being “in the spirit” when seduced by the modern experience of speaking in tongues or being slain in the spirit. These things are counterfeits of true spiritual surrender. They are fabrications of demons, no different than the susceptivity of pornography or the lure of a temptress woman. But walking in the spirit of God is undeniably so much more than can be adequately expressed.

Lewis wrote: “In the second place, many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible.”

It was actually not something I set out to do. In my teens and 20’s I desperately wanted a wife and family. This was one of the major reasons none of my relationships in high school ever worked out. I moved too quickly, fell too hard, and inevitably scared them off. Of course, those women that I choose (or that were even interested in me) were not really of the highest caliber – I’m sure that played a factor.

When I went into the military I did not make the conscious decision to be single and celibate. If I had been given the choice, if someone would have vocalized that decision to me, I would have flatly declined. There was at least two young women during my time in Germany that showed interest in me. One time I passed because she was too young (later I found out the age of consent was not 18 like in the US but 16 – my ignorance all for the better) and the other I was actually quite oblivious to until after it was too late. Rather than a purposed choice, I was simply overtaken by my relationship with God during those years. I had no interest in women because I was captivated by what God was doing in my life, the changes he was making, the inner life of prayer and solitude and serious and in-depth study was forming the foundation that would later provide immense amounts of joy and steadfastness in the face of adversity. At the time, though, I really had no concept of celibacy as a choice. It was not something taught in evangelicalism as something to aspire to, let alone a gift from God to wholeheartedly embrace. In fact, singleness was often looked down upon in the modern churches I’ve had experience with no options to serve, no real communication about embracing solitude or singleness from the leadership. Most ignored it altogether as some kind of stain on the congregation, hoping that the single man or woman would quickly find a mate, marry, have children, and settle down so they could be pacified and distracted by family life. In this aberration, the majority would exchange any kind of genuine work for the church they might be called to for passive financial giving, sitting every Sunday in the pew and quietly listening. The modern church by and large today does not want its programs questioned, its theology or doctrine critically or intensely examined, and simply would rather you tend to your family, to your work, and leave the ministry to the professionals.

Lewis wrote: “Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pickyourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”

This is the description of my recent walk. Much of my life has been a majority of confusion and groping for God in the dark, with brief periods of clarity and certainty in whatever direction he would next lead. But recently, I’ve experienced a much more purposefulness, an exactitude in God’s work on my heart. I’ve felt things begin to change in me, feelings, convictions that I’ve held for many, many years, simply dissipate without warning or cause or purpose. The desire and conviction to never have children was, in the midst of a prayerful argument with God one day, was simply taken form me without warning. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. I can still make the arguments. Those reasons are still true and unchanged. But now I would not only be willing to have children of my own, but I would want to have children if it was something a future wife wanted as well. In fact, I would be overjoyed at such news, despite all the rational, logical arguments against it. Just this morning I was driving to work and during my commute I could feel God working on my soul, on my convictions toward my aversion to people. I don’t know with any certainty what exactly God is doing with me now, in this season. But, unmistakably, I am certain he is doing something.

This statement, though, by Lewis, was worth all the gold I could possibly ever find. Regardless of the disappointing read this classic has so far been (most popular books are disappointments), this claim he makes, if true, gives me a great deal of hope. That I am saved and that salvation is without merit, without labor, without effort. It is a free gift. Sanctification is the natural outpouring from that salvation. I am going to fail. It is a guarantee. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to disappoint those people who are involved in my life. Whether it be a wife or just myself. But in my contrition, I recalibrate, adjust for my predilections, for my weaknesses, for my trigger spots that tip me over the edge and where I slide off into sin, and I strive forward again in righteous thinking and righteous action. I really like the statement, “what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.” This has been my aim now for the last several months as I try to abide by his new call on my life, regardless of what the final outcome will be. I believe and know and am convicted that the final outcome will not be losing him or my salvation or my standing before him. Those are all secure in the blood of Christ, through my faith (the belief he gave me). But he is certainly calling me to something greater than what I currently have obtained. By his grace and faithfulness alone, whatever it may be, may I attain it.

Lewis wrote: “For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or a ny other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the sou l which are more important still.”

I have learn this lesson first hand. Celibacy and especially chastity are states of being that can only be achieved through persistent, spirit led self-control. Self-control is learned only by repetition, by a multitude of failings, but by an ever greater tendency toward submission and reattempting to do what is right, even in light of the probability of failure in the future. Monastics claim that monasticism, the testing of one’s vocation is, in reality, a series of failures punctured occasionally by mere moments of success. To this, too, can I attest. I am learning and am being convinced of as I write this and every day that I walk in the newness of surrendering to him, that habits are trained and righteous living is the result of such training. Yes, there are examples in my life when training and habits were not required. I never once trained to be a studier of God’s word. This was given as a thirst, a gift from God to desire his message. I did not learn to appreciate Scripture. I was indwelled with an insatiable desire to pursue it, to consume it, to dwell on it. When others were going out or watching sports or do any number of other things, I was content to sit in my room and read what Paul and Matthew and all the others were led to write. And this has been the bulk of my life. I have not succeeded in a career or in building wealth. I have not become a millionaire. I have not succeeded when it comes to relationships or in married life, but I believe my relationship with my God and redeemer is strong than I ever could have imagined it would be, or that I even would desire such a relationship in the first place. Yet, now that I have him as close to me as he is, every day, speaking to him and hearing from him in the peculiar way that he chooses to communicate with me, I am baffled by his interest in me. Why me, of all people? Why take the time? Why would he care in the first place? But, regardless of his motives, it has taken time to build the relationship that I have with him. It has taken time, 30 years or more, to get to a place where he can begin to work on these issues with me. To correct me without me coming apart at the seams. To him alone am I grateful.

Lewis wrote: “It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust our selves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”

Yes, I have learned this first hand. I know that I am wicked and broken from the beginning, at my first breath. I’ve always said there is nothing good to be found within me, not in my body, not in my soul. I am cursed because of Adam, I have a fallen and deformed sin nature, one that seeks out its own, that is selfish, that is uncharitable, that does not love the saints, that strives to distance itself from helping others. Yet, God died for me long before I ever existed. He knew from beginning to end everything I would ever do before I ever did any of it. Even the sins I have yet to commit, none of them were so grievous or horrific that he chose instead to form me as a vessel of wrath. Rather, he formed me as a vessel of mercy, that he would use me to show the world (but one example among many) that he is a merciful God, that even in my sins, even with the monster that is me, that resides in me, he still died for me that I might have life in him. So now my life is his. I was a sinner before God saved me, lost and destitute, without hope. Yet now I am heir in the promises of Abraham, in the promises by faith. And it is not even my faith that saves me. It is not even my belief that snatches me from the fire. It is a faith that belongs to God. It is his work, fashioned and molded just for me, but his nonetheless. If it had been left to me, I never would have agreed. I would have remained a Buddhist, I would have certainly choses to hunt and kill and destroy and wreak havoc on as many people as I could possibly bring on the individuals unlucky enough to cross my path. There is no telling what I would have amounted to if it had not been for God’s grace. There is no telling the horrible things I might have done. I hope to find out once all is finished. It is my hope that God will grant me full access to the human record, to the record of creation, the angelic record, and also to the records of the future. The thirst he gave me knows no ends, and I would love nothing better than to spend eternity discovering all the glorious and miraculous and majestic things that God has done during his existence (and how it is he has no origin to begin with).

Lewis wrote: “Virtue-even attempted virtue-brings light; indulgence brings fog.”

I do find the focus on the attempt as quite intriguing, as already discussed. I can’t say indulgence brings fog. It does bring satiation. It also removes possibly the purpose of physical appetites in pushing us toward marriage when we would otherwise view the additional ramifications as too costly.

I have considered a great deal the possibility that I was never called to the solitary life in the last 13 years, that my indulgences have led me more so than God, in that it satisfied an inherent need that God instilled in me to drive me toward a woman rather than toward solitary life. But, after some consideration, I reject this conclusions for several reasons.

1. God never once convicted me to set aside my indulgences during those 13 years after my divorce (though a lack of conviction in no way justifies habitual sin – but there is an argument that sin that is unconvicted is not actually yet sin – Ro 14:2-23).
2. I can attest, I was in no condition after my divorce to be seeking another wife. I was damaged, broken quite beyond repair, but also I had assessed Scripture and found that there was a distinct choice that one makes. If there is independent volition at all, it certainly resides in the decision to be married or to be single. Paul’s qualifier is, of course, can you live the single life without burning with passion? I found that I could, if burning with passion meant not indulging in sexual acts with actual women. I viewed my sexual appetite as a natural bodily appetite, not unlike eating or breathing. But when I would read books on “addiction” they never matched what I was going through, or how I was affected. My indulgences never increased in either frequency or in intensity or perversity. I was not being drawn into greater and greater levels of perverseness, nor was I being tempted by indulgences toward actual sexual encounters with women. I had a physical appetite, but I had no emotional or spiritual draw to share my life with another person.
3. Indulgences allowed me to quite easily be sated and satisfied, so that I could push aside those physical demands quickly and focus on more important things of God without distraction. I was able to devote myself to the serious study of God’s word. I was able to take seminary back up and finish my MA and ultimately my ThD. My relationship with God continued to grow an deepen. Marriage had never done this. It had only caused pain, distraction, and a squandering of the time rather than the redeeming of it.
4. I had no qualms about my choice to remain single after my divorce. My ex wife remarried right away. The ink was not even dry on our divorce papers. I was not out of the house 24 hours before she moved in her new boyfriend to take my place. And another professing Christian, mind you. For me, I remember the moment quite well, I was in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, and I realized that even the best of marriages were the riskiest of endeavors. That you could marry the woman of your dreams, and live with her and love her with everything you had, and yet, she could wake up one day, maybe 10, 15, or even 20 years of living together, and she could simply decide she no longer wants to be married to you. That thought permeated my mind for a long time, and I could never find a way around that risk, never could hedge against it. Even if the woman was a Christian her whole life, even if she had a great testimony from multiple people in her family, from the members of her church, nothing could protect me from that risk inherent to marriage. So, with Scriptures like 1 Co 7 and Matt 12:12, and the readings from the desert fathers and other monastics (who I had just been accidentally introduced to – for they do not talk about these Christian men and women in evangelicalism – if they had, I might never have married in the first place).

Even to this day, up until four months ago, my clarity was crystal clear. I had no desire to marry again. I certainly had no desire to bring children into this godawful world. Even when approached by women throughout the 13 years, I have had no inclination or enough of a desire to act upon those invitations. At least three were very serious offers. I’m certain, had I been of the mind, I could have slept with all three quite easily. But as Paul put it, I was able to “stand steadfast in my heart, having no necessity, but had power over my own will, and had so determined in my heart” (1 Co 7:37). If I had been burning with passion I never would have survived their interest. I only entertain even the possibility of marriage in the future because it is a conviction God has given me. It came out of nowhere, suddenly, and with a certainty that I cannot deny. In addition, the emotional drive to share my life with someone was abruptly rekindled or given anew. Yet I still feel the contentment from my single life simultaneously.

I would disagree with Lewis’ take on the power indulgence has. Or, maybe there are different kinds of indulgences, or maybe different circumstances in which we find ourselves in. One Christian might have liberty to drink alcohol while another Christian is, by faith, forbidden to do so. It is between the heart of a man and his God that determines what is allowable and what is prohibited. It is not so simply divided between virtue and indulgence.

Lewis wrote: “there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self.The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.”

The goal is not the human self but the glorified self through sanctification and eventually through supernatural transformation at the resurrection and rapture. But there are still two at work in our mortal bodies: the sin nature (the flesh) and the spirit that resides within me after being born again. Paul described it this way, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:18–25).

Lewis really seems to think that there is a human nature that is fundamentally good, that this process of our sanctification can be merited by “good works.” It can’t. But, the distinction he makes between the “prig” and the prostitute. I really didn’t know what this term meant, but after looking it up it means “a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.” Pride is the condemnation of the devil, and it is that which draws us to a worldly life. Every sin is rooted in some way to pride.

But, as I am a fallen creature, made mortal by the actions of Adam and Eve, I am led by the flesh in all things. This is essentially who I am, at the core. Yet, when I am saved by Christ, and the spirit indwells me, then I am transformed, and that transformation which was started at my rebirth will be completed at the resurrection of the dead.

We are not brought closer are drawn further away from our true self by our deeds. We are brought or drawn by our faith, our submission, our allegiance to Christ. If we can even lose our salvation (which I’m beginning to think those who have been drawn by the Father cannot resist), it is because we have abandoned the faith, abandoned our belief in Christ as Lord and that he was resurrected by God on the third day. Lewis is in error thinking that our human self has any merit or redeemable quality to it.

Lewis wrote: “Christian doctrines on this subject are extremely unpopular.”

The singular reason why this doctrine of submission is unpopular is due to rebellion of both men and women in the modern world. Men have obfuscated their responsibilities as husbands, fathers, providers, leaders of their families and of the church while women have rebelled against their gender, against their husbands and against their God. Until these two actions cease, there will be no peace anywhere and marriages will continue to implode.

Lewis wrote: “The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.”

I would have to disagree with this statement. I’ve had a few sexual experiences outside of marriage that were quite different from that which is often described. The issue most often I’ve found is that I am trying to seek marital union experiences with people who are neither my wife nor committed. This was the biggest practical issue with my previous marriage. If we had not divorced, if we had stayed together, it would have required that I give up any attempts at seeking those other kinds of union that go along with the physical. I would have had to abandon any hope for an emotional connection. My wife’s childhood trauma from sexual abuse had robbed her of any ability to connect with someone else on an emotional level, especially when it came to sexual experiences. Likewise, because she was not actually a believer but rather a counterfeit believer (something I did not discover until we got toward the end and she finally confessed that she had lied so I would marry her), there was no hope of ever making a spiritual connection with my wife.

Sex was most often a haphazard and sometimes a terrible experience with her, riddled with stress, anxiety, and confusing and contradictory demands. But, a few times, sex was quite earth-shattering – at least for me. For my wife, I don’t know if sex was ever – could ever – be a “good” experience, even if it was done exactly the way she wanted it, exactly when she wanted it. The really good experiences I had, I discovered to my surprise, she had not really been present at all. I’m not certain if she drifted off to fantasy or if she returned to the trauma of her childhood. Sex overall certainly stirred up conflicting issues for her, issues that I could not begin to even try to mend, and for which she refused to get any help.

I’m not certain that everyone is trying to short-circuit marital sex by having premarital sex or sex outside of marriage. Most people are in context that may not even begin to consider a biblical marriage. The only sex they’ve ever known has been physical, barely emotional, without any hope of a spiritual connection at all. Yes, there are some who intentionally try to rob the physical from the rest of it, intentionally avoid commitment, relationships, emotions, and prefers instead to one night stands, risky sex with strangers, and down right perverse sexual experiences. But, it is not fair to loop them all together. I imagine there are countless non-believing individuals who experience the physical and the emotional aspects during sex. There may even be some who experience the spiritual as well. Even with someone they barely know. But, though this has not been my experience, I cannot rule it out for others entirely.

I has most of my sexual experiences before I became a believer. Most of them (they were really only a handful) were lukewarm to down right awful experiences. There was at least one experience, though, that I can remember with someone that I was completely and utterly in love with at the time. She captivated me and I would have spent the rest of my life with her. Our time together was quite mystical, magical to me. It embodied, for the first time in my life, everything that I thought a partner could be, would be like. We were both present and participatory, and I was convinced that we would actually be together forever.

But, she turned out not to share my earth shattering convictions. My certainty drove her away quite quickly.

To be honest, though, I have never experienced what Lewis is talking about here: physical union with another human being that incorporates not just the physical body, but also the full exercise of the emotions as well and the joining together of the spirit or soul. But, even this kind of ecstatic, multi-state experience is still only transitory. Angels do not have sex in heaven. Humans, likewise, will not indulge once we are revealed as Sons of God. Sex is something done in tandem for procreation and for mutual comfort and expression while living in the fallen flesh. At death, all marital ties are severed. To be honest, I’m not really certain I understand what that will be like, once we step into heaven, those who have spent a lifetime (40-70 years) together as a married couple will simply cease to be joined. Will the emotional connections forged over such a long expanse simply cease to have meaning any longer? Will we be so preoccupied being in the presence of Christ that mortal marital bounds will seem suddenly trivial if noticeable at all?

Of course, Lewis is writing all this from the perspective of a single man. He did not marry until 7 years before his death, and his wife died 4 years after they married. This is, of course, my greatest fear. It is not being denied the experience of a great and biblical marriage with a godly woman. Long ago I recognized Paul’s wisdom when he said, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” No, my ultimate fear is that God would present to me a godly woman, who is the perfect fit for me, who is a true and genuine helpmate, and we settle into our life, grow accustomed to the other, only to lose her within 2,3, 5 years to cancer or an auto wreck, or even in childbirth. This is what happened to Lewis. He was with his wife for only 4 years before she was taken by disease. Fortunately for him, he lived only three years beyond that and then died.

Dr. Missler likewise is another example of someone who’s wife proceeded him in death. I recall receiving the news that Nan was battling cancer, and then subsequent notices that she had passed. He, too, survived her by only 3 years before his death. I remember seeing him in interviews and broadcasts after Nan’s departure, and he seemed to be only partial the man I remembered. As if his spirit had been broken at her passing. This is my greatest fear. Another family I knew in my 20’s and 30’s lived in my neighborhood. They were not of a particular denomination, more of a cult if being honest. The women in the family wore head coverings, but not because the father insisted – it was actually the daughters who came to such conclusions years before. This family was wholesome, backward, and quite large. They had 10 or 11 kids by the time I met them, from 18 years old down to just a few months. But, by the time the father hit 55, he was diagnosed with brain cancer and died shortly after. Here was now a widow, mother of 10 children, her husband gone suddenly. I can’t imagine the kind of loss she must have gone through. It must have been unbearable.

I would find it difficult to claim sexual intercourse outside of marriage is monstrous, simply because it is outside of marriage. I’m certain there is a large majority of sex within the confines of marriage that should be categorized as monstrous as well. People have many motives. It is simply not so cut and dried.

Lewis wrote: “someone may reply that he regarded the promise made in church as a mere formality and never intended to keep it. Whom, then, was he trying to deceive when he made it? God? They were impostors, they cheated.”

This is what occurred for me in my marriage. My wife, at the professing of our vows, lied to me and to God when she declared that we would remain together for life, that she would always be willing to work on our problems, any problems that arose. We had discussed it extensively and had both agreed that we did not want divorce to be on the table. It was not until years later that my wife admitted to me that divorce had always been an option for her. She had just said those words so I would marry her. To hear her speak like this shook me to the core. I had no foundation for our marriage any longer, for it had been built on the quicksand of deceit. I could not trust what she said going forward, for she obviously had no fear of God, and no love for me if she was willing to lie to me to get what she wanted (or what she thought she wanted). In the end, it was my insistence that we get help for her issues that drove the final wedge into our relationship. I think she knew, if only at a subconscious level, if she pried too hard at that psychological wall she had put up to protect herself all those years before, there was no telling what she would find behind it. It was simply too much of a risk, and it was easier for her to abandon her vows, violate her promises, commit adultery before the Lord by abandoning our marriage and moving in a stranger to our house and our bed, that it was to put her trust in God, that he would provide a path to her healing.

Lewis wrote: “one fault is not mended by adding another:”

This is one of the primary reasons why I did not attempt a second marriage after my first one failed. I learned first hand that using marriage to try to solve problems in life is a recipe for disaster. It simply does not work. It is the reason why there is so much divorce in the modern era, other than rampant sin, that people use marriage or relationships as a means of soothing their hurts, as a solution against loneliness, or a mechanism by which they can satisfy their appetites. Marriage, in my estimation, is none of these things. It is a union that really should be preordained by God. Yet, even the best intentions can falter given those involved.

Though, there is an argument from the Bible about marriage being an antidote to fornication. After all, Paul said quite bluntly, “it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Co 7:9). But I’ve always looked at marriage, at least in the years after my divorce, as a weakness, “because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband” (1 Co 7:2). Rather, Paul would have had all people remain single, “I wish that all men were even as I myself” (vs 7). He did give room for marriage as a gift from God, but I would imagine reluctantly so.

Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to indicate that most people should get married because marriage was the default, because of weakness. His disciples said to him, “If this is how it is between a man and his wife, it is better not to marry.” He responded with, “all cannot accept this, but only those to whom it has been given” (Matt 19:10-11). If you haven’t been given the gift of singleness (which automatically includes at least celibacy and maybe even complete chastity) then you will not be able to tolerate life without the physical gratifications obligated by each spouse to the other, you will not be able to survive and thrive in life without the emotional and psychological comforts afforded you and that you extend to your spouse (I actually have seen this in several people. One person in particular I have noticed over the years has growing increasingly unstable because of her failures to find a mate). But, make no mistake, it is clear: marriage is borne from weakness, the inability to function autonomously in life, to handle all the challenges of life and ministry without the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual comforts a spouse (in theory) should bring.

And this is all fine and good, except for the reality of the situation that the disciples caught on to quite quickly. If a man and his wife are to be married and to become one flesh, and that there should never have been divorce to begin with (which was also given out of weakness), it means marriage is so difficult, so taxing, so all consuming that you truly are not only divided to the Lord (which should be enough in itself not to want to marry) but you are also just as likely to be taxed physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually as much as you are helped. In fact, often marriage brings no help or comfort or rest at all for the party involved, but only pain, misery, disappointment, discouragement, and often betrayal. It is a fool’s errand to think that marriage will cure the woes of a single person. If a single person is struggling in his or her singleness, there is a good likelihood that they will struggle still in married life, maybe even more so.

For me, I don’t think I received justice from the local church, from family and friends, from pastors or teachers when they continually encouraged me to find a wife and settle down. They did so assuming that my issues were predominately physical, that I was in need of a good sexual partner. But, the reality was, I was struggling under the weight of a non-biblical cultic religion, that was vastly different than the picture provided to me in the Bible. I was struggling to exercise self-control and contentment with the freedoms I had. Truly, the church had the responsibility to take me aside, to take all single people aside, and instruct them on how to seek the Lord, not to obsessively pray for a spouse as a knee-jerk response to temptation, but pray for God’s calling, the first of which is to singleness. Paul tells us, “it is good for a man to remain as he is: are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife” (1 Co 7:26-27). So, in reality, every young man who is brought up in the church should be carefully and tentatively instructed and mentored in his teen years, not to immediately seek marriage, but to consider soberly and honestly what the call is God has placed on his life. He is, by default, unmarried, and should really stay in this state if he is able. But the church does not do this because it is not financially profitable, nor does the church really know what to do with a cadre of single adult men, since the church’s doctrine and theology and teaching is so watered down, and everything is inwardly focused on the “local church” rather than on organic division and propagation. There should not be such a massive focus on evangelism, but on discipleship, on building up the body of believers for works of service, so that the whole body functions and works for the betterment of the body itself. But the church does not want this. They want most of the body passive, sated, distracted by poorly formed marriages, so that they can exchanged their given gifts of service for the gift of giving (financially). This supports their singular aim: authority and financial incentive as well as predatory behavior on the part of the clergy.

Marriage, in the end, is not the solution to the single problem. In fact, singleness is often the solution to the marriage problem. If more men sought Christ alone, rather than division or distraction in marriage, or tried to fulfill the lusts of the flesh with their partners, the church would be healthier and stronger and would have more supernatural power than it currently does. Today, the church is anemic at best, weak, disorganized, focusing on money and fame and the pacification of the saints, rather than the empowerment of them. Marriage, then, is not a cure, but a contagion, with most people ill-equipped for its often intense struggles and demand for self-less participants.

Lewis wrote: “The idea that `being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all.’

I agree. In the conversations leading up to our split and ultimately to our divorce, my wife asked me what I thought marriage was, when boiled down to its essential components. My answer was commitment. We had an obligation before God to make our marriage work, we had taken a vow. It was the same conversation that we had during our courtship, and at that time she had agreed with me (through lying words, apparently). But in the end, she argued that marriage should not be hard, it should not be difficult and it should not have difficulty in it. Of course, she either wouldn’t admit or couldn’t recognize that the majority of our difficult stemmed from the abuse she had suffered as a child. It was creeping into our sex life in the oddest but most destructive of ways, and any attempts at convincing her to get professional help either fell on deaf ears or was a disastrous failure. Marriage is a promise, that no matter what occurs, that other person you made the vow with will always be there, will always sacrifice themselves for the greater good of you both. Unbeknownst to me, my wife went to her best friend for advice about her struggling marriage. She was told to stick with it, to work it out. She then went to her parents, hoping for allies, but they too told her she had made a commitment and that she should seek counseling and that we could resolve our problems. But, in the end, she would have none of it. She was insistent that marriage should be fun, exciting, enjoyable, and if there were issues it meant the marriage was not working and her partner should be traded in for someone that was more compatible.

The issue with this, of course, is there is never anyone more compatible. It is just the same problems expressed in different ways. There was no hope for our marriage from the start. It was doomed. If my wife had expressed these sentiments back when we were dating, I never would have married her, and she knew that. This was the reason why she lied, so I would marry her. And, I think she was mostly likely incapable of admitting these feelings to herself anyway until she was in the trenches and faced with the daunting task of dealing and processing the guilt and shame and trauma she had suffered at the hands of adult men when she was as young as 10 years old, all by the approval of her mother. There was also the sister that I’m sure weighed heavy on my wife’s soul. Her sister was a wreck, having lost her mind to the same kind of trauma years before. She barely could get out of bed. She could not take care of her children. She would neurotically abuse herself. This is potentially what my wife had ahead of her if she tugged on that wall in her mind too hard. There was the risk of it all come tumbling down around her in her own mind, and she might lose every sense of herself, every fabrication that she had erected over her 25 years after the fact. The truth was, my wife was running away from the past, away from the damage that other people had caused, and all these excuses were just her way of distancing herself from me, because I was a threat to her sanity. Which, in and of itself, is the worst kind of sadness, because all I wanted to do was help my wife. All I wanted to do was find a path to a healthy marriage with her, a healthy sex life with her. I wanted to give all that to her, if she would just let me. I would have worked night and day for the rest of my life to give her what she wanted, what she needed. But, she was trying to preserve the facade instead of deal with reality.

Lewis wrote: “the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love.”

My wife never could understand this concept of contract or commitment or vow over emotion, over a sense of love. It is true that this elation we call love is fleeting. It comes and goes and sometimes it disappears altogether. But in our society so has commitment. People are constantly jumping from relationship to relationship seeking what they lost, trying to retain that emotion when the real substance of marriage is in the commitment. I don’t think you can necessarily teach this. It has to be given by God. Maybe parents can instill this in their children. But if that be the case, how could I possibly have learned it when my parent’s marriage was a shambles throughout my childhood. It would have been better, I even begged my mother, for them to divorce. But, she claimed that it was harmful for children to be the products of divorce. Later I would come to realize that her choosing to stay had nothing to do with us children as much as it had to do with her wanting my father around to fix things and to drive her places and to have some one to argue with. But I now recognize my mother broke under all those years of abuse and neglect at the hands of my father, and because of that she is a despicable person today, someone you would cross the street to keep away from if you knew her for more than 5 minutes.

Marriage is not a utopia. It is hard work. It is struggle. It is sacrificial. It is commitment despite the modern world’s preoccupation with emotion. And I personally think it is doomed without Christ being at the center of it for both people.

Lewis wrote: “No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or cold self-centredness.”

I would have to disagree. Personally, if left to my own devices, to my own autonomy, I would choose common sensuality over the marriage commitment. I would choose transactional relationships (prostitution, etc) over the messy disaster that is so often the “love” relationship. I say this because of the inherent risk associated with marriage that cannot be hedged against. When one makes such a commitment, he is not doing so based on years of experience with that person already. Maybe a few years. Maybe they are fortunate enough to be marrying their childhood friend and have known them all their life. But most people meet, date, and are married within a year or so. This leaves very little time for background checks or getting past the brave faces of family or friends. Too often people wake up years later and discover the person they thought they were marrying is not actually the person lying in bed next to them. In fact, that person they thought they married never actually existed.

In transactional relationships, the price is set ahead of time. It is clean. It is comforting to know what is being risked (the money) and that there is safety (if you did it right and are not caught in an illegal situation) in knowing exactly the true motives of the person you are with.

I have never frequented a prostitute or a brothel, though I have been surprisingly in close proximity to both over the years without actually realized it. I have also been tempted over the years because they do seem much more attractive and sustainable to me than the drama infused mayhem of a long-term relationship.

But, I think there is a better alternative to all this. Actually, there are several. There is self-gratification. There is pornography (which is, in reality, just prostitution at a distance). And then there is also the gift from God in continence. Self-gratification is taught by the world as being a natural and perfectly healthy activity. The majority of people do indulge. Pornography, while having been in existence since the fall, certainly has come into its own in modern times and with the proliferation of personal electronic devices and the ubiquity of the internet. The last one, though, continence, is a translation for the word for self-control, to restrain, to exercise restraint over one’s own impulses and emotions. It is not merely self-control but the exercising of self-control over the individual by the individual. This entire concept is shunned by the world. It is scoffed at. It is ridiculed. But I personally think it is something the married and unmarried alike should be striving toward.

Lewis wrote: “Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You can not make it the basis of a whole life”

I would argue also that you cannot make it the basis of an entire marriage for that marriage to survive. I would actually argue that “being in love” is worse than promiscuity if, indeed, that elative emotion is all there is to the relationship. You are destined for a fall if that is the case, whereas the promiscuous person seeks out a partner, knowing full well that there are no strings attached, and that they only thing the two are seeking or will derive from the union is physical satisfaction.

For me, marriage only holds interest concerning the things above promiscuity or the felling of “being in love.” In fact, I would argue that such emotion is really just chemical reaction and is both elusive and undependable. Spiritual commitment, on the other hand, is supernatural in its ability to permeate both body and soul of each member of the union. God, in such a marriage, is actively at work them, separately and jointly, for they are surrendered to God. Paul said it is a great mystery, Christ and the church. That should not be overlooked. Even single and celibate people have much to learn from the married (even while they are celebrating their singleness). But it is not found in the carnal or in the shallow waters of “being in love.”

Lewis wrote: “no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all.Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.”

It is fascinating that knowledge was included here. Knowledge, habits, commitments also should be included. In fact, from these (especially habits) emotions and feelings can be manufactured from nothing.

Lewis wrote: “when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming they havedone that and still faile d to reach agreement. What do they do next?”

I believe this is the primary reason for Paul’s admonition to not be unequally yoked. There is no common ground. There is no singular authority from which to plead a decision on such a matter when a wife and her husband disagree. Do they go to the in-laws or the parents? That is disastrous and prone to breed resentment by whoever is sided against. Do they go to counseling? This can be helpful in some circumstances, but is costly and slow. But the couple who is equally yoked under God’s provision, under God’s designed roles for man and wife, will find a great deal of peace, patience, and transformation when both can calmly seek the Lord in prayer over a contentious issue. There is eminent power to prayer. I think prayer could have potentially solved my marital problems if only my wife had been an actual believer, genuinely submitted to Christ, rather than having built our relationship on lies and deception. Even still, if only I had prayed more, if I had prayed for my wife more, if I had prayed for our marriage more, God could have resolved the issues in our marriage from the inside out. There is no telling what transformative powers we could have availed ourselves of. But this is the inherent jeopardy of marriage. It is difficult to get one person to change, but to get two people to do so is nearly impossible.

Lewis wrote: “that is how He loves us.Not for any nice, attractive qualities we t hink we have, but just because we are the things called selves.”

We actually cannot make such assumptions, for there are countless “selves” in the lost and God has no love for them. In fact, Paul says that God is grieved by their very existence and he suffers while they are alive. It is true, God loves us for reasons beyond what we possess: not for looks or intellect or even right behavior. But we don’t know why he loves us. We don’t know why he chose some of us to be saved while he chose others to be condemned. This is the greatest mystery of God.

Lewis wrote: “What is it that makes a man with £10,000 a year anxious to get £20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure.£10,000 wi ll give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride – the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power.”

I find this interesting. Back in the 1950’s $10,000 was quite a sum. The average income for a typical family back then was only $4,800. I find this hilarious because I essentially live quite comfortably on this today. I can’t really imagine having $10,000 or $20,000 to spend. Even now, living on $4800 a year, I am hard pressed to find a lack in my lifestyle. In fact, my lifestyle compares quite nicely to that of those pulling in $200,000 if you factor by quality of life and level of satisfaction (rather than basing it on amount earned or amount spent or amount of material things amassed). The reality is, I actually have a superior lifestyle to most working people. I work only 2 days a week at a job that has no direct interaction with the general public. I have no boss to speak of (no one looking over my shoulder). I am not hard pressed by artificial or fabricated job stress, and I do not have to worry (much) about co-worker drama. Of course, this is not what I actually make. My income is double what I spend, allowing me to put away my annual expenses each year into savings. This perpetually, year after year, extends my savings by that year. Within 5 years I will have enough saved to retire comfortably until 62, where social security, even with their 25% cut, will be a pay raise of approximately $300 / month. Because my income is so low, I can continue working after 62 and still get full social security benefits. That’s $21000 per year. I could not spend that much if I tried. Because I work only 2 days a week, it would be possible to travel in my golden years. By the time I’m 62 (15 years from now) I will have approximately $100,000 in savings. I could, theoretically, travel indefinitely, especially overseas on my little nest egg. Or I could just remain in my small house that is paid off, and enjoy the quiet life (which I already enjoy quite a bit).

It is true, that humans only need a certain level in order to survive. Once survival is covered, there is again only a certain level above that needed to provide for creature comforts (of which you can only have so many). Beyond that, it is materialism and consumerism and beyond that is gross extravagancy.

Lewis wrote: “He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils i n His name, only to be told at the end of the world thatHe had nev er known them.”

Indeed, this is a significant fear for me. It’s clear, many will be deceived, many more will be deluded, the masses in fact will be turned over to a futile mind and will be carried away by their evil doings. How do I know that I am not one of them? If there are people who will preach and cast out demons and they will not be saved, how in the world will a hermitic misanthrope have any chance to certainty?

The answer, the only answer I’ve found in the last 30 years to this question is: faith. I know God is active in my life because he works contrary to my own will. He not only gives me the desire to want to do something (that I don’t actually want to do) but he also empowers me to do that very thing (Philippians 2:13). Likewise, my faith sustains me. It is a light in the darkness of my soul. Grateful am I that God’s work in my from beginning until today has been entirely by him. Not by intellect, not by emotion, not by being taught, not by human ingenuity have I come to this faith, to this love. It has truly been spiritually discerned.

This is what I place my hope in. In Christ resurrected. In the being that interrupted my life when I was 17, in his ever so gentle yet assertive nudged away from falsity toward his Word. The living springs that arose within me that have never been quenched by sin or doubt or disbelief or betrayal in all these years. God has proven faithful to me when he has absolutely no obligation to do so. May God be true and every man a liar.

Lewis wrote: “The real black, diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you”

I disagree personally with this statement. I do not care what others think, but not because I think I’m better than them. Though, I have found that most people prove themselves to be of quite low caliber and of questionable ethics. Most people I’ve encountered have been quite selfish beings, preoccupied with making money or trying to take advantage of someone.

A dislike of people in general can arise simply out of a natural response to their unlikeableness, to their questionable character, to their poor decision making ability, to their lack of impulse control, to their tendency toward betrayal and every other sin imaginable. It does not require pride on the part of the one disowning humanity.

The key, of course, is to treat them as if you love them anyway. If you find yourself in the company of many enemies, as if the whole world is set against you, you are in the greatest of positions, since Jesus instructed us to “love our enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spite you” (Matt 5:44). It is by this that we become “sons of your father in heaven.” We’ve already discussed our perverse view of love. It extends even to this love mentioned. Love does not mean be necessarily be nice to them. It also does not mean that we have to hang around them, be friends with them, or even listen to them. We are to “seek not our own, but the other’s well being” (1 Co 10:24) and “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4). You don’t have to like a person or even enjoy their company to look out for their best interests.

Lewis wrote: “To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin;”

Again, I would disagree. Just because we are loving something or someone outside of ourselves does not mean we are in any way stepping away from spiritual ruin. In fact, we might even be stepping toward it. We can love someone out of loneliness or out of lust or out of a sense of pride (having a trophy bride). We can love someone with our whole heart, devote ourselves to them, commit to a deep, monogamous, life-long relationship with them, and live out that life, upholding our vows, and then, at the end, meet with condemnation because we were not saved. Spiritual ruin or spiritual success is not measured in good deeds or even in the quality of the person we are. Our worth is measured in Christ and it is a binary measurement. Either we have died with him in his death, or we are found wanting. Those are the only two choices. There are no incremental steps to being found worthy, to being a good or better person, or to doing what is expected of us.

Lewis wrote: “If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.”

I am not proud of myself. In fact, I have a rather low opinion of myself. Thus, I do not contend that I am conceited, yet, Lewis’ statement here would then condemn me to conceit. A better measure would be those from the outside, who see enough of you that they can see what your blind spots cannot.

Lewis wrote: “love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a st ate not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.”

This is how I loved my wife. By commitment. Yes, I also loved her. I was, in fact, very much in love with her since the first day I met her. Yet, despite our marriage not turning out as I had hoped, despite the lack of joy and satisfaction I received from married life, at some points so miserable that I begged for death, divorce never once crossed my mind. I had made a promise to her, not just in our vows (but certainly including them), but also more specifically, in our discussions during our courtship. Divorce was a tragedy. It was disastrous for everyone involved. She had experienced with her parents. I, likewise, had experienced life in a home that should have divorced but never did. We agreed, promised, swore before God, that we would work through our problems, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, I was the only one who genuinely made this vow.

As already discussed, “love” or “being in love” is a curse. In our society, we prize such emotions, the titillation, the physical/chemical interaction and attraction. But, such things are quicksand and should never be used to establish a home or a family or a marriage. If you do, and the love later on in the relationship begins to shift or dissipate, the couple is left with little else to cling to as their foundation is eroded out from under them.

Lewis wrote: “some people are ‘cold’ by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is a
sin;”

I would disagree. I am a person with a “cold” or disagreeable temperament. I am introverted, and quite displeased with the human race in general. I am not necessarily misanthropic, though, if I had not been saved by Christ and subsequently transformed, then there is a very good possibility that I would have wound up truly hating my fellow man and having an irresistible urge to harm, to kill, to destroy, to dominate. But, that’s be to God alone, though I am certainly no extroverted happy-go-lucky fellow still, the greater animalistic and monstrous tendencies within me were nullified by the indwelling of the spirit.

Lewis wrote: “All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible.”

There is a real danger here in symbolizing biblical statements. It is predicted on the early church fathers concluding that the spiritual realm was ethereal (along with its inhabitants including God) and with the tendency to want to pacify passages that are uncomfortable for us. My hermeneutic is simple. Read the Bible in a straight forward, plain way. Resist the temptation to allegorize. Do not pass off actual accounts as parables just because you don’t want to deal with hard truths. Don’t anachronize your current superstitions and traditions for what occurred in the Bible. Typically they are not the same, often not even remotely similar.

Lewis wrote: “People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.”

And there is a clear distinction between describing God with body parts and when Jesus tells us to be as wise as serpents, but as innocent as doves. The use of the term “as” is key to point out symbolic reference. In Jeremiah 1:9 it says, “the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth.” It doesn’t say and reached out what was “like” his hand. Nor did it say he reached out to me as if he were reaching out with his hand to touch my mouth. The Lord’s hand is clearly literal here, as in many other places in the Bible. The same is true for feathers, wings, etc. I think God and Jesus and the rest of heaven all look very different when we get there than most people ever stop to realize.

Lewis wrote: “A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of, his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with hey- his mind lose s its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking,‘Perhaps she’ll be different this time,’and once more makes a fool of him self and tells her something he ought not to have told her.”

This is simply incorrect. The man in question (any man, really) can know a woman is treacherous, and, yet, when he is in direct proximity of her, it is not his faith in her treachery that he loses, but it is his rational faculties. It could be any number of things that sways him into irrational thinking. The smell of her hair. Her beautiful appearance. The way she touches his arm when she laughs at something he said. They all contribute, and surprisingly, the woman doesn’t even have to realize she’s having this influence on him to have it – though she often does know and is doing so on purpose. Sometimes, the man retains his logical knowledge about the woman, knows that she is devious and will likely destroy him, but in the moment he simply doesn’t care. His lust for her overrides everything else that might be happening in his brain. Every instinct is numbed, every thought dimmed, save one. There is a reason why there is mythic feminine creatures that lure fishermen into the sea and to their deaths. The truth of those myths are found in this power women hold over men, to captivate them, to render them quite useless to logic and reason.

Lewis wrote: “am not asking any one to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in. But supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it”

I would argue this is a terrible reason, the worst reason, to become a Christian. Faith in Christ is not logical. It is not about reason or rational thinking. It is similar to resting all your hopes for a relationship on the feeling of being in love. Once the evidence for Christ is overturned, what are you left with other than doubt? Evidence changes over time, as new information is discovered, as supposedly new information is fabricated. In empirical science a thing cannot be proven with any certainty, only that in those instances that it has been measured it was certain. Next week, month, or year a new test could return false and then what will you do with your faith?

Conviction, on the other hand, is better than any evidence that could ever be provided. Conviction allows you to walk in faith and not by sight. It allows you to believe even in doubt, even when the evidence is shaken. The only problem with conviction as apposed to reason or evidence is that conviction must be given by God. It cannot be taken. It does not rely on man at all. So, then, one cannot really become a Christian based on evidence, but only if he is called by the Father, and under conviction, he surrenders to Christ.

Lewis wrote: “there will come a moment when he wants a woman,”

I’ve come to this crossroad many a times, and at a very early age. In grade school I would get in trouble for squirreling off with a young beauty to the tires so I could kiss her without others catching a look. The same was the case in high school. During the four years I was in the military, this was not actually the case. There are only two that I can really consider women I had interest in. A third, though quite lackadaisical. For most of that time I was in a kind of tension between intense stress from the realities of military life, and a fundamental transformation occurring under the surface in my own soul. After the military, though, I quickly found interest in women again. There were several women of interest in my 20s, yet none of them were really what they claimed or seemed to be. Either they were illicit, not at all Christian, or they claimed to be Christian but has twisted ideas of relationships and were often in rebellion to God and their future husbands. There were actually two women interested in me (later I would find out one of them thought I would eventually marry her – after she heard I had married someone else, she came to my work in tears over it) and also a bi-sexual couple quite interested in me joining them to make a throuple (I still don’t know how I was able to resist their indentation) when I actually met my wife. I gave those other women a few chances. The one later in tears, when she made her advances toward me, I invited her to a Bible study to meet with the elders. She declined. The other woman was just bizarre and her family even worst still. The throuple, well, I’m not sure how that would have ended. It’s entirely possible that we would have fell fast in love and would still be together today. But I can guarantee, I would have had to compromise some part if not all of my belief in Christ or my walk with Christ if I had. My testimony among the people at my work at the time would have certainly been lost.

Marriage came quite unexpectedly. I remember telling one person at work that what I was really looking for was a reformed witch. Goth looking, somewhat adventurous but really a homebody. But someone who was a believer. That was the description of my future wife, in the greatest detail. And then, shortly after that conversation, God brought her to me. I can still remember the day I pulled into work and saw her standing outside talking to a customer. I remember our talks during those first days about her Wiccan religion and how the gods she worshiped were actually mentioned in the Bible and how really all gods beside the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are false gods, demons in masquerade. She seemed to hear me. Seemed interested. Was surprised I would actually have a conversation with her about her beliefs rather than just condemn her. Later on, I remember calling her on the phone and offering her the same invitation that I’d offered all the other women who showed interest. But she accepted. She met with the Bible Study group I was meeting with at that time (they met her, or should I say me, with all the judgment and condemnation she had been afraid of).

But, looking back on those years of my life, and looking again at my life now, I can’t say I would make the same choices that I did back then. In fact, I have not made those choices when presented the opportunity in the years that followed. The coworker that I’ve mentioned repeatedly, she was a very good match for me in many ways. We are actually quite perfect for each other. We have no need to take care of each other or for the other to take care of us. We neither have a need to marry again. We both are financially solvent. Yet, she is not a believer, which leaves no room for negotiation. There is simply no option here. So, in the end I find myself sacrificing what possibly could be for what otherwise is in Christ. It means the very real possibility that I will never marry again, that I will never experience the affections of a woman again. And, for the last 13 years, I’ve never regretted that sacrifice, nor have I really desired it or felt a loss for having abandoned it. But, now, I feel God doing something different with me. It is often painful. It is uncomfortable. But, I walk in faith, trusting that he has my best interests at heart.

Lewis wrote: “There will come some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true.”

Yes, there have been times when I found this to be the case. The proposition by the throuple comes immediately to mind. Initially when I was converted at 17 also was a time when I hoped Christianity would pass. I’m not sure how I would have fared in the military without Christ at the core of my existence. I might have washed out, or might have thrived. If not for my conversion, I might not have enlisted at all. And the military gave me an out when they rejected me because of my medical records. It took a special waiver before a board to get my entrance approved. I could have taken that excuse and gone on to college instead. I might very well have married my fiancé. I’m sure we would have divorced at some point, and I would have kids in this world who hate me. I might have, though, gone on to college and it might have took. I might have become a high school English teacher after all. Might have become a college professor on the coast. It certainly would not be something I would desire today, given all the insanity in the world and especially in academia.

But I also know that much of what I think would have happened, wouldn’t. And all the things that I couldn’t even imagine would most likely have befallen me. The monster might have risen. I might have ended up in jail or on death row. I could have been killed at some point. The probabilities and variables and the ripples in oceans of time are endless in what ifs. I do know that the very best possible outcome has been this one I’m now living. This is really the best I could have ever hoped for in this life and whatever comes in the future is the very best possible outcome. I’m convinced God would have it no other way, for “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Ro 8:28) and “not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But every hair on your head is numbered. Do not fear. You are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt 10:29-31). If this is true, it means all other possible counterfactual scenarios end badly, or at least worse than this life has turned out to be. Regardless, God has given me this life to live, with this particular set of choices made. Despite sometimes wishing that I hadn’t become a Christian, I know that my life is quite good. There has been pain and loss and disappointment and betrayal, but God has been there for me all along. He has comforted me, he has convicted me. He has blessed me with an interior life of prayer and contemplation that is simply unimaginable. I would want nothing different.

Lewis wrote: “Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art o f holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.”

This is not the biblical definition of faith. Paul makes that definition clear in saying, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (He 11:1). It makes no mention here by Paul in reference to reason or accepting something by reason or by our faculties. In fact, the definition itself points in the opposite direction. Faith derived by reason is no faith at all. Reason cannot justify a claim without evidence and if there is evidence there is no faith. Faith is what undergirds our hope. It is the scaffolding for our hope in the resurrection, for our hope in our sanctification. Faith is what we rest all of our hopes on when we pray. In fact, we are commanded by James to have only faith and no doubt when we pray, otherwise we should not expect God to answer any of our prayers.

We hold onto our hope by our faith despite all evidence against it. Being called to prepare for a wife, I must act in accordance with faith and not reason. If I were to reason through this conviction, I would have to conclude that there is no possible way I will be married in the future for so many reasons. 1. I am not actively dating or looking for a wife. 2. My pool of potential wives is limited to biblical Christians. 3. I have nothing to offer a woman, my house is a shack, I have little in the way of savings, I make very little money. 4. I have long-term medical problems and I’m overweight. 5. I do not engage with the modern evangelical church. 6. I am introverted, shy, and a homebody. 7. I live in a rural community where there is seemingly nothing to do and nowhere to go. 8. I live a boring life of reading, studying the Bible, listening to theological lectures, and going for hikes on the beach, and take my kayak out paddling in one of the local lakes or rivers.

All of these “evidences” and circumstances conspire against the proposition: I will be married in the future. Everything points to no possible scenario, no path that would lead me to finding a woman who would be willing to marry me. In addition, I do not even want to be married in the future. So add to all the other evidences pointing against marriage, but now there is the fact that I actually want to remain single that also points to me not being married in the future.

Yet, despite all this evidence pointing against a future wife, I cannot help but believe, by faith, that God has told me to prepare for a future wife. This means, by extension, not only will I be married in the future, but somehow, despite all the evidences and roadblocks against it, there will be a woman who still willingly wants to marry me in the future. So, this means either God is going to 1. Change me so that I become more attractive to a future woman. 2. God is going to supernaturally draw a woman to want to marry me, even if it is not something she personally would want to do (hey, he’s doing this to me, why not to her also). 3. God is going to supernaturally create a woman out of nothing (or maybe out of one of my ribs) and she will gladly marry me because she won’t know any better.

All of this sounds completely and utterly preposterous! I sound like a madman, and that I am. I am a madman for Christ. I am a fool for my King because I have spent the last 30 years with him directing my steps. I have watched him turn situations that were completely impossible toward my favor. I’ve seen him rescue me from certain peril. And there is already precedent for this very thing. When I was single and 29, I never once thought I would actually marry anyone. I had spent 15 years already searching for a wife and could not get any woman to agree to follow through. Most ever really showed up at all and of those who did show up, only one of them agreed to marry me and within a year we broke the engagement off. But then, from out of nowhere, when I least expected it, God brought me not only a woman I was head over heels for, but one who met all of my criteria (or so I thought). Plus, she was willing to marry me, and actually did marry me. Did it work out? No. But that was our failure, not God’s. I don’t know with any certainty, but I still think there was a path in which our marriage could have been saved. If I had been a better husband. If she had been a better wife or either of us had been more sensitive to the other instead of both of us being completely selfish, there was a chance. With God, all things are possible, but not all things are permissible. Not all things are beneficial. It was apparently neither for us to remain together. Who knows what would have transpired if we did. I imagine the compromise would have been so great on my part to get to a place that my wife could sustain it would have threatened my faith altogether, even to the point of utter shipwreck or worse. I imagine when push came to shove it would have involved making porn or opening our marriage up to multiple partners or God only knows what other horrors. People often say that God would never warrant a divorce in any situation, but I think in my situation he at least permitted it. I think the result of us staying together would have been so much worse than the damage caused by us splitting up.

Faith is not built upon reason, at least, not the faith I have held on to all these years. It is illogical. It is irrational. It is beyond explanation. This is, in fact, why I believe because it has gone against every explanation ever presented to me. In fact, no one can really explain what happened to me when I was 17. There was no reason for me to become a Christian. I was doing quite well in life. I had a girlfriend. We were soon to be engaged. I had just received my black belt in the martial arts and my instructor wanted to go into business with me in opening up another school. The military wanted me to enlist. Teachers wanted me to go to college. I was a happy and contented Buddhist. I even had acolytes who were shaving their heads and following my instructions in Buddhism. I could have easily gone on and opened a dojo/Buddhist meditation center, made a ton of money, married the girl that I loved, gone to university and studied eastern medicine, maybe even opened a holistic practice in conjunction with the martial arts school and meditation center.

Instead of all that, though, I was touched one night by the creator of the universe and he took from me those things that were most precious to me: the martial arts and the ability to meditate. In its place he put a knowledge of him, the truth of him, a fully formed faith in him and in the Bible, and an unquenchable thirst for his word. Everything else in my life would quickly become a shambles. I enlisted in the military instead of opening the martial arts school. I didn’t go to college right away or study eastern medicine. The military turned out to be nothing but a lie, with thieves and robbers and liars and a horrible system founded on a country that has nothing to do with honor or courage or freedom. Yet, God used my four years in the military as a time of grounding, as a seminary, and raised me up on the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the chief cornerstone. Yet, after the military, my experience in service to the local church was abysmal. Again, another institution fell to what I had been initially taught (from the Bible). It was not the church of the Bible, but a new fangled kind of religion based on an amalgamation of christian traditionalism and capitalism. It had a product to sell and had no interest whatsoever in what the Bible actually had to say. The home church movement was no better. Just more shabbily organized and run, and was a magnet for wackadoodles. It was not until after my divorce that I found the contemplative expression of Christianity in the desert fathers and the monks of the early and medieval church. Yet, for years I would search for a monastery but there were none I felt called to, none were a good fit. I either had too many student loans, did not have enough distance between me and my divorce yet, or by the time I got all of those issues sorted out, I was too old and had too many health problems. Eventually I thought my call was to a hermitage of my own, in nature, separated and isolated, living a simple life with simple pursuits. But even that was interrupted most recently by this call I now have to married life, yet with no woman in sight. I’ve run off the two possible prospects (or, actually my faith in Christ ran off the first one, and the second one turned out to be engaged – who agrees to go out for coffee with someone when they’re engaged?) All the others are non-christian and so I’m not even allowed to try (I think a relationship with the co-worker would be a great romance, but I will never know).

If I’m being honest, it almost seems as if God is purposefully keeping me from any kind of real substantive success in my life. At least, any kind of worldly, outward success. Yet, I want for nothing financially. I’ve never one day been hungry or gone without food or not had a place for shelter. Any jeopardy I have gotten myself into he has always, without exception, gotten me out of it. Even the last 13 years he has blessed me with such peace and such internal contentment and love and now recently such a outpouring of his attention in my prayer life that I cannot really contain it without breaking down. It is indescribable, incomprehensible the things he’s been showing me and teaching me and the burdens that he’s been lifting from my soul. And yet, I remain again in this kind of limbo, waiting on him for virtually everything. My job has been in jeopardy for at least three years, yet I am still working with no signs of my job going away. I have several years of expenses saved. I just got another check in the mail from the State just because my income is “so low,” yet I cannot find enough things to spend money on if I even wanted to.

Faith is trusting in Christ for everything. It is making our requests known to him, fully realizing that he may provide or deny, but in everything he does he will do it toward our benefit. Faith is not based on reason, it is based on what has not yet happened, and what all evidence declares will not likely happen any time in the future. But, as a biblical Christian, I’ve seen God’s handiwork firsthand. I know he is the God that makes the impossible come to pass, and all for his ultimate glory.

Lewis wrote: “We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.”

Again, we disagree. I’m starting to think that we are talking about two different kinds of faith, two different kinds of belief. My faith has not had to be nourished repeatedly over time. It was placed in me fully formed and has maintained itself all these years. It continues to make me believe, it forces me to believe, despite all doubt, all criticism, I can’t help but believe what God said, what Jesus said, or what the Bible says or what the Holy Spirit puts on my heart through direct and irrefutable conviction. It is not the claptrap from the word-faith charlatans. I do not receive a “word of the Lord” every day or worse multiple times a day. It is never vague, never in conflict with the Bible, never about wealth or fame or all the other things the word-faithers are so preoccupied with. But, if I were stranded on a desert island, or if all books suddenly disappeared, even all bibles, my faith would not falter for lack of reminding or refreshment. My faith is like an entity (Holy Spirit?) that dwells within me and does the opposite. I do not feed him, but he continually feeds me.

Lewis wrote: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”

It is a different religion. Lewis’ religion seems to be about works. About what man is capable of doing. About what he can do for his own salvation. About doing right or wrong. My religion is about Christ and Christ alone. It is about what is revealed supernaturally, spiritually in and through his word. It is about conforming to the image of Christ, but not through our effort, but through God’s handiwork.

You cannot try to be good. And being good (however hard you try) will not rectify the badness that resides within all of us. It is God within us who works in us both to will and to do for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13).

Lewis wrote: “handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying.”

In my experience it actually does mean you stop trying. For when I hand something over to Christ, if he so chooses, I then receive the conviction needed to do without trying. The work itself becomes effortless. I suddenly and abruptly want to finish the work. But, this never really lasts for very long in most cases, especially for those things I struggle with. I can only assume it is somehow a defect of my own that resists the surrender to my God. But in those briefest of moments, when I truly surrender, I can feel him silently moving within me, truly giving me both the will and and the ability to do that which he desires. If only I could find a way to live like this every moment of my life. Maybe one day. Maybe by God’s mercy.

Book Four – Beyond Personality – What I Learned – Comments

Lewis wrote: “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is”

I can attest to this fact. Those temptations I thought I had in check, once I try to rid myself of them entirely, they race back and cloud my mind and corrupt my behavior. It is the strongest power I’ve ever experienced, temptation. It sneaks up on me and seduces me, it draws me out and leads me with empty promises that are full and appetizing and yet, despite knowing it is all a deception, I still become enveloped in it, seduced by it. I take comfort in Paul’s words, “what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Ro 7:15).

Lewis wrote, “When the most important things in our life happen we quite ofte n do not know, at the moment, what is going on.”

I never seem to know. Things happen all around me, every day, and everything appears mundane and without significance. But then I can look back on my life in retrospect and can see God’s handiwork throughout it all, at every turn, moving me, shaping me, directing my steps. It amazes me why I am still so apprehensive to trust in his lead, to take comfort in the fact that God is watching over me, guiding me, and loves me. It doesn’t mean that life will automatically be without sorrow or pain, but it does mean that everything that happens to me has been approved by God for a specific purpose. I may not know what that purpose is, but I can trust that it is for my good.

Lewis wrote: “Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.”

This may be true of salvation in particular, but it is not true of the Christian life. In fact, Jesus desires that we surrender everything that we are, everything that we hope for, everything that we desire in exchange for submission. That’s it. He does not promise wealth or a happy marriage or a beautiful wife or a prosperous career. He does not problem health or a live of happiness devoid of any calamity. We can give everything that we have and lay it on the altar of Christ and in return receive a menial job, if lucky a life of contented singleness, if less so fortunate, a life of singleness without any contentment at all. So many Christians today seem to be at a loss to make a connection (it is the curse of our time). I unwillingly surrendered my former life to God (later willingly), but received instead nothing that appears to be “successful” in both the eyes of the world and the eyes of the modern church. God does freely offer redemption, but once we accept that which he offers, there is a cost, which we are cautioned to count (Lu 14:28).

Lewis wrote: “handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean tha t you stop trying.”

Actually, I’ve found that this does mean that we stop trying to obey him, we stop trying to merit his good pleasure and simple surrender to both the fact that we can’t fulfill the law of Moses and we certainly are not able to fulfill the law of Christ. It is God who “works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).

Lewis wrote: “`the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion’”

I simply cannot relate to this. But as Paul stated, each one is given their own gift from God. I could not fathom trying to be an evangelist or even a pastor. But I have always been enthralled by intense and engrossing study of his Word. Not so I can later teach or preach, but just out of an inner curiosity, thirst for understanding, a desire to answer questions, to know him better.

This “practical religion” I believe is a counterfeit. The world is a wash of churches and preachers who are desperate to be relevant to their listeners (mostly for ulterior reasons), yet in doing so they water down or remove entirely the gospel of Christ, the blood sacrifice, the narrow path. Practicality is useless if we are called to be sojourners. The inherent problem is this tries to make the Christian palatable to the world rather than separating the Christian from it. We warned not to be like the world, not to chase after the world or its pleasures and temptations. Paul has a different approach from the “seeker sensitive” mentality of modern Christianity, “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Ti 4:2). Topical sermons are useless to the body of Christ if there is not a systematic exposure to the entirety of Scripture throughout the seasons. In fact, if I were to be called to a preaching position of a church (I severely doubt that would ever be true) I would resist the temptation to do topical sermons at all. For the Sunday morning service I would begin at a particular book in the NT and would work through each book every Sunday until finished. I would pick a different book in a different order each time, but would continue this way indefinitely. Likewise, Sunday evening I would do the same with the OT. Wednesday evenings would be devoted to classes on topics (not just single sermons but full interactive lectures and discussions). This way the congregation would be continually fed. It is possible that I would extend each Sunday service to include all 66 books, given that many people only go to one service each week.

Additionally, I would encourage people to make reading and studying the Bible the central hobby in their lives. I would encourage them to abandon sports, to abandon their distracting hobbies, and focus drawing closer to God in everything they do.

The problem with this, of course, is it is not simply a one sided problem. The problem is not just the professional clergy class who are trying to water down the doctrines of Christ or the Bible for their own self-interest. They are also being pressured into it by the congregation. Paul continues, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Ti 4:3-4).

If I were called to a pastorate, it would not be long at all before the congregation rose up against me, fangs out, demanding relevance, demanding platitudes. They would want less theology, less Bible and more programs, more festivities, more activities. They would demand they were the ones in charge of their own feeding, and they would determine what and when they read not the likes of me. They would demand that I focus on doing the jobs they don’t want to do (feeding the poor, visiting widows and orphans) and would put a time limit on my sermons to an hour at most each service, and would demand topical sermons that are witty and full of allegory and nice stories. They would not want to be challenged in their personal lives, because they would definitely take issue with my opinion that there is nothing in a Christian’s life that is not or should not be offered to God. Our time. Our money. Our wives and husbands. Our marriages. Our families and children. Church is not a building or a membership in which we socialize, where our children have a place to belong that is distinct from the rest of the world. The church is a body of believers, and that body grows and changes and is supposed to mature beyond what it currently is or what it used to be. It is supposed to grow and be built up by the gifts of Christ.

Lewis wrote: “Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrill s or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused.”

I find it interesting that Lewis makes a distinction between doctrines and God-experiences. I would push back a little that Paul called some things as “oracles of God” and I would argue these are the fundamentals of the faith that are indeed elemental of God’s nature and substance and thinking. These are not just “doctrines” and many doctrines that Christians hold today (especially the established modern churches) are doctrines of men, or even doctrines of demons and have nothing to do with God at all.

But, my faith is founded not on the Bible but on a first hand supernatural experience that I have never been able to shake in the last 30 years. the Bible has since become the firm foundation, my faith being rooted deeply on the apostles and prophets with Christ being the chief cornerstone. But the origin of my reliance on the Bible in the first place was first hand, personal experience.

Lewis wrote: “if you want to get any further, you must use the map….what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, an d was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere.”

I would have to argue with this. Do we need the map – doctrines? I’m not certain this is true. There were several generations in which the Bible as we know it was not available. In bits and pieces, maybe. In oral tradition, certainly. But not in formalized doctrines as we have today. There are some who are taught by God, those who live behind walls without access to the Word or preaching or teaching. So, beneficial, certainly. Necessary. Nothing is necessary for God to bring about change in an individual’s life.

I would argue also that what happens in the desert can and does lead to growth in Christ. Of course, I saw no grand visions during my transformation. I simply was led to collide with the Bible, read a chapter in happenstance, then found my soul had been changed. There is a lot to be said about stripping the individual (freeing them) from the confines of modern societal life. Those experiences can lead nowhere if they were sought for the experiences themselves. I do not fundamentally disagree with the charismatic that they “can” speak in tongues or pray in tongues, but I question greatly, based on the biblical instruction given, if they “should” be speaking or praying in a tongue in the congregation. Don’t see the expression itself or for it’s own sake, but only seek what will edify the whole body. Pray in a tongue in your closet at home if you are so moved.

Lewis wrote: “is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher”

I’ve heard this a lot over the years. It simply proves that they have never actually read what Jesus said. If they had, they would know he is either 100% correct or he is a complete madman. I’m certain if I laid out what Jesus actually said, point by point, those people who claim he is a moral teacher would soon realize that his commandments are much more stringent than the most severe pharisees.

Lewis wrote: “It is quite true that if we took Christ’s advice we should soon be living in a happier world.”

This is utterly false. It was actually attempted by Constantine, trying to unite all the disparate groups together in his Empire. All such things do is muddy the waters, blurs the lines between true biblical orthodoxy and heretical beliefs. For much of church history we see example after example of how the majority of the people were “christian” and this always led to corruption, to perversion, and to authoritarianism. This was what the founding fathers in America were trying to eradicate. They were not creating a Christian nation. If you read their writings, they wanted religious freedom for everyone. They did not want Christians to be in control anymore than anyone else did. When Christians hold a majority they begin to persecute not only non-believers, but also believers that do not appear exactly like them. I have been outside of modern Christianity for much of my life because of this. There simply is afforded no place for me without tremendous compromise on my biblical beliefs and convictions.

Lewis wrote: “Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about some thing behind the world we can touch and hear and see.”

I would agree. The Bible (not necessarily christianity the religion) is trying to explain some things about this other world, the supernatural world. It appears to subsume this world, our reality, and yet, we know next to nothing about this other world, the creatures who inhabit it, or the God who presumably created it (or what or who God truly is).

This other world has become quite the preoccupation for me as well as the nature and substance and origin of the angelic beings that seem to make a home there. Who are these beings? What is their backstory? How is it that our destinies seem intertwined in the future? What is this war-like society that appears in only glimpses in the Biblical record, yet seems to simply be assumed by the biblical writers? What comes after our ascension to supernatural being status?

Lewis wrote: “they found God somehow inside them as well:directing them, making them able todo things they could not do before.”

This is the summation of my entire adult life. I suddenly, abruptly, found God indwelling me, directing me, leading me, drawing me to do things that not only I could not do before, but things I had no interest in doing before or even in doing now. I don’t understand it at all. I don’t understand why he chose to do this for me but there are countless other people that he simply seems to abandon and leave them to their own devices, to their own miseries. There is certainly no traditional “fruit” evident in my life that would make one consider me “saved” or a Christian. Most people have no idea that I am a believer because I am reserved, I don’t broadcast my faith to everyone or really anyone. That is because I reject the notion that the great commission was for every believer going forward. It was for the apostles and the disciples in the early church and they accomplished their objective. The message of the gospel has gone out into all the world, has circumnavigated the entire planet. It is on television, it is on demand on all devices. It is in book form, video form, podcast form – the gospel is everywhere and free for the taking. Even in places where the gospel or the Bible is not widely available, God is saving people through dreams.

There have been some people that I think I’ve encouraged, but not many. Not my ex-wife. Not my stepchildren. No church has ever really wanted me. I remember one pastor calling me up to his podium one day when we were at a retreat and I could see how difficult it was for him to let me know the he wanted me to be more a part of the church services, he wanted me to speak more from the pulpit. His apprehension was physically etched in his face, in his posture, in the tone in his voice. He was terrified of what I would say, of the disparity I would inevitably point out between modern christianity and the biblical depictions of church life.

Yet, God continues to move me around. Taking me from Buddhism. Then using the military as a kind of 4 year seminary. Then my 20’s trying to serve different churches. My 30’s trying to serve house churches and failing miserably at married life. Then my 40’s in solitude and isolation as a hermit and monastic, only to now be reluctantly called away from that peace and serenity and be told I now need to prepare for a wife. I have no idea how to do such a thing. I have spent the last 13 years living on my own, alone, often in the woods, living out of a hammock. My last attempt at marriage imploded. How could I possibly be a good husband now? I am not healthy. I am overweight. I do not naturally have a very good disposition. I’m not really all that easy to live with. I don’t eve know how to dress. I wear t-shorts and shorts all the time. I don’t own any other clothes. I am plagued by abandonment issues. I have a very low self-esteem. I don’t feel I have really anything to offer a woman, even a Christian woman. Maybe my faith (which is not really mine to begin with). But I am not one who would do well in a large church fellowship meeting. Maybe in a small, country church.

God continually pushes me in directions I don’t really want to go. It has always been good for me, though. Becoming a Christian certainly has been the singular joy of my life. Becoming a monastic solitary has likewise been such a peaceful existence where I’ve been able to grow in faith and in hope and in love for Christ. I guess now he wants me to grow in love for others, for the church, and to step out and live out my faith by pouring myself into others. But I am afraid. Terrified. I’m terrified of being rejected. I’m afraid of being abandoned yet once again. All my life God has been there, and he has protected me. But people have only hurt me. I guess he wants me to do it anyway, even if it means they will hurt me again. Maybe many times over. But even if this is the case, I know I have Christ.

Lewis wrote: “when you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.”

I’m a little surprised that Lewis would agree with this. But I would agree with him. We only can come to Christ when God the Father draws us. If he does not reveal himself, if he does now entice, if he does not draw, we cannot come. We will not want to because no one on their own desires to be in fellowship or relationship with God. In fact, we were predestined from before the foundation of the world to either be called or to be abandoned.

Lewis wrote: “it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition.”

I disagree. My mind, my character, they were completely opposed to God, to theism when he interceded in my life and utterly transformed my worldview from the inside out. God can do anything. He can, as Jesus said, “God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones” (Luke 3:8). When he replied to Abraham he said, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Ge 18:14). God does not need to wait for a person to right himself before he can reveal himself to him. I was given no choice at all. I was obstinately opposed to God and Christianity. I went to the hospital because the woman I loved had been in a car accident and I wanted to tell her that I loved her. But God used that opportunity (I still don’t know why then or why there) when, in the middle of the night, I picked up a bible that was on the windowsill, quietly flipped it open to the back and just happened to land on 2 Peter 2. After reading it, my who life changed in an instant. I can’t really describe what it was like. One moment I was a Buddhist and the next I was Christian, even though I really had no idea what that even meant. The next day, when someone asked me if I was a Christian, I emphatically said yes. And then, almost immediately after that, I was thrown into an entirely new environment with a great deal of stress for the next four years, and the main element in all that was the thirst I had for God’s Word. And that thirst has never left me, never been sated. Not through attending undergrad, not after 30 years of belief and surrender, not after completing an MA and a ThD in Theology and Philosophy. These things have only strengthened that thirst, to the point that it is my may avocation today. Man does not have to right himself to meet God. God rights the man himself. That’s what he did for me. I’m still trying to figure out why.

Lewis wrote: “the one really adequate instrument for learning about Godis the whole Christian community, waiting for Him together.”

Cannot disagree enough. The individual is part of the Christian community. But nowhere does it say in the Bible that community is the only mechanism by which we grow in Christ. We are taught everything by the Holy Spirit, who is our seal until the day of redemption. We learn through consuming the word of God, which is not book learning in its normal sense, but knowledge of God is spiritually discerned. Whenever I pick up a book by a Christian author, I am learning from the body of Christ. Whenever I listen to a sermon on podcast or watch a video, I am meeting with the body of Christ, albeit asynchronously. Christian community can be found in all shapes and sizes, in all modes and fashion. It varies in peculiarity from one region to another, and they are all part of the church that Jesus is building. The local gathering does not constitute the whole of the Christian community. It is but a part. Some so called groups may not be part of the body of Christ at all, even though they claim to be. It is a misnomer and quite anachronistic to simply assume groups today that claim to be “the church” are actually the church spoken of in the Bible or that they constitute the church that Jesus is building. That church is fluid, moving in and out and around and through these human designed organizations. They are earthly, fleshly, and fad-driven. They do not exist in places like China, yet the Church Jesus is building is vibrant there still. Same for North Korea, though the church is underground, hidden, and yet it still grows and moves at the spirit’s leading. It is just as faulty to think that forsaking the assembling of ourselves together is the same as not attending a local gathering on a particular day. The church gathers together in a variety of different ways, and it can be in person, online, or even asynchronously. It can even be one way, with mentor teaching student via books or videos. It is still fulfilling Ephesians 4:11-16 and that is the Church.

Lewis wrote: “all these people who turn up every few years with some patent simplified religion of their own as a substitute for the Christian tradition are really wasting time.”

It is dangerous to assume or conclude that tradition is Christ or tradition is the church. The Catholic Church demands that its traditions are to be held at the same level as the Bible itself, even though much of what it’s tradition teachers runs counter to biblical teaching. Tradition is what spawned the divisions that have shattered Christian unity. It’s not about simplified religion as a substitute for Christian tradition, is is trying to escape tradition which is dogma and either from man or demon, but not from God. Certainly, members of the church can be found in these modern day organizations, in the denominations, etc. But that does not equate to those groups “being” the church that Jesus is building. There have been countless groups throughout the history of the church who would starkly contrast modern evangelicalism today. And just about every one of these groups would consider every other group from history as heretical if their theologies were at any length compared. This is the nature of man in the flesh. Every group has considered itself to be the true church during their time. Sadly, most fail to recognize that they are but a part.

Lewis wrote: “God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel.”

As an author myself, I’ve often wondered about this comparison between us on earth, in this existence, and the characters in which we find on the pages of books and novels and even those on the screen. How real are those characters compared to us? How real (or not real) are we compared to God and the other creatures that inhabit the supernatural realm? Where do we exists in relation to God? Are we somehow subsumed by the supernatural ream? Are we adjacent to it? How is it that those other worldly beings seem capable of crossing back and forth between their reality and our reality, yet they can be invisible in ours? Or do we exist entirely in God’s mind? A fabrication of his imagination, no more real than a creature I conjure up in my own mind that is seen only by my consciousness? Do I exist only when Christ or God have their attention directed toward me? Do they always have their attention on me? Do I cease to be if they ever look away or become preoccupied with another or with something else in their reality? Does my life stop and go every time they open or close the book on my life? When we step over the threshold into that other world at our resurrection and redemption, does “the revealing of the Sons of God” mean something we don’t quite understand? Does our existence become more tangible? Is the supernatural realm “more real” than the physical realm? It’s a subject that quickly brings up many more questions than there are answers.

Lewis wrote: “would He at the same time be God who knows everything and als o a man asking his disciples ‘Who touched me?’”

I have to conclude that Jesus and God the Father are two distinct beings, though they do share many commonalities and appear to indwell one another with perfect unity. There are things that the Father alone knows and there are things that Jesus does not know. This would indicate at least separate beings, persons, conscious identities.

Lewis wrote: “God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least t wo Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.”

I would again disagree. I have recently been given a love for someone that may not even exist. Yet, I still know with certainty that I love them. It was not there four months ago. I have not had anything remotely resembling love for another person for the last 13 years. Not once. There has been no feelings of longing, or loneliness, or melancholy that I wasn’t still married or had someone to share my life with. In fact, often I would consider my life as a single and celibate man and feel nothing but gratefulness and appreciation that God has spared me such things after my divorce. I was convinced beyond any doubt that I would remain single the rest of my life, having no need and being fully convinced in my own mind that such a life was what I had been called to.

Yet, from out of nowhere, I look up one day and I can feel it. It came on abruptly, one moment feeling nothing and the next the feeling was there, fully formed. There is no other way to describe it. It is very familiar, because it is exactly the same way God brought me to a saving faith in Christ, was through a gift of involuntary faith. One moment I had none. The next moment I had faith that was fully formed. It was not based on any logical reasoning, no persuasive preacher or evangelist or teacher. It was as if God took a faith and place it itself of me and it has taken over and began to operate within me, bringing me to believe in things that I never could have believed in before. Even now it moves me to do things and want for things that I would never have wanted previously.

I now love someone I don’t really know if I will ever meet face to face. It might have been given with the intention that this love for another would remain unrequited indefinitely. It might be something I have to simply make room for in my walk as I continue down the road of singleness. If so, I am baffled as to why he would do such a thing. I’m beside myself trying to understand the purpose of this shift in my life. I don’t really like it, if I’m completely honest. It is uncomfortable. Though, it is familiar, like a very old friend that I have not seen in years. For it is the same love or a similar love to that which I had since my teenage years, the love that I attended to in my 20’s, and it was the love that I gave to my wife when I met and married her. She was the wife I thought I would remain with the rest of my life on earth. But when she told me she no longer wanted to live the live we had built together, that love died in me. From the day I left our home, which later became the home of her and her new husband’s, that love was absent from my soul. I did not miss it. I don’t believe I just buried it. I think it was seared away completely by betrayal and lies and abandonment. I recognized then that even the best of marriages, even the best potential partner carried such inherited risk that there was no such thing as safety and security in marriage. Yes, some people luck out and they enjoy a long life with their spouses. But many, many others are not so fortunate. I can remember coming to the conclusion that the disciples were right, “if this is the way it is between a man and his wife, it is better not to marry.” And Jesus was correct as well, “Not all can accept this, but only those to whom it has been given.” For 13 years I was one of those to whom it had been given.

But now, I have not been spared a love that has no objective. So it is possible that God as well could have existed prior to Jesus. I am not saying this is correct, since there is a case to be made that Jesus was pre-existent before his birth, that he has always existed. But it is not impossible that God existed before that. What is impossible is for us to fathom how that could be.

Lewis wrote: “Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we ca n, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. I f we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the S on of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God.”

It has, at least, not been my experience that God waits on me to let him do anything. God does what he determines to do. He may wait some time before he acts. Maybe he has given me opportunity upon opportunity to follow his lead before he forces me to do those things that he has predestined for me to do. But I have rarely had a say in any matter that pertains to his will. I have not had a say in calling me away from the single life into the void, the unknown, where I have no idea if I’m going to be married (which carries its own travails) or if I’m going to now be walking forward single but still with the desire to marry (a desire that is not my own, or was at least dead but has since been resurrected). I had no say in him making me believe all those years ago, when all I personally wanted was to go back to Buddhism and meditation.

We, at least I, don’t really have a say in what God does with me or what he does in my life. He often just does it.

Lewis wrote: “I do not know how things would have worked if the human race h ad never rebelled against God and joined the enemy.”

This is the part of the narrative that we are not privy to. We don’t actually know what God’s intention was for humanity, other than to multiple and subdue the earth (it was apparently quite wild, even before the fall). We don’t even know what Satan’s real issue was or what his agenda is actually now. We don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish or what his actual intent was in the Garden. We don’t even really know if he succeeded in his task. Maybe that was just part of the plan. We don’t know what his end goal is or his motivation. We don’t know why he is an enemy of God, other than he decided to rebel and tried to make himself like God (apparently there is a distinction between God – Elohim – and the other elohim that are creations of God). Satan at least assumed he could become like or make himself equivalent to God, which is interesting in and of itself. So I really don’t know what would have occurred if Eve hadn’t been deceived and the two of them ate the forbidden fruit.

We do know, or at least can assume, that children would still be born out of physical procreation, though we can assume there would be significantly less pain. But, is it even possible that Adam and Eve could not have fallen, since we are all predestined before the foundation of the world either to be vessels of wrath or vessels of mercy? Would vessels of wrath have ever even been born? Would they even be necessary? Would they even be possible without the sin nature inherited? Would there be any reason to have vessels of mercy in this case? What for? If humans were still in their pre-fallen state, there would be no sin and thus no need or mercy on God’s part.

Personally, I don’t think it’s actually possible for there to be a scenario where Adam and Eve did not sin. God even states it as a fact that they would, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Ge 2:17). God seems to already know that there would come a day when they would actually eat the fruit that was forbidden. It seems as if the fall was preordained. I wonder why? I wonder if there was no possible scenario in humanity where they would not have eventually been taken in by the devil? I wonder if every road led to the same result?

Lewis wrote: “you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be”

If he is referring here to Jesus and his time on earth, I would disagree. Unless, of course, he is referring to Jesus post resurrection. But, even still, this is not the man that all men were intended to be. All men were originally intended (unless the fall was predestined always) to be as Adam and Eve before the fall. Jesus during his earthly life was unique in that he was both God and man. The God in him was able to die a sinless death because he was tempted by all points but never committed a single sin. Since he was sinless, his death was a propitiation for our sins and this grants him victory over death and God now is able to not only raise Jesus from the dead, but everyone else who is in Christ and they are presented not as sinners but as sinners saved by grace. Their sins are not imputed to them, but all God sees now is Christ’s work on the cross. Jesus becomes something altogether different from his earthly, mortal state, and also different from the pre-fall state of Adam and Eve. He is a God man who lived mortally, died, and was resurrected. There was no death for Adam and Eve before the fall. The earth was not marred by futility or possibly even entropy. And, apparently, there is no putting back the earth to its former state, for the earth will end in fire and will melt down to its base elements, it will literally flee from the face of God. What we were originally intended to be will never be in the future. To be honest, I’m not certain any of us would be here if Adam and Eve actually had not sinned. If creation begins and conception, and the individual soul, the core personality, the consciousness that defines the persistence of the distinct identity, then Adam and Eve’s choice to not sin would have certainly had drastic consequences on the rest of their line going down through the centuries. There would possibly have been no need for the flood (unless, of course, the flood had more to do with Ge 6:2 than it did with the wickedness of man), it is quite possible that Cain never would have killed Abel and, thus, Seth may never have been born. That is enough to end all of humanity as we know it today. There could have been an entirely different humanity consisting of entirely different individuals who were in our reality never born because Abel died before having any children. But, if all things are predestined and we are only walking in the works he has created beforehand for us to walk in, then there was no possibility for al alternate human race and this one, in which I and the rest of us who exist, is the one that was always predestined to exist. In that case, then we are actually the people intended originally to be here, Christ was always intended to be resurrected, and the saved were always intended to be conformed into the image and likeness of Christ while the lost have always been intended to be condemned.

Lewis wrote: “every man, woman, and child all over the world is feeling and brea thing at this moment only because God, so to speak, is ‘keeping him going’.”

This is a fascinating topic for me. I’ve actually thought quite a bit about it over the last several years. It traces back predominately to Col 1:16-17, “All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.” The word here for consist is συνέστηκε and it means “to bring together or hold together.” It actually lines up quite nicely with the double slit experiment, where we discover that matter is actually exists in a state of probability until it is observed. Only when it is observed does the wave function collapse and our physical reality is selected. This indicates that there is required an observer for our existence, for our reality, to continue to exist. If I am standing in a room and walk out of that room, it technically should cease to exist and revert back to its previous state of probability. Of course, there is no way of knowing if the room does cease to exist because if we try to observe it in any way, that observation collapses the wave function and reality persists, which is why all the ingresses and egresses on my security cameras always record physical reality. The lawn chairs in my front yard, the weeds in my raised beds, the spider that lives in front of my fourth camera, all persist and continue to exist because they are being observed. Clearly observation does not require sentience, since my DVR records 24/7 even when I’m sleeping, and I can replay all 8 hours of that recording in the morning and I still see the physical reality as I would expect it.

But, if we have a meadow in the middle of the woods and a hunter walks through, as we would assume, he sees the meadow and it exists statically as a meadow. But, once he has turned his back to the meadow and begins his climb up the ridge, he is no longer observing the meadow. Does it cease to exist? No. Why? Because there are other observers there in the meadow and adjacent to the meadow that keep the wave function of the meadow collapsed. The hawk in the tree. The deer standing frozen behind the bush (obviously terrified the hunter will return). The squirrel running up the tree. They are all observers. But, let’s send a disease into the meadow that wipes out all life there. All animals. All creatures. All insects. We sanitize the entire meadow of all life. Now does the wave function revert back to it’s probability state? Aside from the question of the trees and other vegetation being sentient (though sentience is not required just the ability to observe the wave function), if we remove this option, then the above bible reference tells us that there is one observer still remaining, Jesus. “In him all things consist.” In him all things are held together. Personally, I think our very existence is moment by moment being held together by Jesus’ observation of us. I think he is constantly watching each of us. Constantly concerned. Constantly moving and working in us and through us and for us. Even those who are destined for the Lake of Fire, these too he appears to be watching, since God suffers greatly from their very existence.

Lewis wrote: “if God wanted sons instead of ‘toy soldiers,’ He did not beget m any sons at the outset instead of first making toy soldiers and then bringing them to life by such a difficult and painful process.”

Again, God did not beget many sons because he entrusted this task to Adam and Eve. They would produce, presumably, Sons of God fully formed from the womb. This has actually never been seen before, not even in Christ, since Jesus was the embodiment of the Father in every way. If we were born without sin, without a sin nature, being in right standing before God, being as Adam and Eve had been, we would be something altogether unique to anything else in existence (unless, of course, we discover later that angels were actually born rather than created – though Scripture would not support this – Ps 33:6; 148:5). The same must be true of male and female, since we see no other place in the supernatural realm or in our interactions with angelic beings where there are females. Only in God’s creation in this physical universe do we see a plurality of genders. God appears to be a male, as do his angels. Lucifer appears to be male. Even the nephilim appear to be only male (subsequently their demonic state would be male as well, if indeed demons have gender).

The bottom line is we don’t have enough information about the angels or even about God himself to make an educated guess about why he chose sex and birth as the mechanism for bringing new life into the world. We can’t say with certainty that just because Adam and Eve existed in a particular state, that if they had children those children would likewise inherit the sinless state they existed in. But, then again, there is enough evidence to make the argument that there was no other alternative to the fall of the first man and woman. They were predestined to fall, their works as well as our works having been pre-written.

Lewis wrote: “He gave them free will because an automata could never love and therefore never know infinite happiness. The difficult part is this.”

I would argue against this. Beings can love without choice. In fact, there is an argument to be made that we don’t have a choice in who we love. I know when I met my wife, I immediately knew I wanted to marry her. She was exactly the person I had been praying for. Granted, there were other aspects of her personality and her mental state that I did not foresee and was not at all prepared for. I’m not certain there was anything that could have been done to save our marriage even if I had been told ahead of time. The breakup might have been just as predestined as the union had been.

But, more to the point, God does sometimes force his point. Every time unforeseen calamity comes our way it is forced acceptance required. We are to accept both the bad and the good without question. Much of my Christian life has been against my will. I do not choose things. God chooses for me. As Paul states, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13) and also, concerning his own flesh, Paul considered himself captive, “what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Ro 7:15). I personally think free will is a delusion and God has predestined everything we have ever done, or will ever do. From God’s perspective, we are all automata.

Lewis wrote: “a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.”

Yes, I understand his point here. But it is said that there is a time for every purpose under heaven (Ecc 3:1). It can be argued that there is never an excuse for being a Totalitarian, but there have been many in the past who were both. The entire monastic or solitary vocation is rather individualistic, even if its motivation is largely for the purpose of the larger church. Lewis seems to view the whole of Christianity through a very narrow protestant lens. I wonder if he is even aware of other expressions of Christianity around the world. Personally, I’ve come to recognize that none of us is right or wrong. We are all groping in the dark, desperate for home, crying for certainty. All forms of religion (including Christianity on earth) is only a shadow, a ramshackle mimicking what God is actually doing.

Lewis wrote: “Why? What is the good of pretending to be what you are not?”

I agree with his statement, even though he would not. He states that we should be pretending to be like Christ. I would agree, we are to put on Christ. We are to strive more and more to become like Christ in all that we do. But, this is too often translated, we should all be like each other, despite Paul being very clear that there is one body, but a multitude of members.

This is the greatest sin of the evangelical church in modern times, that it assumes rather fanatically that everyone must be like them or they have no use for them. I suspect the body of Christ is more diverse than we could even imagine, just short of Lewis’ belief that those in other religions (i.e. such as a Buddhist or a Muslim) could be saved because they are drawing closer to God through the parts in their religion that are closely aligned to parts in Christianity.

Lewis wrote: “There is a bad kind, where the pretense is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you. But there is also a good kind, where the pr etence leads up to the real thing.”

I would have to disagree. Faking it until you make it is not something one should do concerning their faith. There are too many who pretend a faith in Christ as Lewis said out of false pretense, we don’t need a whole gaggle of other people prentending out of sincerity. I did this in my 20s with the evangelical churches. I prenteded to be excited about Christ. To be happy and better off than I had been before I was saved. The truth was, though, I was not in the least happier as a Christian. I was much happier as a Buddhist. I would wager that my life would have been more successful as well if God had left me alone to my mute idols. Instead of excited, though, I was perplexed and confused. But there is no place in evangelicalism for this. I was called to a solitary vocation, but there is no room in that expression of Christianity for that either.

There are more aspects to the Christian walk than are found only in the narrow expression that is evangelicalism. I’ve found a great deal of suffering, internal, soul crushing struggle within. Devastating revelation that leaves no outward marks on the body but carries with it a life-long burden on the soul. There is no purpose in faking such behaviors. There is in it no reward in such things.

“The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is man (just like you)and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretence into a reality.”

If God did this then he would have turned my wife’s counterfeit faith into the genuine article. Pretence, whether out of good intentions or ill, is still counterfeit and it will not be rewarded by God. It is possible that someone who has been faking a faith at one point can at the next be called of God, drawn to Christ, saved, and redeemed. But, it is in no way related to the artificial actions that occurred before. You cannot manufacture faith by works. Works are the bi-product of faith, which is a gift from God.

Lewis wrote: “You may say `I’ve never had the sense of being helped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other human beings”

I would say the actual opposite. It has always been other human beings who have harmed me, betrayed me, and deceived me. It was and still is the invisible Christ who comforts me, who protects my heart and my mind, who loves me with a love I can feel deep within the core of my soul. If not for God having changed me and having loved me all these years, I am certain I would be now or would have in the past prayed on those other human beings. For I am truly a misanthrope at heart. I have no care for other people in general and consider them vile and detestable. But it is Christ in me that has shown me that I am to love people regardless of what they do to me. I have to show mercy to those who do not deserve mercy. Just as he showed me mercy and loved me even though I was despondent to him, and deserved no redemption.

Lewis wrote: “If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings.”

This categorically false. People do nice and good things all the time for other people and it has no motive in Christ. There are people who give all their wealth to widows and orphans when they die. There are people who serve in soup kitchens. There are people who help other simply because they can. Many of the greatest people on earth (Gandhi for example) had no faith in Christ at all. Good deeds have nothing to do with Christ inherently. The two are not synonymous. There are also horrible people who are genuinely believers, and they are daily being worked over by Christ through the Holy Spirit. There are countless reasons why someone would have such a disposition. It’s possible that the walk itself in the spirit is the cause.

Lewis wrote: “The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life.”

Actually, the State is a beast of burden to bring about God’s will. It has little to do with the happiness of the individual or of society at large. The State works, often against its own will and motivations, to bring about what God has predestined to occur. As much as we might desire Christianity to be focused on personal or individual happiness, it is not. It is focused on righting the ship that has listed and is in jeopardy of going under. For whatever reason, we have been assigned to the earth, for “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (He 9:27).

Lewis wrote: “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.”

This is not the case. The full purpose of the church is to build up the saints, only part of that process is bringing into the sheepfold the lost sheep of the world. The church has been organized in such a way that it utilizes certain gifts to equip the saints (every Christian) to do good works. Those gifts are a myriad and none two are alike in either ministry or in purpose or in execution. This idea that the soul purpose of the Church or its members is evangelism is derived from an unhealthy focus on that particular gift. Paul says some are called, not everyone. The great commission is not for every believer in every age. It was for the first century church as they began spreading the gospel throughout the world. They accomplished that commission. Now the Bible and it’s message are readily available in most every place people inhabit. Even in those places where the Bible is scarce, God is using dreams and visions to bring about salvation. Not everyone is called to be an evangelist.

Lewis wrote: “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 often wonder what the original purpose was for his creation. Why he created the physical universe. Why he created animals and then humans. What role were we supposed to play in the greater scheme of things (a scheme we know next to nothing about)? Did the fall deviate from that original plan, or was it a part of it all along?

Lewis wrote: “We havebeen shown the plan only in so far as it concerns ourselves.”

I would argue that we actually have not been shown the plan that concerns ourselves, at least not the entire plan. We still don’t know what will take place after the lost are thrown into the Lake of Fire. Will we spend eternity in the new City? Will we travel throughout the newly made universe? Will there be a new creation of beings that are in need of salvation? Will the gospel be different or the same? Will they look upon Christ who comes to them at a particular time in their history or do they look to Christ in our narrative? What will we be doing after all is said and done?

Lewis wrote: “whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death,”

It was disheartening to see Lewis believes in some sort of purgatory doctrine, that we, after death, are subjected to torment as purification, that we might atone for our sins or pay a tribute or as if some level of pain or agony on our part can appease God’s sense of justice and mercy. Purification may occur here, while we are on earth. This is called our sanctification. Life is a smelting of wrong beliefs, our poor behaviors to right us to God, not that he cannot see me or that we find favor in his sight by our own merit. Rather, it is the working of God to purify us to the end and to present us as his chaste and virgin bride. Once we die, that is it. I think we all still end up in that intermediate state, but the narrative between the Rich Man and Lazarus explains how there is no option for those who have already died. There is also no other way provided by which men can or will be saved other than Jesus Christ.

Lewis wrote: “When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty w ell (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along – illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation -he is disappointed.”

This is because we have fundamentally misunderstood the meaning and purpose fo becoming a Christian. It is the prevailing culture in our day, that becoming a Christian means only good things. If bad things occur after the fact, that means there is some kind of unconfessed sin in your life. It’s not feasible in modern evangelicalism that an individual could actually have been better off in most every sense of the word before becoming a believer, and that afterward, he is plagued with difficulty and pain and anguish as he wrestles with his own sanctification.

Lewis wrote: “The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a com mand to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.”

Yes, but we are often leaving out important questions that have yet to be answered. If the angels could sin, yet they have no grace afforded them for the forgiveness of their sins, does that means, since we will become like the angels in heaven, we, too, will cease from the cover grace has provided us? Does grace only get us into the door of heaven, only gets us the invitation, but we then must live and be perfect, just as God is perfect? Once in heaven, are we held to the same unforgiving standard that the angels are held to? If they could sin, doesn’t that mean we could also sin? If they could lust after women, doesn’t that mean we, too, will be capable of lusting after women? I often wonder if perfection is not the bliss we might think it is.

Lewis wrote: “The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment.”

Death is not a part of our sanctification at all. It is the reason why Jesus had to die himself so that we could be set from from the captive bond of death by our resurrection. Death is the consequence of the curse (or is the curse) and it is a supernatural prison that no human will ever escape but for Christ. Likewise, we know that death is not a part of the process since there will be a significant number who never taste death at all, those who are living at the time of the resurrection from the dead.

Lewis wrote: “If Christianity is true then it ought to follow (a) That any Christian will be nicer than the same person would be if he were not aCh rist ian.”

I disagree. I was a much nicer person when a Buddhist than as a Christian. This is because I had everything as a Buddhist. I had the world. Christianity – true, biblical Christianity – requires the cost of your life, your time, your every waking moment. It is not about making corrupt and destitute people nice and civil and amenable. It is about making those horrible and broken people whole again, and conforming them to the likeness and image of the son.

Lewis wrote: “
Of course God regards a nasty nature as a bad and deplorable t hing.And, of course, He regards a nice nature as a good thing-go od like bread,”

I disagree. I don’t think God really concerns himself with nastiness or goodness of an individual. He’s concerned with wickedness and righteousness. Some of the nicest people are the most wicked. And some of the most ill tempered, poorly dispositioned among us are the most holy.

Lewis wrote: “One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be q uite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realise your need for God.”

On this we can agree. The love of money is the root of all evil. I know from my own self-reflection, I think the primary reason I have not been “blessed” with vast amounts of money is that I would inevitably use it to my own destruction. I can feel it whenever I even thinking about such a thing as winning PCH or the lottery. I can quickly see in my mind where the flesh leads me. Surely I would give most of the money away, I say to myself. I only need a fraction of what they’re offering. Then it’s, I can build a ministry, hire a few theologians and create a think tank, etc. Then it’s, well I probably need a lot of that money just in case something happens. Well, I certainly will want to build a house for myself on my property. Well. Maybe I will just give my property away and move to Hawaii. Actually, I will probably just give away my house and property and just travel. Before long I’m thinking about how the money will make me more attractive to women and then I slip right off the deep in into debauchery and utter destruction. More often than not, I think the giving of money and the amassing of wealth is a judgment upon those who are given it. “Much is given, much is required” (Lu 12:48).

Lewis wrote: “ut if you are a poor creature- poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels s addled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual, perversion-nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends-do not despair. He knows a ll about it.You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows w hat a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can.”

I wish that this be so. I am one who had an upbringing by parents who could barely live life let alone thrive in it. It poisoned me from the very beginning of life with an inferiority complex, with ridiculously low self esteem and that was continually reinforced by one disastrous relationship after another until finally I thought I was lucky enough to meet my wife, only to again be assailed by abandonment and desertion. At the core of my hatred for people is the pain from their abuse, from crashing into them, from them hardly considering me at all.

But, true melancholy comes when I recognize that this is not their plan for me, they are just cogs in the machine. This life I am living has been desired from the beginning by God alone. If the Scripture is to be believed, nothing occurs in the life of a believer except for that which has been approved by God. Then I have to ask, why? Why would he give me a heart to love another when he had no intentions of bringing another person again across my path? Why bring someone into my life, someone I truly connect with intellectually, if it is never meant to be? Why put in my path a woman after my own heart, someone who wants to be a Christian woman and a Christian wife, but lives in a town I would never live in again, and who has so many children she will still be raising them in her 60’s? Not to mention make her a charismatic, knowing full well I cannot be married to someone who is speaking tongues in front of me?

Lewis seems to think intention is the real goal, not necessarily action or behavior. I certainly don’t buy into the idea that we will receive gifts based on our works while on earth. That will only breed resentment in the afterlife. I have had a great deal of intention in my life. Just not a great deal of success.

Lewis wrote: “perhaps a modern man can understand the Christian idea best if h e takes it in connection with Evolution.”

He writes as if he would state evolution as a fact rather than as a fiction. I’m not certain I understand how he could do so. The history of the human race is not one of evolution. The future of the human race likewise cannot be compared to evolution. I agree with him, it is not mere improvement, but transformation. Transformation is not evolution. Evolution is graduate adaptation over large expanses of time, resulting (mysteriously) in the gain of information and the production of a new species from a previous one. This is not something that has evidence for it. No separate kind of creature or being has ever produced a different kind of creature. The fallen human man is not producing a better version of himself. He is becoming a “new creature” in Christ. It is not evolution, it is supernatural. He says we arrived at evolution from studying the past. I disagree. Humans arrived at evolution by way of deception. They were deceived by the devil, and they deny the creation was created by the creator.

Lewis wrote: “There was a time before sex had appeared; development used t o go on by different methods.”

This is peculiar because we don’t actually know what went on before sex was instituted as the means of production of new life on earth. We have literally no information on the origin of the angels. We know next to nothing about God’s background before he spoke light into existence, yet there seem to be a myriad of created things already in place by the time he started working on earth in verse 1. I find it such an oddity that he has kept all these things from us.

Lewis wrote: “there would come a time when sex disappeared, or else (which is what is actually happening) a time when sex, though it continued to exist, ceased to be the main channel of a development”

Jesus does seem quite emphatic about the disappearance of sex altogether. Though, to be fair, he doesn’t actually mention sex at all. Instead, it is marriage that ceases to exist. Now, some have argued that only new marriages will no longer occur, but that existing marriages go on into eternity (and sex with those marriages). But this is argued from either biblical ignorance or willful disobedience. We know from 1 Co 7 that we are bound by law (of both Moses and Christ) to our spouse until death, and at death, the obligation of that marriage is removed. The marriage has ended. It has been severed the only way it was intentionally meant to be – through death. Which, in actuality, death was not initially meant to be severed, since death was not originally to occur. This would mean that marriage was originally meant as an eternal institution.

So, I wonder then if becoming Sons of God is either an alternative to God’s original purpose (to be human immortals on earth for eternity) or if it was orchestrated all beforehand. Or, if being born into immortality is somehow different than being a direct creation (i.e. Adam and Eve) and, thus, those beings born automatically become like angels? No, because they were given the command to procreate. Angels are forbidden form doing this. There is no marriage in heaven. There are many, many questions, but few answers.

Lewis wrote: “the step from being creatures to being sons, is voluntary”

It was not voluntary for me. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. Maybe I could have intentionally left. But even that I did (still believed while in rebellion), but God never left me. He was right there, even though I didn’t feel as if I deserved to be a Christian or deserved to be saved. Most of what God has me do in this life is not something I willingly participate in. I’ve come to understand that what God does have me do there is a very good reason for why he’s doing it. So, in that sense, I do pray for his will to be done in my life. But, I did not want to become a believer at 17. If someone would have asked if I wanted to, I would say absolutely not. Especially since it cost me the martial arts and the ability to meditate and my religion that I deeply enjoyed and found great personal satisfaction in. I did not want to end my marriage, but it was quite clear, there was nothing I could do to fix what was wrong. Even to this day I do not know for certain what the catalyst was that drove my wife away. I don’t know if it was something I did. Something I didn’t do. If there was something I could have done or stopped doing that would have actually changed her calculus and stayed or at least tried to work on the issue. It was not my choice to find a desire once again to be married after so many years of blissfully and contentedly being single. It is not my choice to carry this new discontent with me. I don’t know if or when it will be requited, if ever. It carries with it all manner of extraneous temptations with it, temptations that I never was exposed to in these intervening years between my divorce and now. Do I have to just make room for the disquietness I’m now experiencing? Make room for it and trudge on? It is some kind of punishment? God has never worked that way with me. He has never punished me for anything. Even my divorce, as painful as it was, felt like God was saving me from whatever that relationship was destined to amount to. It’s quite possible that if I had managed to work things out with my wife, the compromises necessary to do so – the compromises of my faith, of my obedience to God – might have so jeopardized my standing with God that I might have been lost entirely.

There is no telling where God will do with me next. The one he has decided I should marry might be one of the two I’m speaking with now online. They both fit the criteria (for the most part). Actually rather spectacularly. But, then again, the woman he has set aside for me might be someone else entirely different. Yet again still, there might not be an actual woman at all and this season is something God had determined I should go through at this time for a specific purpose (I have no idea why). But I can assure you, if left to my own devices, I would never do them on my own accord.

Lewis wrote: “Never forget that we are all still ‘the early Christians.’”

I certainly agree with this statement. I believe we actually are still part of the early church, and that when we look back on the overall history of Christ’s church, it will stretch out for hundreds if not thousands of years into the future yet still. At the same time, I truly think that we are on the edge of the end right now. Truly, no one knows but the Father when the end will actually arrive. All I know is I pray it is soon. I would like to avoid death if at all possible, and be raptured before the tribulation begins.

Conclusions

Wow. This post became a book unto itself, coming in at just shy of 60,000 words! Rightly so, though, since Mere Christianity is one of the hallmark texts in the modern Christian faith. I find it odd, to be honest. It was not that great of a book. But I leave that to the literary experts. I know I was glad to have undertaken it. I wish I had done so years ago. Many months later, I am now the SA for this course. I would recommend it.

Until my next assignment….

---

Please consider supporting my writing, my unschooled studies, and my hermitic lifestyle by purchasing one or more of my books. I’m not supported by academia or have a lucrative corporate job – I’m just a mystical modern-day hermit trying to live out the life I believe God has called me to. So, any support you choose to provide is GREATLY appreciated.

---

Excerpt from Our Daughter:

---

“Okay, mom,” Randy said.

“You behave yourself and be nice. You’re lucky to have company while you wait for the doctors.”

The woman turned and started back the way she came.

“The nurse said it would be twenty or thirty more minutes, so we’ll eat quick and be back up here before they take you in, okay?”

“Okay, mom.”

“Sorry for him,” the woman said to Katie as she walked by.

“He’s funny.”

Katie grinned.

As the woman left, Katie noticed the boy moving around again on the bed. Before she realized what was happening, the tiny lump disappeared and she could hear the faint sound of bare hands and feet on the tile floor.

He was low crawling under the beds toward her.

A moment later, Randy popped his head out from under the nearest hospital bed, craning his neck around to look up at her.

“Hello, there,” Katie said.

Randy disappeared back under the bed, the bed sheet draping down almost to the floor. Katie could still see three little fingers pressed to the tile.

“What are you here for?” Katie asked, readjusting her seat in the chair, trying to get the ache in her chest to lessen.

For whatever reason, the wheelchair was really uncomfortable.

“Why are – “

Randy’s voice trailed off for a moment as he looked around.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m getting my leg fixed,” Katie said. “See?”

Randy poked his head back out from under the bed and looked at the leg she was pointing to.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“The doctor said it’s broken,” Katie said. “Shattered.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Ouch.”

“Can you feel it?” Randy asked, able to stay out from his hiding place.

“I can feel it, but it’s not too bad,” Katie said, then tapped the IV in her arm. “This thing is giving me medicine of some kind for the pain. At least that’s what the nurses said.”

“Why are you – “

Randy stopped mid-sentence.

He scooted out from under the bed entirely and slowly crept over to er on all fours.

“What are you, some kind of spider?” Katie asked, giggling a little.

“What are you?” Randy echoed.

He was now only about a foot away from her chair and sat there, his legs folded up under him, gawking up at her.

“What are you staring at me for?”

“I’ve never – “

Randy put out a hesitant hand and ever so gently touched her arm.

“Are you some kind of ghost?”

He looked around again.

“Are you – ”

He leaned in, talking in a whisper.

“Are you dead?”

A nurse came around the corner and stopped abruptly, spotting the empty bed in the far corner where Randy should have been.

“Randy Andrews,” the nurse said, her hands now on her hips. “You get right back into the bed and you stop playing around, please. They are ready for you in surgery.”

Katie watched as Randy scrambled on all fours under the beds and back up onto his, pulling the sheet back over top of himself again.

She started to ask him about his question, but couldn’t get the words out before his parents appeared at the door.

Katie sat there quietly, watching Randy stare back at her from under his sheet. She glanced over at his parents and the nurse, noticed Randy’s dad had no hair on the top of his head.

Are you dead?

What kind of question was that?

The snap of the wheel locks being disengaged on Randy’s hospital bed jarred Katie out of the confusion she was in.

The doctor she’d first seen was now at the door, waiting for Randy.

He was his surgeon.

They wheeled Randy out of the room, his parents following right behind, disappearing to the left, heading for his operating room.

The pre-op room was empty again.

Dead.

Are you dead?

What kind of crazy question was that?

The nurse came back through the double doors.

“It won’t be long now,” she said.

“Okay.”

Katie tried not to think about the dull ache growing just behind her sternum.

The nurse disappeared around the corner as Katie watched the double doors to the operating rooms slowly shut.

---

Buy my book Our Daughter and begin the adventure of a lifetime, as you uncover the mysteries behind Katie Cadora’s new life after the horrible accident that stole her mother away from her. Will she find sure footing again? Will the pain ever stop? Will she discover the secrets her new foster family are keeping from her? Is the boy’s question right? Is Katie Cadora actually dead?

Click here and grab your copy today and jump into this Witch Gnostic Heresy trilogy with both feet!

But, trust me when I tell you, there are deceivers in our midsts!  Get started in this bone chilling suspense novel right away and find out why….sometimes….you’re just better off DEAD!

---