"Can You Prove That God Is Compassionate?"

Yesterday a friend asked me an intriguing question. He wrote, “If an unbeliever asked you to prove from your own life that God is compassionate and gracious, what would you say?” He clarified that he was not talking about spiritual salvation. That is precisely what an unbeliever would doubt or disbelieve. The kind of evidence my friend was looking for would come not from the pages of Scripture but from personal experience. Is it possible, looking no further than the scope of one’s life, to find reasons for believing in the compassionate nature of God?

I think that a certain kind of answer might be quickly exposed as problematic. For example, suppose I say, “Here’s how I know God is gracious. Nine years ago, in my loneliness and wearied despair, God brought to me a woman whose sweetness of disposition no fantasy could contrive, and she agreed to marry me, and I became the most happily married man I have ever known.” But another could answer, “Very well for you. In my case, my wife treated me with ever-increasing rude contempt until she abandoned me to pursue lovers. Where was your compassionate God then?” Or suppose I say, “About 15 years ago, I thought I would lose my son, because his depressions were so severe that they led to suicide attempts and repeated hospital stays. But God mercifully adjusted the chemicals in his brain, and now he is a married, productive father of two who has not slit his wrists in more than a decade.” Another answers, “Yes. Well. My son cussed me out and took his life.”

It is hard to imagine any blessing, any joyous reception of God’s grace, to which some understandably embittered soul might not respond, “But I experienced the opposite! If your good fortune demonstrates God’s kindness, doesn’t my bad fortune demonstrate his cruelty? Your circumstantial evidence gets you nowhere, because I can always summon counterexamples. Is it not better to say that God is capricious, distributing good luck and bad in approximately equal loads, and the only reason you think he is good is because you conveniently ignore his nastiness? Or maybe God is beyond good and evil, and our notions of ‘compassion’ and ‘cruelty’ are really just human constructs that we project onto a God who transcends morality. Or maybe there is no God, and our delights and our tragedies are random events that we try to infuse with meaning by attributing them to the kindness of a good God or the discipline of an angry one. But all three hypotheses – a capricious God, a morally transcendent God, or no God at all – fit the facts better than your “God-is-kind-because-one-time-he-did-this-terrific-thing-for-me.”

To be clear, I do believe in God, and I even believe that things like my happy marriage and my son’s psychological restoration are signs of his grace. But these are not events upon which I would base any argument if trying to reason with a skeptic. If I were a skeptic myself, I think that such reasonings would fall flat because of the counterstrikes I have mentioned above.

But there is still an argument from experience which my internal skeptic has never been able to answer. And it concerns the fact that there indeed exists such a thing as compassion. Compassion is real, undeniable; we have all felt it and witnessed it, and even, at some point, delighted in it with joy inexpressible. If you are of a certain turn of mind, that joy is never more than five minutes from you. You can experience it now by going to YouTube and watching the viral video of 50 moms lip-synching and signing “A Thousand Years” with their Down Syndrome children. When I saw that video the other day I wept, like everybody else, and I told my wife about it, and she said she had seen it already, but she watched it again, and wept again. Maybe some of the moms in that video shed tears of grief when they learned that their babies would have certain limitations. But they had their babies anyway, and loved them, and they go on loving them – and now their manifestations of sweet compassion provoke in us not tears of sorrow but tears of delight.

Contemplate that delight. Give it a good, honest philosophical rumination from as objective a standpoint as your subjective mind can attain. Where does your appreciation for compassionate grace come from? What set of circumstances characterize the universe (or multiverse) as you understand it such that there wells up within you a joy beyond words when you see compassion incarnated in a mom doting on her struggling child?

It seems to me that all the non-God hypotheses fail to account for this phenomenon. They require too much faith, and insist that we accept not merely paradoxical mystery but flat-out contradiction and nonsense.

Suppose God is there but doesn’t care. He does not delight in compassion, nor is he the author of it. All he did was make us and our habitat (who knows why?) and set us adrift in the cosmos to go do our thing. How in the world then, as offspring of this non-moral God, did we manage to invent goodness? How did the stream rise higher than its source? I cannot for the life of me believe that we ourselves crafted mercy from scratch - perhaps in the hope that we could some day present it to God and tell him how much it would please us if he got on board with it. But God would only do that if he thought mercy were a good thing, and how could he think anything was “good” if he himself were beyond good and evil? To think something good you must first have some kind of goodness yourself! I do not see how something like compassion could ever “arise” from a non-compassionate originating force. But I can perceive how it might descend to lower plains from an Original that is goodness itself.

The same sort of thinking applies to the hopeless task of accounting for compassion in a universe that has no Maker whatsoever. In a Godless universe, all acts of compassion (along with all concepts, thoughts and events of any kind) are reducible to matter and energy, which in turn are reducible to – what, exactly? A fluctuating quantum field that randomly generates bubble universes? Something like that, I suppose. Author and poet Joy Davidman outlined the creed she once held as an atheist in these terms: "Life is only an electrochemical reaction. Love, art, and altruism are only sex. The universe is only matter. Matter is only energy. I forget what I said energy is only."

It is indeed possible to see the compassion of Down Syndrome moms and our responsive tears as electrochemical responses grounded in nothing but a series of cause-and-effect events that go all the way back to the Big Bang, and that, given the way atoms necessarily respond to forces acting upon them, could never have been otherwise. Of course, exactly the same would be true of the actions of a murderer-rapist and of the revulsion and rage that characterize our response to him. Compassion and mercy and cruelty and malice all stand on precisely equal grounds in a cosmos without God, and there is simply no reason to say that one set of actions is “better” than any other.

It cannot be said too often that Friedrich Nietzsche understood this point with bracing clarity. As Tim Keller likes to point out, Nietzsche has never been answered. (Here I candidly admit that I am in part relying on Keller’s authority. He has read a lot more philosophy than I.)

So I make my appeal to what I think is the right instinct in all of us, an instinct that keeps bubbling up and that can only be resisted by a deliberate act of the will and convenient forgetfulness. Compassion is a real thing, and it is good, and there is a reason why it delights us that is not ultimately the same as the reason for the existence of things like malice and oppression. The simple truth is that compassion is an attribute of our Maker, and we delight in it because he does.

Once you have come to accept (whether by faith, revelation, or deduction) that God exists and that he is compassionate, then I think you are able to relish the significance of a story like that of Lisa and the rainbows.

On Mother’s Day 2001, Lisa’s husband suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack right in front of her. Russell Krausfeldt was just 40 years old, a good man much beloved by all who knew him. Their children were 14, 11 and 5. For many months afterward, Lisa would not wear makeup, because it ran when she cried, and she never knew when she would burst out in tears.

As you can imagine, Mother’s Days in succeeding years were very difficult for her. But a consoling sign came to her on Mother’s Day 2002. She saw a rainbow in the sky that day, and it pleased her, and she received it as a gentle indicator of God’s ongoing love in the midst of her trial. But God wasn’t done. The next year, again on Mother’s Day, she saw another rainbow. Then the year after that, the same maternal holiday arrived with a third consecutive rainbow – each one refracting to a widow’s eyes the light of God’s grace.

Lisa told me that by the fourth year she was a bit stronger and did not “need” the rainbow as she did on previous Mother’s Days. (Of course she looked for one anyway, but contented herself when they ceased appearing). Move ahead to 2009, when I met and courted her so quickly that poor Lisa got stuck with the task of informing friends and family that in a few weeks she would be marrying a guy none of them had heard of. Naturally they had questions and doubts. When she called Russell’s mother with the news of her sudden engagement, she found that she needed to defend the wisdom of her decision. “Are you really sure you want to marry this man?” In the course of this difficult conversation, Lisa happened to turn around and look out the window. There was a rainbow.

I know what that meant. God, in an act of gracious compassion, gave to one of his daughters the sight of four rainbows: three to comfort her in the loss of a good husband, and then an extra to encourage her in the acceptance of a serviceable one.

The Sin That Jesus Never Mentioned

It is a practice condemned in both the Old and New Testaments, and a whole city was once destroyed largely because of it. But Jesus himself never said it was sinful. In fact, as far as we can tell, he never said a word about it. Why is that?

I am referring to the sin of idolatry, the worship of images made from wood, stone, metal or clay. There are hundreds of passages in the Old Testament condemning idolatry - most notably, perhaps, Exodus 20:4-5, the 2nd of the 10 commandments: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” But despite warnings from the prophets, Israel and Judah succumbed to idol worship repeatedly over hundreds of years until judgment fell in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. For the connection between idolatry and Jerusalem’s fall see Ezekiel 5:8-9: “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again,’” and 2 Chronicles 24:18: “They abandoned the temple of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, and worshiped Asherah poles and idols. Because of their guilt, God’s anger came on Judah and Jerusalem.”

More than 600 years later, the apostles of Jesus likewise condemned idolatry and warned Christians to flee from it. See for example 1 Corinthians 10:14: “Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry”; 1 Peter 4:3: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry”; 1 John 5:21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

But Jesus, insofar as we have record of his teachings, avoided the topic of idol worship. He did so even when the discussion provided a natural spot to mention it. In Mark 7:21-22, for example, Jesus listed a dozen sins in rapid succession – “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” – but left out idolatry. And in the encounter with the rich young ruler, Jesus said, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother’” (Mark 10:19). Again, idolatry could have been mentioned but wasn’t. By way of contrast, when St. Paul enumerated vices that keep people out of God’s kingdom, he put idol worship back on the list (see 1 Corinthians 6:9; Galatians 5:19).

So why the silence on Jesus’ part? Any answer is speculative of course because no Bible text reads, “Here’s why Jesus never mentioned idolatry.” But it seems that a satisfying answer lies pretty close at hand. Jesus didn’t condemn idolatry because he didn’t have to. His fellow Jews had already taken care of it, and by the first century AD had expunged idolatry from their midst with righteous zeal. After the return from exile in Babylon some 500 years earlier you don’t see idolatry among the Jews. The Babylonian Captivity seems to have cured them of it - at least in terms of its visible and publically tolerated manifestations. Gentiles worshiped idols, but Jews didn’t. And in the course of his public ministry, Jesus dealt almost exclusively with Jews. His Gentile encounters can be numbered on one hand.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that the Jews of Jesus’ day never committed spiritual idolatry of the sort that St. Paul condemned when he equated idolatry with greed in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5. Of course they were greedy, and so are we: we all commit that kind of idolatry and need God’s grace to overcome it. I’m referring only to graven images that people consciously worship. Nor am I saying that there did not exist, in Jesus’ day, Jews with idolatrous orientations who longed to visit pagan temples or who sneaked surreptitious prayers to statues they kept hidden under their floorboards. It would be impossible to say that the sin was nonexistent. What I am saying is that the cultural climate among the Jews was so hostile to idolatry that the practice could not easily be found among them. If Yitzhak nudged Rueben and whispered, “Psst! Rueben! Want to join me tonight as I sacrifice a chicken to my image of Molech?” then Rueben would have outed him on the spot and gathered a crowd of zealots to stone him to death. It wasn’t safe to worship idols among the Jews.

In his culture it would have been pointless for Jesus to condemn idolatry. And not just pointless, but, I would suggest, cowardly. A peculiar temptation of moral crusaders is to rage against those sins that the people in their audience are already raging against. We, the corrupt audience, love to hear other people’s sins condemned, and are very pleased when our own sins go unchallenged. If Jesus had condemned idolatry, who in his audience could possibly have objected? Who would have been convicted of sin and moved to repent? Everyone would have nodded and said, “Amen.” A Jewish coalition as diverse as publicans, prostitutes, priests and Pharisees would have praised Jesus for ripping those Gentile polytheistic perverts. Even Herod Antipas, butcher of prophets, would have applauded such a sermon and put up a link to it on CountenanceScroll.

But Jesus didn’t go after safe sins. He targeted sins that people in his audience actually committed. This, coupled with his outrageous claims to divinity, tended to divide them into two camps: those who fell at his feet in humble repentance and those who said, “Kill the bastard.”

Years later, when the gospel of Jesus went out into the Gentile world, idolatry again became a live issue. The apostles, not being fools, did not scratch their heads and say, “Well, Jesus never mentioned idolatry, so maybe it’s not so bad after all.” They attacked idolatry just like their Old Testament counterparts. In Acts 17:16 St. Paul was deeply grieved to find the city of Athens full of idols, and went on to preach an anti-idol message of the sort that would have been superfluous coming from the mouth of Jesus. Writing to another Idol-filled city, Rome, St. Paul again excoriated the practice in unambiguous terms (see Romans 1:21-25).

Two conclusions follow.

First, we who walk in the footsteps of Jesus and claim to speak in his name must take care lest we find ourselves condemning only those sins that our culture is already attacking. That is a good strategy for becoming popular, but it dishonors God. Question your call as a minister if the only sins against which you raise a prophetic voice are the obvious, egregious things that everybody already hates and that no rational person defends – things like sex trafficking, racism, or being Donald Trump. And may God have mercy on your soul if you go silent about some evil practice right at the time that society has deemed it good. Cowards have no place in Christian proclamation.

Second, see for what it is the argument that seeks to justify some behavior on the ground that Jesus never mentioned it. That argument is as dumb as a box of socks.

Nonreligious People And The Concept Of Sin

In a recent panel discussion Rev. Tim Keller was analyzing challenges in communicating the gospel to “post-Christian non-Christian” culture. One problem, Keller said, is that “There is no anxiety about sin in particular. They have no concept of sin. Even to get across the concept of sin is something that is really difficult. You go to China, Africa, almost any other place, there is some concept - but not here.”

Keller’s point requires a qualification that I believe he himself would quickly acknowledge. I think today’s nonreligious people have a robust concept of sin. It is just a matter of where they locate it.

Every day my Facebook feed is filled with expressions of anxiety about sin and angry denunciations of it. Curiously, most of these comments seem to come from “Nones” – that is, atheists, agnostics, nonreligious, non church-going people, fans of late-night satiric news and comedy. Their sensitivity to sin is finely calibrated, and sometimes they are so anxious about it that they lose sleep at night. They research sin, identify it, reveal previously undisclosed evidences of it, and urge all good people everywhere to resist it. Many are so passionately opposed to sin that they are not ashamed to shed tears over it in public. Just watch Jimmy Kimmel.

The rub, of course, is that it is someone else’s sin, not their own. One detects little introspection, just (to coin a term) extrospection. Typically the sins being denounced are those of Donald Trump, or Congress, or the foul unthinking hordes who put them in power. When they decry Trump’s treatment of immigrants or a Congressman’s resistance to gun laws, they do not use the words “sin,” “sinner” or “sinful,” but these are clearly the categories they have in mind. The energies they bring to bear on their pleas are moral in nature. I have never heard them advocate for their positions on the basis of freely acknowledged partisanship or personal taste.

What I mean is this. If I’m a Cubs fan and you root for the White Sox, we may find each other’s loyalties puzzling but never (if we’re grownups) morally loathsome. If you liked the film “Arrival” and I thought it was terrible, we may have a discussion – even a heated one – about the film’s merits and demerits. But neither of us would try to call the other to repentance for the sin of disliking a worthy film or celebrating a bad one. We would just acknowledge that our tastes differ, and charitably keep to ourselves the concluding thought, “Of course, my taste is more refined than yours.”

But the zeal of Nones that I daily witness is moral zeal, righteous indignation. Trump is to be resisted not because his hair is ridiculous but because his actions are bad. And “bad” does not mean “displeasing to me personally, but of course you might have a different view and who am I to judge that?” but rather, “objectively evil.” Sinful. Worthy of reprobation and demanding active resistance.

Two thoughts come to mind as I contemplate these waves of moral indignation on the part of people whose worldview is nonreligious, philosophically materialistic, and sometimes even contemptuous of that “Sky Fairy” faith that simple folk in flyover states cling to.

First, I encourage the indignation. Sin, unhappily, exists, and it is better to acknowledge its presence and hate it and fight it than to sigh and say, “Well, some people think this and some people think that, and there is no independent righteous standard to judge between them. There can be no such standard, because we are, after all, complex bags of walking seawater who arrived at this point through a process of natural selection pruning the output of random mutation. No Moral Spirit constructed us or expects us to behave in a certain way. We are here because the strong ate the weak. Millions of generations of flexible organisms disassembled the proteins of less suitable ones and incorporated them for private use. Even in my individual creation, the brilliant Super Sperm that became me outraced 180 million rivals and then chemically excluded them with marvelous genocidal efficiency. Like it or not, I am Genghis Khan, and Nietzsche explained how it all works. There is no right and wrong. There is only strong and weak. Alive or dead.”

Deeply felt moral outrage tends to give the lie to philosophical materialism, because many find it hard to hold compatible a belief in sin with a belief that matter and energy are all that exist. These dual beliefs speed in opposite directions, and the intellectual strain involved in trying to encompass them both has led many thinkers to jettison their atheism. If there is a Law, there must be a Lawgiver. If there is no Law, if you and I are just competing (and sometimes cooperating) bags of seawater, then why in the world should I let you tell me what to do? And don’t tell me that it is ultimately in my own best interests. I’ll determine what is in my own best interests, thank you. And besides, your moralizing is always telling me to do what is not in my own interests simply because it is the “good and right thing to do.” We’re back at that again. There is no escaping the categories of goodness and badness, holiness and sin. Expressions of moral indignation remind us of this truth. Hooray indignation.

Second, Keller’s point about the secular mindset lacking a concept of sin strikes me as pretty well-taken as long as we are referring to one’s own sin. I agree: people who do not view themselves as sinful will be very hard to reach with the gospel of Jesus. It won’t be relevant for them. Of course, this is an old story. Jesus himself had a devil of a time trying to convert people who focused on other people’s sins but never their own. In the Bible such people go by the cover term “Pharisee”. A Pharisee hates everybody else’s sin but never sees it in himself. He hungers and thirsts for righteousness – other people’s righteousness. He’s already got it. If only everybody else were as good and reasonable as he, then everything would be fine.

These people are almost hopeless. Jesus had better luck with Simon Peter, who said to him, “Depart from me Lord; I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8) than he did with his namesake Simon the Pharisee, who thought, “Depart from her; she’s a sinful woman.” (free paraphrase of Luke 7:39-40). The mindset of a person who is perpetually pleased with himself yet just as perpetually offended by others is reflected in a parable Jesus told about a Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14. This Pharisee lamented other people’s sins, while a nearby penitent tax collector lamented his own. The tax collector was forgiven and (presumably) became a better man.

Though Pharisees ancient and modern can be very hard to reach, they do have this one thing in their favor. They know that sin exists, and they hate it. On the whole, I suppose it is better to have strong feelings about other people’s sins than to have no feelings about sin at all. Better a Pharisee than a Nietzschean psychopath. With a self-righteous Pharisee, one can at least hope, and I will certainly pray, that the finger of accusation can be taught to point in the opposite direction.

Alister McGrath Was Wrong About The Date Of C. S. Lewis’ Conversion To Theism

C. S. Lewis came to believe in God late in the spring of 1929. In Surprised By Joy he wrote, “In the Trinity Term of 1929 [April 28 to June 22] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”

Alister McGrath in C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet claims that Lewis got the date of his own conversion wrong, that it actually happened a year later. McGrath bases this claim on inferences from Lewis' correspondence with friends and family. "At no point in Lewis' writings of 1929 did I discern any signs of the dramatic developments that he describes as having taken place in his inner life that year...Even allowing for Lewis' reluctance to self-disclosure, his writings of this period do not point to any kind of conversion experience in 1929." McGrath also finds it significant that apparently Lewis did not begin attending college chapel services until October of 1930. "If Lewis really was converted during the Trinity Term of 1929, why did he wait over a year before starting to attend college chapel? It makes little sense.” McGrath concludes, "Lewis's conversion is best understood as having taken place in the Trinity Term of 1930, not 1929. In 1930, Trinity Term fell between 27 April and 21 June."

McGrath’s revision of the date is not compelling. First, there is really no puzzle about Lewis taking more than a year to start attending chapel. For a man who disliked religious ritual as much as Lewis, it is understandable that it would take him a while to learn to drag himself out of bed to make it to an 8 AM chapel service. The amazing thing is that he went at all, because at that point in his spiritual development he wasn't a Christian but a merely a theist.

What is truly puzzling is McGrath's claim that Lewis' private letters in 1929 "do not point to any kind of conversion experience." This is simply false. Below I have compiled a list of quotes from Lewis' letters all taken from before the time frame in which McGrath thinks Lewis converted from atheism to theism – April to June of 1929. The letters are in reverse chronological order. My few comments are in italics.

Lewis to Hamilton Jenkin, March 21, 1930:

On my side there are changes perhaps bigger: you will be surprised to hear that my outlook is now definitely religious. It is not precisely Christianity, tho’ it may turn out that way in the end. I can’t express the change better than by saying that whereas once I would have said, 'Shall I adopt Christianity', I now wait to see whether it will adopt me: i.e. I now know there is another Party in the affair – that I’m playing poker, not Patience, as I once supposed.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 30, 1930:

The old doctrine is quite true you know – that one must attribute everything to the grace of God, and nothing to oneself. Yet as long as one is a conceited ass, there is no good pretending not to be. My self-satisfaction cannot be hidden from God, whether I express it to you or not: rather the little bit of self-satisfaction which I (probably wrongly) believe myself to be fighting against, is probably merely a drop in the bottomless ocean of vanity and self-approval which the Great Eye (or Great I) sees in me.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 26, 1930:

[On daily reading George MacDonald’s devotional book, Diary of an Old Soul:

I shall soon have finished it and must look round for another book. Luckily the world is full of books of that general type: that is another of the beauties of coming, I won't say, to religion but to an attempt at religion – one finds oneself on the main road with all humanity, and can compare notes with an endless succession of previous travelers. It is emphatically coming home: as Chaucer says 'Returneth home from worldly vanitee.'

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 13, 1930:

In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am still inclined to think that you can only get what you call 'Christ' out of the Gospels by picking and choosing, and slurring over a good deal.

If Lewis is still an atheist, what would "my recent changes of view" refer to? He seems to be saying that though now he believes in God, he is not ready to embrace Christianity because he cannot reconcile that faith tradition with all of what he reads concerning Jesus in the Gospels.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 3, 1930:

By now I hope you have my long letter and are well advanced with your long reply. You shall have another gripping instalment, D.V., in the course of the next ten days.

I am willing to stand corrected if anyone finds a counter-example, but I believe that the above is the first occurrence in Lewis of the abbreviation "D. V.", (Latin Deo Volente - "God willing"). It may reflect mere social custom, (as when a non religious person says “God bless you” when you sneeze), but I suspect that the ever-precise (and newly-theistic) Lewis actually meant it: "If God so wills, I’ll write you some more.”

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, December 21, 1929:

I should like to know, too, in general, what you think of all the darker side of religion as we find it in the old books. Formerly I regarded it as mere devil worship based on horrible superstitions. Now that I have found, and am still finding more and more, the element of truth in the old beliefs, I feel I cannot dismiss even their dreadful side so cavalierly...

Bacon says "The whole world cannot fill, much less distend the mind of man."(By the way, that is the answer to those who argue that the universe cannot be spiritual because it is so vast and inhuman and alarming. On the contrary, nothing less would do for us. At our best, we can stand it, and could not stand anything smaller or snugger. Anything less than the terrifyingly big would, at some moments, be cramping and 'homely' in the bad sense – as one speaks of a 'homely' face. You can't have elbow room for things like men except in endless time and space and staggering multiplicity.)

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 17, 1929:

It is very hard to keep one's feet in this sea of engagements and very bad for me spiritually.

Would an atheist care about what was bad for him spiritually?

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 6, 10, 17

These letters seem to show that Lewis was trying to maintain a devotional life.

I have not yet started meditation again. The difficulty is to find a suitable time.

I am slowly reading a book that we have known about, but not known, for many a long day – MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul. How I would have scorned it once! I strongly advise you to try it.

Dropped in on [John] Christie for half an hour and was in bed by 11:15 after reading my daily verse from The Diary of an Old Soul.

(Resumption)

Part of me feels bad for McGrath, because he worked very hard on his biography of Lewis, and he said in an interview with Aaron Cline Hanbury, "I think my proposal for a redating of Lewis’ conversion from 1929 to 1930 may be the most important aspect of the book." If I wrote a book and treasured one part of it as "the most important aspect", I'd be a bit put out if someone proved me wrong, and I'd probably go to bed that night in total chagrin muttering to myself, "Oh shucks. Darnit. Darnit." But C. S. Lewis had his conversion date right in the first place, and McGrath's revision cannot be allowed to stand.

Should A Pastor Drive A BMW?

Jesus drives a forklift at my job at the chemical plant. (Not Messiah Jesus - Hispanic Jesus. Pronounced "Hey SOOS"). He is a good soul who tries to watch his language around me because, as he puts it, “I was taught to RESPECT my elders.” He was explaining to me the other day why he doesn’t go to church. “Why should I go and listen to some guy who lives in a mansion and drives a fancy car and he’s still telling me I should put a lot more of my money in the offering plate?”

It seemed to me that Jesus’ mental image of a pastor was strongly shaped by the sons of hell and servants of Mammon that preach on TV. But I had a pretty good card to play in response. “Jesus, look at me,” I said, as I stood before him in my shellac-stained industrial uniform. “You know I’m a pastor. Does it look to you like I’m in it for the money? That I’m living a much-too-luxurious lifestyle?” Thankfully he granted the point, and acknowledged that it was possible to go to a church where the pastor wasn’t some low-life money-grubbing bastard.

Just a few days after that an associate pastor told me that she was going to buy a new car, and some friends advised her to get a used BMW. Same price as a modest new car, they explained, but really a better value. “I can’t do that,” she said. “As a pastor I can’t be seen driving a BMW.” She was right, and I commended her restraint and self-awareness on the matter. A parishioner might see her driving that and not know that she got it used. Back at work the next week I put the following scenario to a couple friends. “Let’s say you go to church this Sunday. As you pull into a parking space, you see that the car pulling in next to you is a BMW. Out steps the pastor who will be preaching that morning. Is that a problem for you?” In the ensuing discussion they made it clear that yes, it would be. Among other things, “How could a pastor tell me to be humble and give generously when he’s cruising around in a luxury car?”

I can already hear the chorus of boos from many of my spiritually corrupted ministerial colleagues. “Why should I care about what the poor rabble think of my spending habits and profligate self-indulgence?” they ask. But to ask such a question is to answer it – at least for a sincere servant of God who lives his life in the shadow of the cross. We do care about what others think. We must. We’re trying to reach them for Christ. We must pay all kinds of personal sacrifices in order to remove hindrances to the gospel. The Apostle Paul, a happy meat-eater like myself, once said that he would become a life-long vegetarian if that’s what it took to keep people from sin (I Corinthians 8:13). I confess my spiritual immaturity, that I would find it terribly hard to forgo hamburgers forever for Jesus’ sake. But to drive a Toyota Corolla rather than a Jaguar even if I could afford one? Come on, that should be a snap.

It is just possible that some minister would respond to this attempt at moral persuasion with, “No. I will enjoy nice things. As for anyone who wrestles with tithing from a meager paycheck to support the lifestyle I think I’m entitled to, well, nuts to him. I don’t care how he perceives me.”

Really? Tell that to Jesus. Either one.

A Criterion For Selecting A Spouse That I Have Never Heard Advocated

The genial old widower lost my sympathy when he got to number 6 on the list of things he wanted in a spouse if he were to remarry. “Lord,” he prayed, “if you have somebody for me, here’s what I would like: someone who is (1) intelligent (2) godly (3) sweet (4) humble (5) attractive” and (6): “Let her not have a lot of complications in her personal life, like grown kids who run around the house smoking dope all the time.”

The first five items were things you would expect to find on the list of any ordinary Christian man who considers himself worthy of a great wife. “Why wouldn’t such a woman marry me?” he thinks. “I myself am intelligent, godly, sweet, humble and attractive, and have other appealing characteristics too. I’m reasonable. I don’t expect a spectacular woman to marry beneath her moral station. All I want is a wife with a subset of the great qualities I already possess.”

Though selfish and self-regarding, it is typical of the things proud Christian men pray for, and I will spend no more time sneering at this part of the list or decrying its presumption. But I do want to attack with holy vigor the sixth criterion: “Let her not have a lot of complications in her personal life.”

Oh good grief. You want a woman without “complications”? Then you are not worthy of a good woman, because you are not good yourself. You don’t want a woman, you want a sanctified pleasure-bot, an individual who can delight you with her godliness and humility and wit and attractive body but not annoy you with those weary, time-consuming, resource-demanding pains of life. The truth is, nearly every potential spouse will have “complications” that require your patience, provoke your tears, eat up your time, deplete your energy, and plead for your help. But that is part of the joyful price to be paid to be in loving partnership with a real human being. Your wife’s “complications” are the very things that constitute your opportunity to sacrifice yourself for Christ’s sake and love her as Christ loved the church.

I admit that the example the man used, if taken literally at every point, would give anyone pause. Grown children (plural) who run around the house (couldn’t they at least sit down, or go outside?) smoking dope all the time (don’t they ever do anything else?). But let me scale back that problem to realistic but still-unpleasant proportions. Suppose a woman has a jobless, sullen, pot-smoking 19-year-old son. Isn’t she far more in need of a husband than a woman who has no such “complication”? The young man is fatherless – his dad died or deserted the family. His mother, straining under her own burdens of grief or abandonment, does not know what to do. Does she turn him over to the police? Confront him and provoke another fight? Keep silent and enable more self-destruction? Evict him in the risky hope that homelessness will teach him responsibility? I could see such a woman longing for a husband to help her to think, to provide steadiness, to offer a shoulder to cry on, and to assure her that she is loved.

But she will get none of that from a man who is praying that God will send him a woman “with no complications in her personal life.” He’s much too focused on getting his own needs met.

The greatest true-life romance I ever read outside of Ruth and Boaz was that of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. Lewis married a woman with complications galore (twice!), and both times it was strictly for her benefit. There was nothing in it for him. Joy was a friend but not a love interest. She was a poor divorced immigrant with two boys, 10 and 12, and she was due to leave England because her visa was up and her application for renewal was denied. She asked Lewis if he would marry her in order to save her from being deported. He did. They had a civil ceremony for a marriage-in-name-only but did not live together as husband and wife. Then within a year Joy got terminal cancer. A kind priest conducted for them a “real” wedding ceremony at Joy’s hospital bedside, and Lewis brought her to his home to provide her with hospice care.

As Lewis wrote later to a friend, friendship gave way to pity which became love. Though Joy was expected to die within days or weeks, her cancer went into remission, and she and Lewis celebrated a joyous three years together before she finally passed away. He grieved as no man ever grieved. Brian Sibley’s account of their romance, Through The Shadowlands, is the only book that ever made me cry. You should also read Lewis’s A Grief Observed.

Ten years ago when I was single and miserable the thought crossed my mind that perhaps God would bring to me a dying woman whose final months I could bless by being her comforter and caretaker. That kind of situation is no one’s first choice in marriage – certainly not mine – but I did earnestly want to help somebody. Though I am a man of a thousand limitations, I wondered if in some narrow range of circumstances there might be a woman whom I could do some good, a woman who would be better off with me than without me.

Eight years ago a widow asked me what I was looking for in a woman, and I had to think for a second because I had made no list of qualities. “I just want someone nice,” I said. She was nice. Still is. Boy is she nice.

I don’t recommend making a list of qualities you’re looking for in a mate, but if you do, could you put this item on your list? Ask God to bring you someone whose “complications” you are suited to address. Don’t look primarily for someone who satisfies you but for someone whom you can satisfy. The last thing Joy Lewis said to her husband on the day she died was, “You have made me happy.” What greater reward than that could any worthy husband know?

Yesterday my nice wife received a Valentine's Day card from her mother. Her mother added this note: "and a special Happy Valentine's day to a special son-in-law who loves my daughter and makes her happy." Believe me, those are the kinds of statements that make marital joy complete.

Matthew 1:18-21: The Best Salvation

(Christmas Day sermon to be preached at Chinese Evangelical Free Church of Greater Chicago, written for the purpose of simultaneous translation into Cantonese.)

Matthew 1:18-21:

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

There is a Christmas song that is addressed to Mary the mother of Jesus.

It begins with the question: “Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?”

I believe Mary would answer, “No, I did not know that.”

The song continues, “Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?”

I believe Mary would answer, “Yes, I did know that.”

“That is why I named him ‘Jesus’.

Congregation do you know what the name ‘Jesus’ means?

It means, “God saves.”

An angel told Joseph, the husband of Mary, to name her baby “Jesus”.

He was given the name “Jesus” because he would save his people.

But what does he save them from?

There is more than one correct answer to that question.

It is correct to say that Jesus saves his people from the wrath of God.

1 Thessalonians 1:10 says that Jesus saves us from the wrath to come.

Jesus experienced the wrath of God on the cross so that his people would never have to experience it.

It is also correct to say that Jesus saves us from the fear of death.

Hebrews 2:15 says that Jesus frees those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

A person who belongs to Jesus Christ is not afraid to die.

Jesus saves his people from the wrath of God.

Jesus saves his people from the fear of death.

Is there anything else that Jesus saves us from?

Yes. I will tell you the most important thing that Jesus saves us from.

In the text that we read, it says in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus will save his people from their sins.

This is not the only verse in the Bible that speaks of salvation from sins.

Psalm 130:8 says that God will redeem Israel from all his sins.

Titus 2:14 says that Jesus gave his life to free us from every kind of sin.

Why do I say that salvation from sin is the most important salvation?

Let us think about it.

Suppose you were free from the fear of death, but you were still a corrupt sinner.

Is that how you would want to approach the end of your life?

Would you want to come to the end of your life unafraid, but still full of selfishness, envy, hatred and contempt?

Or suppose that you were free forever from the wrath of God.

He would never punish you.

But for all eternity you would be just as bad a person as you are now.

Is that how you would like to spend your eternity?

Deep within the hearts of some people there is a longing to be good.

It is a longing so deep that it is like the hunger or thirst of a person who has had nothing to eat or drink for a long time.

The Bible says that such people are blessed by God.

Jesus said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

Jesus himself is the one who will fill them.

He said “I am the bread of life.”

He said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”

This morning I have a question for you to consider.

Do you want to be good?

Please notice what I am not asking.

I am not asking if you want to go to heaven.

Everyone wants to go to heaven.

I am not asking if you want to have peace, joy, satisfaction and a sense of purpose in your life.

Everyone wants peace, joy, satisfaction and a sense of purpose in their lives.

I am not asking if you want to have good luck and a prosperous new year.

I am not asking if you want health and a long life.

I am not asking if you want an honorable family, or to be highly esteemed by your great grandchildren.

I am asking, “Do you want, more than life itself, to be a good person?”

Do you want to be saved from your sin?

I know a pastor who once asked a little girl the following question.

He said, “If you had to choose, would you rather be happy, or healthy, or holy?”

She said, “I know the right answer is holy, but I would really rather be happy.”

He thanked her for her honesty.

If some of us were as honest as that little girl, we might admit that we would rather be happy than holy.

Today I want to urge you to want holiness more than you want anything else.

More than success, happiness, or peace of mind.

More than a good spouse or worthy children.

More than health and long life.

I can think of four answers to the question, “Do you want, more than anything else, to be good?”

Answer number 1: “No. I like my sin and do not want to change.”

Answer number 2: “I want to be good, but there is something else I want a lot more.”

“What I really want is to get a job that pays me enough money.”

“What I really want is for my husband to stop misbehaving.”

“What I really want is for my children to show me some respect.”

“What I really want is to be healed of my disease.”

Answer number 3: “I am already good. Or at least, good enough.”

“I am not as bad as some other people.”

“I am a decent, respectable person.”

“I treat other people right.”

“Asking me if I want to be good is like asking me if I want to be Chinese.”

“I am Chinese!”

Answer number 4: “Yes. I am not good but I want to be.”

“I hunger and I thirst for true goodness in my heart.”

“Who will free me from my sin?”

If that is your answer, I have good news for you.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, saves his people from their sins.

His name means “Savior”, and he is a savior from sin.

He and he alone has the power to make you eternally good.

If you go anywhere else in your quest for eternal goodness, you will not find it.

If you go to anyone else, you will only find another sinner like yourself.

But Jesus never sinned.

1 John 3:5 says, “In him there is no sin.”

1 Peter 2:22 says, “He committed no sin.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He knew no sin.”

And 1 John 3:2 says that the children of God will be like him.

Will we be like him because we look like him?

Will we be like him because we share his power or deity?

No. We will be like him because we too will be without sin.

We who belong to Jesus will finally be good.

The Bible says this will happen when we see him.

It says in 1 John 3:2 that when he appears, we shall be like him.

If you want to be good forever, believe in Jesus Christ.

Be baptized as a sign to all that you belong to him.

He will save you from your sins.

Let us pray.

Father, we echo the words of your servant the Apostle Paul when he asked, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

We thank you that we know the answer as well as he.

Jesus your Son offered up his sinless body to save our sinful ones.

Deliver us from our evil deeds and thoughts and make us good forever.

In Jesus’ name, amen.