I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite ‘brain-buster’ subjects to contemplate is God’s concept of time. Personally, so far, I have not come across a better explanation than C.S. Lewis’ term, “the ever-present Now”. I find it a particularly useful thing to wrap my head around since it’s something that people trying to come to grips with their faith (say, in RCIA) often run into – the seeming contradiction of God’s perfect vision of all of time at once and His gift to us of free will. Lewis does a good job of un-tieing the (usually self-made) knot in Mere Christianity:

Another difficulty we get if we believe God to be in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today’. All the days are ‘Now’ for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not foresee you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.

I try to be nice, don’t you? But as C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity it is the source and direction of our niceness that counts in the end, not just some ephemeral self-constructed action that we consider ‘nice’.

‘Niceness’ – wholesome, integrated personality – is an excellent thing. We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’; just as we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat. But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save.

It is truly a danger, particularly in this modern and heavily secularized world, to stop at being ‘nice’ and to forget the true reason we are being nice. And if you don’t know the answer to that, spend some time contemplating Christ on the Cross and see what comes to you.

I have this pet peeve about doing things “good enough”. One of the first things I learned from my father was, “if you’re going to do it, do it right”. The only times I’ve found myself floundering in life were when I had failed to live up to that standard so there must be something to it. But so often in this life we find ourselves begging out of the hard chore, sleeping in on a cold morning or just leaving things as-is because they’re “good enough”. Some of us even perform mental gymnastics with Jesus’ saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48) to the tune of “I can’t possibly be as perfect as God is, therefore He must have meant that purely figuratively and therefore I’ll do the best I can [which of course I decide for myself] and that’s what He really wants”. I’d say that’s a right reading, taken to a wrong extreme. God calls us to a perfection which He knows is unattainable if we only use the faculties we possess; realizing this is no sin but a great step towards understanding. It is when one stops here, stops as it were with one foot in and one foot out of the car which is about to speed away, that one gets hurt. It is in putting our full faith in God and not ourselves that we find all new levels of perfection. C.S. Lewis had much the same to say about it in Mere Christianity but of course he said it with much better flair than I.

On the one hand, God’s demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection. On the other hand, you must realise from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal. That is what you are in for. And it is very important to realise that. If we do not, then we are very likely to start pulling back and resisting Him after a certain point. I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone.

I find it somewhat entertaining how timeless true statements can be. C.S. Lewis originally put together the radio broadcasts that became Mere Christianity during World War II, but yet so much of it still speaks to us right where we live, right when we live. In this case he is speaking of something dear to my heart – the need for the Christian to keep himself (and yes, of course, herself) current and practiced in the art (and I’d argue to the extent it is used today, the science) of theology.

In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones – bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.

Now after reading that, if you didn’t know the timeframe of its origin you’d swear it was written in the present day. It certainly does sound like the all-too-common comparisons of pre- and post-Vatican II Catholics, with a certain condescension to those raised with the “wall-facing” Mass and liturgies in a language they didn’t understand. But yet, the comments were made during a time when those liturgies were just that way. Now, I stipulate that C.S. Lewis was an Anglican and so I am stretching things just a little, but my intent is to throw yet more light on the fact that our forebearers were not the knuckle-dragging simpletons some of our “modern”-inclined friends would have us believe they were.

Further than that, however, is the reminder that today’s problems always will seem more complicated than yesterday’s, but so very often they have the same remediation: more prayer, more learning, more contemplation. Christianity is hard work, not a weekend beach getaway.

In a vain attempt to restore my sticky-tab stock, I came across this tidbit from Mere Christianity. It’s positively uncanny how much C.S. Lewis sounds like Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict.

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two 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. … [T]he living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.

I remember trying to explain the relational concept between love and the necessity of a multiplicity of persons to our RCIA class after coming across this in Ratzinger’s Principles of Catholic Theology. As I was chatting I realized just how deep a topic I was bringing up and just as I was about to segue into a lighter topic I noticed that light of understanding on their faces. The concept of love requiring two people combined with the biblical revelation that ‘God is love’ really does click with married people, even those who have a relatively shallow theological formation. It is moments like this that I wonder if we (this in the “royal we” sense) are not short-changing our RCIA members by giving them the “solid food” they are capable of ingesting. ‘Tis a fine line we walk some days…

Given the gift-buying season that is drawing to a close (too soon of a close for some of us who are last-minute inclined) this C.S. Lewis classic is quite apropos. Maybe it’s just me, but being a dad it hits even closer to home. Some of you will recognize this from his classic tome, Mere Christianity (emphasis mine).

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.

One could easily delve quickly into a discussion of justification theology here, but it’s almost Christmas and that’s just far too heady right now. Rather, I believe, the simplicity of Lewis’ statement should be allowed to stand on its own.

I just recently finished C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, a wonderful work if I do say so. I think there is much to learn in how he moves about from simpler topics to more complex ones in a way that does not overtly challenge the reader. Much better than the “hammer over the head” apologetics I feel I sometimes fall into. But anyway, something to think about.

On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’ He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

Indeed, at whatever cost to Him. And what a cost it was, and is.

I’m still working through C.S. Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity. One would swear I’m reading slower as I get older. Or perhaps it’s that as I get older I’m paying more attention to what I’m reading; I rather like to believe it is the latter rather than the former. But enough of that.

I was making my way the other day through his section on Social Morality and had to re-read his conclusion to the section. Not because, as usual, I was distracted but rather because it really struck me in how utterly relevant it is to us as Catholics as we try to decide in the voting process how we are to balance the different issues. His call is, simply, remember that we are to be Christians first, then political entities. If we are lacking in the fullness of our Christian witness it is likely we will be lacking in our political positions as well.

A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward – driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home.

I’ve managed to pick up a copy of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and I must say from what I have read so far it earns its reputation as an insightful piece of work. I hesitate to call it apologetics just yet because it steers clear of the doctrinal issues common in that field, but it certainly approaches it. The book is certainly not as light a fare as other Lewis I’ve read, but when one takes into account its setting in war-time England and as an extrapolation of the goodness and truthfulness of Christianity, and thus of the rightness of the English in their fight against the Nazis in a way, flights of whimsy would be rather out-of-place.

I’ll snag a quick quote that caught me. It’s a nice summation of the central tenant of Christianity – that of a God who takes human form and dies for our own salvation, as St. Paul said “a stumbling block” for those who would not believe. But Lewis turns that a bit on its ear and I think they are both right in their own way:

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies – these over-simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.

It kind of goes with the saying, “truth is stranger than fiction”.