Background Image

...

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

-C. S. Lewis

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Ancient Man Approached

C. S. Lewis

...

The Ancient Man Approached God (or Even The Gods)as The Accused Person Approaches His Judge. For The Modern Man The Roles Are Reversed. He Is The Judge: God Is In The Dock. He Is Quite A Kindly Judge: If God Should Have A Reasonable Defense For Being The God Who Permits War, Poverty, And Disease, He Is Ready To Listen To It. The Trial May Even End In God's Acquittal. But The Important Thing Is That Man Is On The Bench And God Is In The Dock.

Views: 6

Topic

More From C. S. Lewis

Even I Never Dreamed Of Magic Like This!

Non-christians Seem To Think That The Incarnation Implies Some Particular Merit Or Excellence In Humanity. But Of Course It Implies Just The Reverse: A Particular Demerit And Depravity. No Creature That Deserved Redemption Would Need To Be Redeemed. They That Are Whole Need Not The Physician. Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

And All The Time - Such Is The Tragic Comedy Of Our Situation - We Continue To Clamor For Those Very Qualities We Are Rendering Impossible. We Make Men Without Chests And Expect Of Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst. We Castrate And Bid The Geldings Be Fruitful.

There Must, Whether The Gods See It Or Not, Be Something Great In The Mortal Soul. For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, And Our Capacity Without Limit.

When God Becomes A Man And Lives As A Creature Among His Own Creatures In Palestine, Then Indeed His Life Is One Of Supreme Self-sacrifice And Leads To Calvary.

Now Is Our Chance To Choose The Right Side. God Is Holding Back To Give Us That Chance. It Won't Last Forever. We Must Take It Or Leave It.

If You Think You Are Not Conceited, It Means You Are Very Conceited Indeed.

When I Was Ten, I Read Fairy Tales In Secret And Would Have Been Ashamed If I Had Been Found Doing So. Now That I Am Fifty, I Read Them Openly. When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including The Fear Of Childishness And The Desire To Be Very Grown Up.

The World Does Not Consist Of 100 Percent Christians And 100 Percent Non-christians. There Are People (a Great Many Of Them) Who Are Slowly Ceasing To Be Christians But Who Still Call Themselves By That Name: Some Of Them Are Clergymen. There Are Other People Who Are Slowly Becoming Christians Though They Do Not Yet Call Themselves So.

We Feasted On Love; Every Mode Of It, Solemn And Merry, Romantic And Realistic, Sometimes As Dramatic As A Thunderstorm, Sometimes Comfortable And Unemphatic As Putting On Your Soft Slippers. She Was My Pupil And My Teacher, My Subject And My Sovereign, My Trusty Comrade, Friends, Shipmate, Fellow-soldier. My Mistress, But At The Same Time All That Any Man Friend Has Ever Been To Me.

The Very Nature Of Joy Makes Nonsense Of Our Common Distinction Between Having And Wanting.

Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And... God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again

You Find Out More About God From The Moral Law Than From The Univerise In General Just As You Find Out More About A Man By Listening To His Conversation Than By Looking At A House He Has Built.

What You See And What You Hear Depends A Great Deal On Where You Are Standing. It Also Depends On What Sort Of Person You Are.

God Is Basic Fact. He Must Not Be Thought Of As A Featureless Generality. He Is The Most Concrete Thing There Is.

But Now I Discovered The Wonderful Power Of Wine. I Understood Why Men Become Drunkards. For The Way It Worked On Me Was Not At All That It Blotted Out These Sorrows, But That It Made Them Seem Glorious And Noble, Like Sad Music, And I Somehow Great And Revered For Feeling Them.

I Was At This Time Living, Like So Many Atheists Or Antitheists, In A Whirl Of Contradictions. I Maintained That God Did Not Exist. I Was Also Very Angry With God For Not Existing. I Was Equally Angry With Him For Creating A World.

She's The Sort Of Woman Who Lives For Others - You Can Tell The Others By Their Hunted Expression.

There Is Wishful Thinking In Hell As Well As On Earth.

Screwtape Letters

I Prefer Being Honest To Being 'honest To God.'

When A Man Is Getting Better He Understands More And More Clearly The Evil That Is Still Left In Him. When A Man Is Getting Worse He Understands His Own Badness Less And Less.

This Act [creation], As It Is For God, Must Always Remain Totally Inconceivable To Man. For We--even Our Poets And Musicians And Inventors--never, In The Ultimate Sense Make. We Only Build. We Always Have Materials To Build From. All We Can Know About The Act Of Creation Must Be Derived From What We Can Gather About The Relation Of The Creatures To Their Creator

People Talk As If Grief Were Just A Feeling -- As If It Weren't The Continually Renewed Shock Of Setting Out Again And Again On Familiar Roads And Being Brought Up Short By The Grim Frontier Post That Now Blocks Them.

The First Demand Any Work Of Art Makes Upon Us Is To Surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get Yourself Out Of The Way.

Edmund, Give A Special Goodbye To Trumpkin For Me. He's Been A Brick.

Love Is Something More Stern And Splendid Than Mere Kindness.

When I'm Older I'll Understand" Said Lucy, " I Am Older And I Don't Think I Want To Understand", Replied Edmund

Till That Word Can Be Dug Out Of Us, Why Should They Hear The Babble That We Think We Mean? How Can They Meet Us Face To Face Till We Have Faces?

Emerson Said, Do You Love Me? Means Do You See The Same Truth?-or At Least, "do You Care About The Same Truth?

Every Day In A Life Fills The Whole Life With Expectations And Memory.

But How Can The Characters In A Play Guess The Plot? We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage. To Play Well The Scenes In Which We Are "on" Concerns Us Much More Than To Guess About The Scenes That Follow It.

Really, A Young Atheist Cannot Guard His Faith Too Carefully. Dangers Lie In Wait For Him On Every Side. You Must Not Do, You Must Not Even Try To Do, The Will Of The Father Unless You Are Prepared To "know Of The Doctrine." All My Acts, Desires, And Thoughts Were To Be Brought Into Harmony With Universal Spirit. For The First Time I Examined Myself With A Seriously Practical Purpose. And There I Found What Appalled Me; A Zoo Of Lusts, A Bedlam Of Ambitions, A Nursery Of Fears, A Harem Of Fondled Hatreds. My Name Was Legion.

The Whole Journey Was Odd And Dream-like -- The Roaring Stream, The Wet Grey Grass, The Glimmering Cliffs Which They Were Approaching, And Always The Glorious, Silently Pacing Beast Ahead.

A Man Whose Life Has Been Transformed By Christ Cannot Help But Have His Worldview Show Through.

But All Night, Aslan And The Moon Gazed Upon Each Other With Joyful And Unblinking Eyes.

You Weren't A Decent Man And You Didn't Do Your Best. We None Of Us Were And None Of Us Did.

In The Same Way A Christian Is Not A Man Who Never Goes Wrong, But A Man Is Enabled To Repent And Pick Himself Up And Begin Over Again After Each Stumble--because The Christ-life Is Inside Him, Repairing Him All The Time, Enabling Him To Repeat (in Some Degree) The Kind Of Voluntary Death Which Christ Himself Carried Out." - Mere Christianity

Poetry Most Often Communicates Emotions, Not Directly, But By Creating Imaginatively The Grounds For Those Emotions. It Therefore Communicates Something More Than The Emotion; Only By Means Of That Something More Does It Communicate The Emotion At All.

Love, Having Become A God, Becomes A Demon.

We Make Men Without Chests And Expect From Them Virtue And Enterprise. We Laugh At Honor And Are Shocked To Find Traitors In Our Midst.

In A Sense It (christianity) Creates, Rather Than Solves, The Problem Of Pain, For Pain Would Be No Problem Unless Side By Side With Our Daily Experience Of This Painful World, We Had Received What We Think A Good Assurance That Ultimate Reality Is Righteousness And Loving.

They Stormed And Jeered At One Another In Long Meaningless Words Of About Twenty Syllables Each.

We Have A Strange Illusion That Mere Time Cancels Sin.

Isn't It Funny How Day By Day Nothing Changes, But When You Look Back, Everything Is Different.

The Only Palliative Is To Keep The Clean Sea Breeze Of The Centuries Blowing Through Our Minds, And This Can Be Done Only By Reading Old Books.

Do Not Waste Time Bothering Whether You ‘love’ Your Neighbor; Act As If You Did. As Soon As We Do This We Find One Of The Great Secrets. When You Are Behaving As If You Loved Someone, You Will Presently Come To Love Him.

Humility Is Not Thinking Less Of Yourself, It's Thinking Of Yourself Less.

If You Look For Truth, You May Find Comfort In The End; If You Look For Comfort You Will Not Get Either Comfort Or Truth Only Soft Soap And Wishful Thinking To Begin, And In The End, Despair.

Truth And Falsehood Are Opposed; But Truth Is The Norm Not Of Truth Only But Of Falsehood Also.

Truth And Falsehood

Christianity Thinks Of Human Individuals Not As Mere Members Of A Group Or Items In A List, But As Organs In A Body-different From One Another And Each Contributing What No Other Could.

By Gum,' Said Digory, 'don't I Just Wish I Was Big Enough To Punch Your Head!

I Now See That I Spent Most Of My Life In Doing Neither What I Ought Nor What I Liked.

Screwtape Letters

Repentance Is Not Something God Demands Of You Before He Will Take You Back And Which He Could Let You Off If He Chose; It Is Simply A Description Of What Going Back Is Like.

All Human Beings Pass Away. Do Not Let Your Happiness Depend On Something You May Lose. If Love Is To Be A Blessing, Not A Misery, It Must Be For The Only Beloved Who Will Never Pass Away.

Christ, Who Said To The Disciples, 'you Have Not Chosen Me, But I Have Chosen You,' Can Truly Say To Every Group Of Christian Friends, 'you Have Not Chosen One Another But I Have Chosen You For One Another.'

Of Course Language Is Not An Infallible Guide, But It Contains, With All Its Defects, A Good Deal Of Stored Insight And Experience.

One Flesh. Or If You Prefer, One Ship. The Starboard Engine Has Gone. I, The Port Engine, Must Chug Along Somehow Till We Make Harbour. Or Rather, Till The Journey Ends.

The Real Trouble Is That 'kindness' Is A Quality Fatally Easy To Attribute To Ourselves On Quite Inadequate Grounds. Everyone Feels Benevolent If Nothing Happens To Be Annoying Him At The Moment. Thus A Man Easily Comes To Console Himself For All His Other Vices By A Conviction That 'his Heart's In The Right Place' And 'he Wouldn't Hurt A Fly,' Though In Fact He Has Never Made The Slightest Sacrifice For A Fellow Creature. We Think We Are Kind When We Are Only Happy: It Is Not So Easy, On The Same Grounds, To Imagine Oneself Temperate, Chaste, Or Humble.

So Many Things--nay Every Real Thing--is Good If Only It Will Be Humble And Ordinate.

A Pleasure Is Full Grown Only When It Is Remembered.

The Real Problem Is Not Why Some Pious, Humble, Believing People Suffer, But Why Some Do Not.

The Son Of God Became A Man To Enable Men To Become Sons Of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis

The Sight Of The Huge World Put Mad Ideas Into Me, As If I Could Wander Away, Wander Forever, See Strange And Beautiful Things, One After The Other...

God Wants A Child's Heart And A Grownup's Head.

“who Are You?” One Who Has Waited Long For You To Speak.

Music. A Meaningless Acceleration In The Rhythm Of Celestial Experience.

It Is Quite Useless Knocking At The Door Of Heaven For Earthly Comfort. It's Not The Sort Of Comfort They Supply There.

Could One Start A Stagnation Party-which At General Elections Would Boast That During Its Term Of Office No Event Of The Least Importance Had Taken Place?

Christianity Has Not Message For Those Who Do Not Realize They Are Sinners.

We Are Not The Playwright, We Are Not The Producer, We Are Not Even The Audience. We Are On The Stage.

Strictly Speaking, There Are No Such Things As Good And Bad Impulses. Think...of A Piano. It Has Not Got Two Kinds Of Notes On It, The 'right' Notes And The 'wrong' Ones. Every Single Note Is Right At One Time And Wrong At Another. The Moral Law Is Not Any One Instinct Or Set Of Instincts: It Is Something Which Makes A Kind Of Tune (the Tune We Call Goodness Or Right Conduct) By Directing The Instincts.

Faith, In The Sense In Which I Am Here Using The Word, Is The Art Of Holding On To Things Your Reason Has Once Accepted, In Spite Of Your Changing Moods.

Better To Be Miserable With Her Than Happy Without Her. Let Our Hearts Break Provided They Break Together. If The Voice Within Us Does Not Say This It Is Not The Voice Of Eros.

A Sick Society Must Think Much About Politics, As A Sick Man Must Think Much About His Digestion.

I Desired Dragons With A Profound Desire.

Courage Is Not Simply One Of The Virtues, But The Form Of Every Virtue At The Testing Point.

Humans Are Amphibians - Half Spirit And Half Animal. As Spirits They Belong To The Eternal World, But As Animals They Inhabit Time.

It's Not A Question Of God 'sending' Us To Hell. In Each Of Us There Is Something Growing Up Which Will Of Itself Be Hell Unless It Is Nipped In The Bud.

Only Real Risk Passes The Reality Of Faith.

Man, Even Now, Can Do Wonders To Animals: My Cat And Dog Live Together In My House And Seem To Like It. It May Have Been One Of Man's Functions To Restore Peace To The Animal World, And If He Had Not Joined The Enemy He Might Have Succeeded In Doing So To An Extent Now Hardly Imaginable.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books.

There Is But One Good; That Is God. Everything Else Is Good When It Looks To Him And Bad When It Turns From Him.

A Woman Means By Unselfishness Chiefly Taking Trouble For Others; A Man Means Not Giving Trouble To Others...thus, While The Woman Thinks Of Doing Good Offices And The Man Of Respecting Other People's Rights, Each Sex, Without Any Obvious Unreason, Can And Does Regard The Other As Radically Selfish.

And I Was The Lion You Do Not Remember Who Pushed The Boat In Which You Lay, A Child Near Death, So That It Came To Shore Where A Man Sat, Wakeful At Midnight, To Receive You.

The Eternal Being, Who Knows Everything And Who Created The Whole Universe, Became Not Only A Man But (before That) A Baby, And Before That A Fetus In A Woman's Body.

To See, In Some Measure, Like God. His Love And His Knowledge Are Not Distinct From One Another, Not From Him. We Could Almost Say He Sees Because He Loves, And Therefore Loves Although He Sees.

We Have Had Enough, Once And For All, Of Hedonism--the Gloomy Philosophy Which Says That Pleasure Is The Only Good.

Eros Will Have Naked Bodies; Friendship Naked Personalities.

I Must Keep Alive In Myself The Desire For My True Country, Which I Shall Not Find Till After Death; I Must Never Let It Get Snowed Under Or Turned Aside; I Must Make It The Main Object Of Life To Press On To That Other Country And To Help Others To Do The Same.

It Seems To Me That We Often, Almost Sulkily, Reject The Good That God Offers Us Because, At That Moment, We Expected Some Other Good.

The Humblest Praise Most, While Cranks & Malcontents Praise Least. Praise Almost Seems To Be Inner Health Made Audible

And There We All Were, As Invisible As You Could Wish To See.

You Don't Have A Soul. You Are A Soul. You Have A Body.

Love As Distinct From "being In Love" Is Not Merely A Feeling. It Is A Deep Unity, Maintained By The Will And Deliberately Strengthened By Habit.

If Naturalism Were True Then All Thoughts Whatever Would Be Wholly The Result Of Irrational Causes. It Cuts Its Own Throat.

Christian Love, Either Towards God Or Towards Man, Is An Affair Of The Will.

Morality Or Duty Never Yet Made A Man Happy In Himself Or Dear To Others.

For He (god) Seems To Do Nothing Of Himself Which He Can Possibly Delegate To His Creatures.

Jesus Was Either A Liar, A Lunatic, Or Lord

God Knows Our Situation; He Will Not Judge Us As If We Had No Difficulties To Overcome. What Matters Is The Sincerity And Perseverance Of Our Will To Overcome Them.

The Value Of The Old Testament May Be Dependant On What Seems Its Imperfection. It May Repel One Use In Order That We May Be Forced To Use It In Another Way-to Find The Word In It...to Re-live, While We Read, The Whole Jewish Experience Of God's Gradual And Graded Self-revelation, To Feel The Very Contentions Between The Word And The Human Material Through Which It Works.

You Never Know How Much You Really Believe Anything Until Its Truth Or Falsehood Becomes A Matter Of Life And Death To You.

The Question Is Not What We Intended Ourselves To Be, But What He Intended Us To Be When He Made Us.

Don't You Mind," Said Puddleglum. "there Are No Accidents. Our Guide Is Aslan; And He Was There When The Giant King Caused The Letters To Be Cut, And He Knew Already All Things That Would Come Of Them; Including This.

I'd Sooner Live Among People Who Don't Cheat At Cards Than Among People Who Are Earnest About Not Cheating At Cards.

Now The Story Of Christ Is Simply A True Myth: A Myth Working On Us The Same Way As The Others, But With This Tremendous Difference That It Really Happened: And One Must Be Content To Accept It In The Same Way, Remembering That It Is God’s Myth Where The Others Are Men’s Myths: I.e., The Pagan Stories Are God Expressing Himself Through The Minds Of Poets, Using Such Images As He Found There, While Christianity Is God Expressing Himself Through What We Call 'real Things'.

You Can’t Get Second Things By Putting Them First. You Get Second Things Only By Putting First Things First.

Put First Things First

First Things First

Don't Worry. If You Really Want To, You Will Whether You'll Like It When You Do Is Another Question.

The Theory That Thought Is Merely A Movement In The Brain Is, In My Opinion, Nonsense; For If So, That Theory Itself Would Be Merely A Movement, An Event Among Atoms, Which May Have Speed And Direction But Of Which It Would Be Meaningless To Use The Words 'true' Or 'false'.

Things Never Happen The Same Way Twice.

You Must Picture Me Alone In That Room In Magdalen, Night After Night, Feeling, Whenever My Mind Lifted Even For A Second From My Work, The Steady, Unrelenting Approach Of Him Whom I So Earnestly Desired Not To Meet. That Which I Greatly Feared Had At Last Come Upon Me. In The Trinity Term Of 1929 I Gave In, And Admitted That God Was God, And Knelt And Prayed: Perhaps, That Night, The Most Dejected And Reluctant Convert In All England.

Excess Of Love, Did Ye Say? There Was No Excess, There Was Defect. She Loved Her Son Too Little, Not Too Much. If She Had Loved Him More There'd Be No Difficulty.

I Sometimes Think That Shame, Mere Awkward, Senseless Shame, Does As Much Towards Preventing Good Acts And Straightforward Happiness As Any Of Our Vices Can Do.

I Need Christ, Not Something That Resembles Him.

The Church Exists For Nothing Else But To Draw Men Into Christ.

The Life-force Is A Sort Of Tame God. You Can Switch It On When You Want, But It Will Not Bother You. All The Thrills Of Religion And None Of The Cost. Is The Life-force The Greatest Achievement Of Wishful Thinking The World Has Yet Seen?

Critics Who Treat Adult As A Term Of Approval, Instead Of As A Merely Descriptive Term, Cannot Be Adult Themselves. To Be Concerned About Being Grown Up, To Admire The Grown Up Because It Is Grown Up, To Blush At The Suspicion Of Being Childish; These Things Are The Marks Of Childhood And Adolescence.

This Was The Very Reason Why You Were Brought To Narnia, That By Knowing Me Here For A Little, You May Know Me Better There.

Think Of A Country Where People Were Admired For Running Away In Battle, Or Where A Man Felt Proud Of Double-crossing All The People Who Had Been Kindest To Him. You Might Just As Well Try To Imagine A Country Where Two And Two Made Five.

An Unliterary Man May Be Defined As One Who Reads Books Once Only.

Fancy Sleeping On Air. I Wonder If Anyone's Done It Before. I Don't Suppose They Have. Oh, Bother—-scrubb Probably Has!

He'll Be Coming And Going" He Had Said. "one Day You'll See Him And Another You Won't. He Doesn't Like Being Tied Down--and Of Course He Has Other Countries To Attend To. It's Quite All Right. He'll Often Drop In. Only You Mustn't Press Him. He's Wild, You Know. Not Like A Tame Lion.

It Is Not Enough To Want To Get Rid Of One’s Sins, We Also Need To Believe In The One Who Saves Us From Our Sins.

Look For The Valleys, The Green Places, And Fly Through Them. There Will Always Be A Way Through.

But I Will Not Tell You How Long Or Short The Way Will Be; Only That It Lies Across A River. But Do Not Fear That, For I Am The Great Bridge Builder.

The First Action To Be Taken Is To Pull Ourselves Together. If We Are Going To Be Destroyed By An Atomic Bomb, Let That Bomb, When It Comes, Find Us Doing Sensible And Human Things -- Praying, Working, Teaching, Reading, Listening To Music, Bathing The Children, Playing Tennis, Chatting To Our Friends Over A Pint And A Game Of Darts -- Not Huddled Together Like Frightened Sheep And Thinking About Bombs.

I Am A Product [...of] Endless Books. My Father Bought All The Books He Read And Never Got Rid Of Any Of Them.... I Had Always The Same Certainty Of Finding A Book That Was New To Me As A Man Who Walks Into A Field Has Of Finding A New Blade Of Grass.

One Must Never Be Either Content With, Or Impatient With, Oneself.

For Christianity Is A Fighting Religion. It Thinks God Has Made The World- That Space And Time, Heat And Cold, And All The Colors And Tastes, And All The Animals And Vegetables, Are Things That God 'made Up Out Of His Head' As A Man Makes Up A Story. But It Also Thinks That A Great Many Things Have Gone Wrong With The World That God Made And That God Insists, And Insists Very Loudly, On Our Putting Them Right Again.

In Our World," Said Eustace, "a Star Is A Huge Ball Of Flaming Gas." Even In Your World, My Son, That Is Not What A Star Is, But Only What It Is Made Of.

Humans Are Very Seldom Either Totally Sincere Or Totally Hypocritical. Their Moods Change, Their Motives Are Mixed, And They Are Often Quite Mistaken As To What Their Motives Are.

God Has No Needs. Human Love, As Plato Teaches Us, Is The Child Of Poverty – Of Want Or Lack; It Is Caused By A Real Or Supposed Goal In Its Beloved Which The Lover Needs And Desires. But God's Love, Far From Being Caused By Goodness In The Object, Causes All The Goodness Which The Object Has, Loving It First Into Existence, And Then Into Real, Though Derivative, Lovability. God Is Goodness. He Can Give Good, But Cannot Need Or Get It. In That Sense , His Love Is, As It Were, Bottomlessly Selfless By Very Definition; It Has Everything To Give, And Nothing To Receive.

My Argument Against God Was That The Universe Seemed So Cruel And Unjust. But How Had I Got This Idea Of Just And Unjust? A Man Does Not Call A Line Crooked Unless He Has Some Idea Of A Straight Line. What Was I Comparing This Universe With When I Called It Unjust?

All Schools Both Here And In America Should Teach Far Fewer Subjects Far Better.

Love Is Never Wasted, For Its Value Does Not Rest Upon Reciprocity.

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

There Have Been Men Before Now Who Got So Interested In Proving The Existence Of God That They Came To Care Nothing For God Himself.

Human Beings Look Separate Because You See Them Walking About Separately. But Then We Are So Made That We Can See Only The Present Moment. If We Could See The Past, Then Of Course It Would Look Different. For There Was A Time When Every Man Was Part Of His Mother, And (earlier Still) Part Of His Father As Well, And When They Were Part Of His Grandparents. If You Could See Humanity Spread Out In Time, As God Sees It, It Would Look Like One Single Growing Thing--rather Like A Very Complicated Tree. Every Individual Would Appear Connected With Every Other.

Good And Evil Increase At Compound Interest. That's Why The Little Decisions We Make Every Day Are Of Infinite Importance.

Decisions We Make

There Is A Story About A Schoolboy Who Was Asked What He Thought God Was Like. He Replied That, As Far As He Could Make Out, God Was 'the Sort Of Person Who Is Always Snooping Around To See If Anyone Is Enjoying Himself And Then Trying To Stop It.'

But In Reading Great Literature I Become A Thousand Men And Yet Remain Myself. Like The Night Sky In The Greek Poem, I See With A Myriad Eyes, But It Is Still I Who See. Here, As In Worship, In Love, In Moral Action, And In Knowing, I Transcend Myself; And Am Never More Myself Than When I Do.

People Blush At Praise--not Only Praise Of Their Bodies, But Praise Of Anything That Is Theirs.

The Change Which The Writing Wrought In Me (and Of Which I Did Not Write) Was Only A Beginning; Only To Prepare Me For The Gods' Surgery. They Used My Own Pen To Probe My Wound.

Never, In Peace Or War, Commit Your Virtue Or Your Happiness To The Future. Happy Work Is Best Done By The Man Who Takes His Long-term Plans Somewhat Lightly And Works From Moment To Moment 'as To The Lord.' It Is Only Our Daily Bread That We Are Encouraged To Ask For. The Present Is The Only Time In Which Any Duty Can Be Done Or Any Grace Received.

A Man Who Was Merely A Man And Said The Sort Of Things Jesus Said Would Not Be A Great Moral Teacher. He Would Either Be A Lunatic - On A Level With The Man Who Says He Is A Poached Egg - Or Else He Would Be The Devil Of Hell. You Must Make Your Choice. Either This Man Was, And Is, The Son Of God; Or Else A Madman Or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him Up For A Fool; You Can Spit At Him And Kill Him As A Demon; Or You Can Fall At His Feet And Call Him Lord And God. But Let Us Not Come With Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being A Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open To Us.

Heaven Is Reality Itself. All That Is Fully Real Is Heavenly. For All That Can Be Shaken Will Be Shaken And Only The Unshakeable Remains.

We Read To Know We Are Not Alone.

God Is Not Merely Good, But Goodness; Goodness Is Not Merely Divine, But God.

There Is A Difficulty About Disagreeing With God. He Is The Source From Which All Your Reasoning Power Comes: You Could Not Be Right And He Wrong Any More Than A Stream Can Rise Higher Than Its Own Source. When You Are Arguing Against Him You Are Arguing Against The Very Power That Makes You Able To Argue At All: It Is Like Cutting Off The Branch You Are Sitting On.

Christ Died For Men Precisely Because Men Are Not Worth Dying For; To Make Them Worth It.

I'm Not Sure God Wants Us To Be Happy. I Think He Wants Us To Love, And Be Loved. But We Are Like Children, Thinking Our Toys Will Make Us Happy And The Whole World Is Our Nursery. Something Must Drive Us Out Of That Nursery And Into The Lives Of Others, And That Something Is Suffering.

Her Absence Is Like The Sky, Spread Over Everything.

Suspicion Often Creates What It Suspects.

Screwtape Letters

The Christians Are Right: It Is Pride Which Has Been The Chief Cause Of Misery In Every Nation And Every Family Since The World Began.

Look For Yourself, And You Will Find In The Long Run Only Hatred, Loneliness, Despair, Rage, Ruin, And Decay. But Look For Christ And You Will Find Him, And With Him Everything Else Thrown In.

Man Was Appointed By God To Have Dominion Over The Beasts, And Everything A Man Does To An Animal Is Either A Lawful Exercise Or A Sacrilegious Abuse Of An Authority By Divine Right.

God Has Paid Us The Intolerable Compliment Of Loving Us, In The Deepest, Most Tragic, Most Inexorable Sense.

No Book Is Really Worth Reading At The Age Of Ten Which Is Not Equally – And Often Far More – Worth Reading At The Age Of Fifty And Beyond.

Once A King In Narnia, Always A King In Narnia. But Don't Go Trying To Use The Same Route Twice. Indeed, Don't Try To Get There At All. It'll Happen When You're Not Looking For It. And Don't Talk Too Much About It Even Among Yourselves. And Don't Mention It To Anyone Else Unless You Find That They've Had Adventures Of The Same Sort Themselves. What's That? How Will You Know? Oh, You'll Know All Right. Odd Things, They Say-even Their Looks-will Let The Secret Out. Keep Your Eyes Open. Bless Me, What Do They Teach Them At These Schools." -the Profesor

At Least He Went On Saying This Till Aslan Had Loaded Him Up With Three Dwarfs, One Dryad, Two Rabbits, And A Hedgehog, That Steadied Him A Bit.

Some People Probably Think Of The Resurrection As A Desperate Last Moment Expedient To Save The Hero From A Situation Which Had Got Out Of The Author's Control.

It Takes Courage To Live Through Suffering; And It Takes Honesty To Observe It.

As Long As You Are Proud, You Cannot Know God.

Some Journeys Take Us Far From Home. Some Adventures Lead Us To Our Destiny.

Sleeping On A Dragon's Hoard With Greedy, Dragonish Thoughts In His Heart, He Had Become A Dragon Himself.

Many Things, Such As Loving, Going To Sleep, Or Behaving Unaffectedly - Are Done Worst When We Try Hardest To Do Them.

The Road To The Promised Land Runs Past Sinai. The Moral Law May Exist To Be Transcended: But There Is No Transcending It For Those Who Have Not First Admitted Its Claims Up On Them, And Then Tried With All Their Strength To Meet That Claim, And Fairly And Squarely Faced The Fact Of Their Failure.

Emeth Speaking Of Aslan, "beloved, Said The Glorious One, Unless Thy Desire Had Been For Me Thou Wouldst Not Have Sought So Long And So Truly. For All Find What They Truly Seek...and Since Then, O Kings And Ladies, I Have Been Wandering To Find Him And My Happiness Is So Great That It Even Weakens Me Like A Wound. And This Is The Marvel Of Marvels, That He Called Me Beloved, Me Who Am But As A Dog

If They Won't Write The Kind Of Books We Like To Read We Shall Have To Write Them Ourselves.

If You Have Really Handed Yourself Over To Him, It Must Follow That You Are Trying To Obey Him. But Trying In A New Way, A Less Worried Way.

I Think Earth, If Chosen Instead Of Heaven, Will Turn Out To Have Been, All Along, Only A Region In Hell; And Earth, If Put Second To Heaven, To Have Been From The Beginning A Part Of Heaven Itself.

You Cannot Make Men Good By Law.

Lucy Looked And Saw That Aslan Had Just Breathed On The Feet Of The Stone Giant. It's All Right!" Shouted Aslan Joyously. "once The Feet Are Put Right, All The Rest Of Him Will Follow.

You Must Therefore Zealously Guard In His Mind The Curious Assumption 'my Time Is My Own'. Let Him Have The Feeling That He Starts Each Day As The Lawful Possessor Of Twenty-four Hours. Let Him Feel As A Grievous Tax That Portion Of This Property Which He Has To Make Over To Him Employers, And As A Generous Donation That Further Portion Which H Allows To Religious Duties. But What He Must Never Be Permitted To Doubt Is That The Total From Which These Deductions Have Been Made Was, In Some Mysterious Sense, His Own Personal Birthright.

The Sweet Heavy Smell Grew Very Much Less. For Though The Whole Fire Had Not Been Put Out, A Good Bit Of It Had, And What Remained Smelled Very Largely Of Burnt Marsh-wiggle, Which Is Not At All An Enchanting Smell.

Lucy Woke Out Of The Deepest Sleep You Can Imagine, With The Feeling That The Voice She Liked Best In The World Had Been Calling Her Name.

To Live In A Fully Predictable World Is Not To Be A Man.

Chastity Is The Most Unpopular Of The Christian Virtues. There Is No Getting Away From It; The Old Christian Rule Is, "either Marriage, With Completely Faithfulness To Your Partner, Or Else Total Abstinence."

The Birth Of Christ Is The Central Event In The History Of The Earth-- The Very Thing The Whole Story Has Been About.

Girls Aren't Very Good At Keeping Maps In Their Brains", Said Edmund, "that's Because We've Got Something In Them", Replied Lucy.

Now God, Who Has Made Us, Knows What We Are And That Our Happiness Lies In Him.

Now Eros Makes A Man Really Want, Not A Woman, But One Particular Woman. In Some Mysterious But Quite Indisputable Fashion The Lover Desires The Beloved Herself, Not The Pleasure She Can Give.

And So Take Away His Work, Which Was His Life [. . .] And All His Glory And His Great Deeds? Make A Child And A Dotard Of Him? Keep Him To Myself At That Cost? Make Him So Mine That He Was No Longer His?

We Must Show Our Christian Colors, If We Are To Be True To Jesus Christ. We Cannot Remain Silent Or Concede Everything Away.

But However Happy You Are Feeling, You Can't Talk With Your Mouth Full Of Snow.

In God There Is No Hunger That Needs To Be Filled, Only Plenteousness That Desires To Give.

He Cannot "tempt" To Virtue As We Do To Vice. He Wants Them To Learn To Walk And Must Therefore Take Away His Hand; And If Only The Will To Walk Is Really There He Is Pleased Even With Their Stumbles.

This Is Where Men, Even The Trustiest, Fail Us. Their Heart Is Never So Wholly Given To Any Matter But That Some Trifle Of A Meal, Or A Drink, Or A Sleep, Or A Joke, Or A Girl, May Come In Between Them And It, And Then (even If You Are A Queen) You'll Get No More Good Out Of Them Until They've Had Their Way.

If You Do One Good Deed Your Reward Usually Is To Be Set To Do Another And Harder And Better One.

The Moment Good Taste Knows Itself, Some Of Its Goodness Is Lost.

Prostitutes Are In No Danger Of Finding Their Present Life So Satisfactory That They Cannot Turn To God: The Proud, The Avaricious, The Self-righteous, Are In That Danger.

If The Church Is Not Making Disciples, Then All The Cathedrals, Clergy, Missions, Sermons, Even The Bible, Are A Waste Of Time.

They Call Him Aslan In That Place," Said Eustace. "what A Curious Name!" "not Half So Curious As Himself," Said Eustace Solemnly.

To Have Faith In Christ Means, Of Course, Trying To Do All That He Says. There Would Be No Sense In Saying You Trusted A Person If You Would Not Take His Advice.

Pride, On The Other Hand, Is The Mother Of All Sins, And The Original Sin Of Lucifer.... An Instrument Strung, But Preferring To Play Itself Because It Thinks It Knows The Tune Better Than The Musician

If The Immutable Heart Can Be Grieved By The Puppets Of Its Own Making, It Is Divine Omnipotence, No Other, That Has Subjected It, Freely, And In A Humility That Passes Understanding. If The World Exists Not Chiefly That We May Love God, But That God May Love Us, Yet That Very Fact, On A Deeper Level, Is So For Our Sakes. If He Who In Himself Can Lack Nothing Chooses To Need Us, It Is Because We Need To Be Needed.

God Has Infinite Attention, Infinite Leisure To Spare For Each One Of Us. He Doesn't Have To Take Us In The Line. You're As Much Alone With Him As If You Were The Only Thing He'd Ever Created.

Though We Cannot Experience Our Life As An Endless Present, We Are Eternal In God's Eyes; That Is, In Our Deepest Reality.

All The Time The Joke Is That The Word "mine" In Its Fully Possessive Sense Cannot Be Uttered By A Human Being About Anything. In The Long Run Either [satan] Or God Will Say "mine" Of Each Thing That Exists, And Specially Of Each Man.

There Have Been Times When I Think We Do Not Desire Heaven But More Often I Find Myself Wondering Whether, In Our Heart Of Hearts, We Have Ever Desired Anything Else.

Trending Author

Joshua Reynolds

Category