Evil

I think one may be quite rid of the old haunting suspicion—which raises its head in every temptation—that there is something else than God—some other country . . . into which He forbids us to trespass—some kind of delight which He “doesn’t appreciate” or just chooses to forbid, but which would be real delight if only we were allowed to get it.

The thing just isn’t there. Whatever we desire is either what God is trying to give us as quickly as He can, or else a false picture of what He is trying to give us—a false picture which would not attract us for a moment if we saw the real thing. Therefore God does really in a sense contain evil—i.e., contains what is the real motive power behind all our evil desires. He knows what we want, even in our vilest acts: He is longing to give it to us. He is not looking on from the outside at some new “taste” or “separate desire of our own.” Only because He has laid up real goods for us to desire are we able to go wrong by snatching at them in greedy, misdirected ways. The truth is that evil is not a real thing at all, like God. It is simply good spoiled. That is why I say there can be good without evil, but no evil without good. You know what the biologists mean by a parasite—an animal that lives on another animal. Evil is a parasite. It is there only because good is there for it to spoil and confuse.

Thus you may well feel that God understands our temptations—understands them a great deal more than we do. But don’t forget Macdonald again—“Only God understands evil and hates it.” Only the dog’s master knows how useless it is to try to get on with the lead knotted round the lamp-post. This is why we must be prepared to find God implacably and immovably forbidding what may seem to us very small and trivial things. But He knows whether they are really small and trivial. How small some of the things that doctors forbid would seem to an ignoramus.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II

Cheating

Our quarrels provide a very good example of the way in which the Christian and Jewish conceptions differ, while yet both should be kept in mind. As Christians we must of course repent of all the anger, malice, and self-will which allowed the discussion to become, on our side, a quarrel at all. But there is also the question on a far lower level: 'granted the quarrel (we'll go into that later) did you fight fair?' Or did we not quite unknowingly falsify the whole issue? Did we pretend to be angry about one thing when we knew, or could have known, that our anger had a different and much less presentable cause? Did we pretend to be 'hurt' in our sensitive and tender feelings (fine natures like ours are so vulnerable) when envy, ungratified vanity, or thwarted self-will was our real trouble? Such tactics often succeed. The other parties give in. They give in not because they don't know what is really wrong with us but because they have long known it only too well, and that sleeping dog can be roused, that skeleton brought out of its cupboard, only at the cost of imperilling their whole relationship with us. It needs surgery which they know we will never face. And so we win; by cheating. But the unfairness is very deeply felt. Indeed what is commonly called 'sensitiveness' is the most powerful engine of domestic tyranny, sometimes a lifelong tyranny. How we should deal with it in others I am not sure; but we should be merciless to its first appearances in ourselves.

C S Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, pages 18/19

Telling the truth

Let us be a society that refuses to give easy answers to the difficulty of reality. Let us be a society that does not fear questions to which we do not know the answer. Let us be a society that would listen to the challenge raised by [critical people]. In short, let us be a society whose members strive to tell one another the truth about the difficulties of reality. For I believe if we do so we may discover we have something to say in a world that no longer believes that anyone can speak the truth.

Stanley Hauerwas"Bearing Reality" in Approaching the End

No Government without Law

Psalm 119: 118. Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes 

There is a disposition to merge all the characteristics of the Divinity into one; and while with many of our most eminent writers, the exuberant goodness, the soft and yielding benignity, the mercy that overlooks and makes liberal allowance for the infirmities of human weakness, have been fondly and most abundantly dwelt upon— there has been what the French would call, if not a studied, at least an actually observed reticence, on the subject of his truth and purity and his hatred of moral evil. 

There can be no government without a law; and the question is little entertained— how are the violations of that law to be disposed of? Every law has its sanctions— the hopes of proffered reward on the one hand, the fears of threatened vengeance on the other. Is the vengeance to be threatened only, but never to be executed? Is guilt only to be dealt with by proclamations that go before, but never by punishments that are to follow?...Take away from jurisprudence its penalties, or, what were still worse, let the penalties only be denounced but never exacted; and we reduce the whole to an unsubstantial mockery. The fabric of moral government falls to pieces; and, instead of a great presiding authority in the universe, we have a subverted throne and a degraded Sovereign...If there is only to be the parade of a judicial economy, without any of its power or its performance; if the truth is only to be kept in the promises of reward, but as constantly to be receded from in the threats of vengeance; if the judge is thus to be lost in the overweening parent — there is positively nothing of a moral government over us but the name, we are not the subjects of God's authority; we are the fondlings of his regard. Under a system like this, the whole universe would drift, as it were, into a state of anarchy; and, in the uproar of this wild misrule, the King who sits on high would lose his hold on the creation that he had formed. — Thomas Chalmers.

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David.

Satan's lies

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David, on Psalm 119, verse 86. 

All thy commandments are faithful. David sets down here three points. The one is that God is true; and after that he adds a protestation of his good conduct and guidance, and of the malice of his adversaries: thirdly, he calls upon God in his afflictions. Now as concerning the first, he shows us that although Satan [intends] to shake us, and in the end utterly to carry us away, subtly and cunningly goes about to deceive us, we must, to the contrary, learn how to know his ambushes, and to keep us from out of them. So often then as we are grieved with adversity and affliction, where must we begin? See Satan how he pitches his nets and lays his ambushes to induce and persuade us to come into them, what saith he? Dost thou not see thyself forsaken of thy God? Where are the promises whereunto thou didst trust? Now here thou sees thyself to be a wretched, forlorn creature. So then thou right well sees that God hath deceived thee, and that the promises whereunto thou trusts appertain nothing at all unto thee. See here the subtlety of Satan. What is now to be done? We are to conclude with David and say, yet God is true and faithful. Let us, I say, keep in mind the truth of God as a shield to beat back whatsoever Satan is able to lay unto our charge. When he shall go about to cause us to deny our faith, when he shall lie about us to make us believe that God thinks no more of us, or else that it is in vain for us to trust unto his promises; let us know the clean contrary and believe that it is very plain and sound truth which God saith unto us. Although Satan casts at us never so many darts, although he have never so exceeding many devices against us, although now and then by violence, sometimes with subtlety and cunning, it seems in very deed to us that he should overcome us; nevertheless he shall never bring it to pass, for the truth of God shall be made sure and certain in our hearts. — John Calvin.

Both-And

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.

Brennan ManningThe Ragamuffin Gospel

Fluctuations

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David, on Psalm 119, verse 25.

One does not wonder at the fluctuations which occur in the feelings and experience of a child of God— at one time high on the mountain, near to God and communing with God, at another in the deep and dark valley. All, more or less, know these changes, and have their sorrowing as well as their rejoicing seasons. When we parted with David last, what was he telling us of his experience? that God's testimonies were his delight and his counsellors; but now what a different strain! all joy is darkened, and his soul cleaveth to the dust. And there must have been seasons of deep depression and despondency in the heart of David— given as a fugitive and wanderer from his home, hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, and holding, as he himself says, his life continually in his hands. Yet I think in this portion of the Psalm there is evidence of a deeper abasement and sorrow of heart than any mere worldly suffering could produce. 

He had indeed said, "I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul"; but, even in that moment of weak and murmuring faith, he knew that he was God's anointed one to sit on the throne of Israel. But, here there is indication of sin, of grievous sin which had laid his soul low in the dust; and I think the petition in Psalms 119:29 gives us some clue to what that sin had been: "Remove me from the way of lying." Had David— you may well ask in wonder— had David ever lied? had he ever deviated from the strait and honourable path of truth I am afraid we must own that he had at one time gone so near the confines of a falsehood, that he would be but a poor casuist and a worse moralist who should attempt to defend the Psalmist from the imputation. We cannot read the 27th chapter of the 1st of Samuel without owning into what a sad tissue of equivocation and deceit David was unhappily seduced. Well might his soul cleave to the dust as he reviewed that period of his career; and though grace did for him what it afterwards did for Peter, and he was plucked as a brand out of the burning, yet one can well imagine that like the Apostle afterwards, when he thought thereon he wept, and that bitterly. Barton Bouchier.

Plausibility structures

Clearly it is such a claim to universal judgement that is embodied in the often expressed idea that all claims to revealed truth must be judged by the canon of reason.  There are no canons of reason which are not part of a socially embodied tradition of rational debate.  It is especially important to say this because, as I said earlier, we who are Western Christians are also part of an international culture which uses the European languages as its medium of reasoning and which makes claims to universal validity – claims which are made more plausible by the success of this culture in establishing itself throughout the world as the standard of what is called ‘modernization.’  It is this way of understanding the world which provides the ‘plausibility strucutre’ for most of the educated and urbanized peoples of the world.  It we adhere to the Christian tradition we thus do so in conscious recognition of the fact that this is a personal decision.  In contrast to the long period in which the plausibility structure of European society was shaped by the biblical tradition, and in which one could be a Christian without conscious decision because the existence of God was among the self-evident truths, we are now in a situation where we have to take personal responsibility for our beliefs.  When we do so, we are immediately faced with the charge of subjectivity.  In a consumer society where the freedom of every citizen to express his or her personal preference is taken as fundamental to human happiness – whether this personal preference is in respect of washing powder or sexual behaviour – it will be natural to conclude that adherence to the Christian tradition is also simply an expression of personal preference.  The implication will be that claims to universal truth are abandoned and that we are back again in a relativistic twilight.  The only firmly established truth is the truth of the reigning plausibility structure, which is bound to deny the Christian’s claim that God has acted in historic events to reveal and effect his purpose for all humankind.

In some situations it is possible to escape from this problem by withdrawing into a ghetto where, in a small community, the Christian tradition can function as the plausibility structure which is not questioned.  There are places where that can happen, but they are few.  How then do we deal with the threat of this relativism of a consumer-oriented society?  In following the argument of [Alisdair] MacIntyre I have suggested the answer.  It is that one learns to live so fully within both traditions that the debate between them is internalized.  As a Christian I seek so to live within the biblical tradition, using its language as my language, its models as the models through which I make sense of experience, its story as the clue to my story, that I help to strengthen and carry forward this tradition of rationality.  But as a member of contemporary British society I am all the time living in, or at least sharing my life with, those who live in the other tradition.  What they call self-evident truths are not self-evident to me, and vice versa.  When they speak of reason they mean what is reasonable within their plausibility structure.  I do not live in that plausibility, but I know what it feels like to live in it.  Within my own mind there is a continuing dialogue between the two.  Insofar as my own participation in the Christian tradition is healthy and vigorous, both in thought and in practice, I shall be equipped for the external dialogue with the other tradition.  There is no external criterion above us both to which I and my opposite number can appeal for a decision. The immediate outcome is a matter of the comparative vigour and integrity of the two traditions; the ultimate outcome is at the end when the one who alone is judge sums up and gives the verdict. 

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, pgs 64/5, by Lesslie Newbigin. 

Turning a corner

Jesus exploded into the life of ancient Israel -- the life of the whole world, in fact -- not as a teacher of timeless truths, nor as a great moral example, but as one through whose life, death and resurrection God's rescue operation was put into effect, and the cosmos turned its great corner at last.

N.T. Wright
Simply Christian

Religion and Truth

Scott Peck wrote that, “there are two reasons people seek religion: to approach reality, and to escape reality.

Similarly, Sir Thomas More wrote: “God help me always to seek the truth; and protect me from those who have found it.”

Speaking truth in your heart

....this person speaks truth in his heart. A curious turn of phrase. It is not enough to speak truth with one’s mouth. Not only is there always the question of just what the truth is, and when it might be appropriate to withhold some part of it, but the more serious problem is that truth-telling can become crass or calculating when it loses its moorings in the character of the truth-teller. Hence the harder task of telling truth to oneself. Such honest is a prerequisite of integrity.

Mark Hamilton, discussing Psalm 24

Truth and justice

Because they spurn riches as ashes that are dead because of avarice, none of them has anything according to his own will. Whatever each has through the gift of God, let her possess with God. She says that nothing is hers by her own strength, but all is from God who gives all good things to the good. And what are these? Truth and justice, which interweave with all good things.

Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Life’s Merits

Truth

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Artur Schopenhauer [pictured as a young man]

The True Self

True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth.

- Parker Palmer, from his book, Let Your Life Speak

Rollo May

Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: [rather] it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment…”

Rollo May, in The Courage to Create