"Learning in Wartime" vs. EGW Ch. 5

Vocation is for adults. whether or not it should be or not, it is. Grade school students have no idea what vocation is, High school students begin thinking about vocation (knowingly or not), college students search for and pursue vocation, and adults either have found vocation, or have not. I think i like what Lewis says in Learning in Wartime better than what Plantinga says. So much of life is completely pointless, and when viewed properly, all of life is pointless. Nothing is ever normal, and it never should be. In Lewis' view, humanity is pretty pessimistic. Without vocation and without God, life isn't worth living, normal or not.

At the end of the discussion, aren't we all called as Christians to be first and foremost bearers of God's image and sharers of his Love? This is our vocation. it doesn't matter where we learn, it doesn't matter how mixed up our environments are, it doesn't matter where we live, just as long as we're sharing God's love and bearing his image in the best way we know how. This is our vocation.

Screwtape Letters II

It was very easy for me to see and understand the 'human undulation' on the day we read about it for a few reasons. I've noticed that pattern in my life and in the life of others, and it seems universal. I myself was somewhere on the bottom slope of an undulation at the time, and so I could identify well. "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." Being in a trough (a shallow one, but a trough none-the-less), it is easier to understand what Lewis means by this quote. I may feel like God is not so near as he was before, but that isn't the point. the point is that he wants me to make the effort to walk with him, so that he knows that i want to. To use another metaphor, if we were riding a tandem bicycle, then when both riders pedal, the going is pretty easy. but if one person stops pedaling, the other has to work harder. If God stops pedaling, he's still on the bike, he just wants to know that we still want to ride with him, and are willing to work for it.

EGW ch. 1

"Oh Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
Father in Heaven, I pray with all my heart that my heart would rest in you. The pressures of the ordinary have been a distraction for long enough, and my heart aches again for you. motivate me to seek after you instead of "real life." We were made for You, not You for us.

Screwtape Letters 1

"By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences."
I find that when i spend time playing video games instead of studying, or when I browse the internet instead of read my Bible, that i become much less happy. I can function well, but my head isn't clear, and i lose motivation. The days that i spend time thinking and studying-- it doesn't matter what-- i feel much better about myself, and it becomes easier to read my Bible consistently and pray more often. It actually saddens me to see so many people stuck in this rut of irrelevant, unimpassioned living. I wonder if they know what they're missing out on. The beach is hundreds of times better than the sandbox (i would have said infinitely, but this is only a metaphor, and this metaphor doesn't extend quite that far).

Show-and-tell assignment

One of my favorite things about Narnia is Aslan. But not just Aslan because he's a lion and he's really cool, but the way Lewis uses him as a metaphor. It's cool that Aslan = God, but whats cooler is the way Lewis makes that evident in dialogue as well as action. Recently i re-read all seven of the books, and in just about every book, there is a conversation similar to this one:
"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right - somehow? But how? Please Aslan! Am i not to know?" "To know what would have happened, child? said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."
I continue to remember these conversations after finishing the books, and i think about what Aslan said. It's really a different perspective, knowing that what would have happened isn't important.

We Have No Right to Happiness

Where does Lewis say, except in the title, that we have no right to happiness? In his example, the man divorced his wife in order to be happier. This, as Lewis displays, is an awful thing to do, because it is selfish, and in the end, it will be the downfall of our race. But does the man really achieve happiness at all? Perhaps he has a right to happiness. Perhaps he has no right to divorce his wife in order to take another, but Perhaps he has a right to happiness. I say this because I do not think Mr. A will be any happier with his new wife than he was with his old wife. he may experience ecstasy, and it may last for several years, but will he really be happy? If Mr. A is really in love with Mrs. B, then maybe he'll be happy for the rest of his life. But then why wasn't he happy with Mrs. A? I suppose because he wasn't in love with her. But then why did he marry her? The fact is, we live in a fallen world. Just like the boy playing in the mud, we usually can't see the greater good that is being offered to us. Mr. A moved from the muddy sandbox onto the slimy swing perhaps, which made him happy, but perhaps he would have been far happier if he had waited in the muddy sandbox for his father to take him to the shore even after he had lost all interest in the mud.

Our English Syllabus

"The student is, or ought to be, a young man who is already beginning to follow learning for its own sake..."
When my Dad's father attended Calvin Seminary, i believe he was the first in his family. his wife was the only child in her family to graduate high school. My mom's father graduated from 8th grade, and his wife may have attended high school. One generation ago, my mother and father and all their siblings attended college, and were very blessed to do so. In this generation, my siblings and I are all attending college and quite enjoying the learning. This is not the case with many peers, nor is it the case with a large collection of students throughout the nation. C.S. Lewis regrets that higher education has become 'final education', and describes how education is a life-long pursuit. Today, many students don't appreciate the taste of the life-long learning that 4 years offer, because higher education has become 'normal'.
On a different note, i'm not sure C.S. Lewis is entirely correct. Higher education nowadays is primarily meant to teach students how to learn, and secondarily to help students explore, and thirdly to give students occupations. Higher education has changed, as Lewis described, but it has changed again since Lewis' day, and i think what it has become is in many ways exactly what today's world needs.

Weight of Glory

I am especially fond of Lewis' analogy of Greek poetry. To study greek for the purpose of enjoying Greek poetry would be silly, and probably impossible. One must study a language for several years before being truly able to enjoy its poetry. To aim for this enjoyment without having any experience with the language seems rather impossible. When the goal is so far away, one has no motivation to work towards it.
Near the end, when Lewis finally reaches the namesake sentence of his essay, one can easily understand exactly what he means when he says 'weight of glory'. such a standard is impossible without God's grace. But even so, i find myself attracted to the challenge. To devote everything to attaining glory in the afterlife (Heaven) seems like such a great adventure, who would ever want to pass it up? One who can't see beyond the muddy sandbox.

Bulverism

Lewis' essay on Bulverism is not actually about Bulverism at all; Bulverism is just a digression he continually returns to. Lewis is really talking about the way differing worldviews are discoursed. He points out how many times reasonable arguments are in fact not reasonable, and how other arguments are not actually relevant. Then he mentions that many times the arguments are made personal (though quite irrational and irrelevant) by a technique he calls Bulverism. Once this is stated, he goes back to arguing for rationale and logic in discussing big issues. Bulverism is a distraction from discourse, and it is a negative one. In the case of this essay, I think Bulverism is also a distraction from what he's actually getting at, though perhaps this distraction is more important than the actual topic of discussion.