Today's Travels

In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advises his nephew, demon Wormwood, to keep the following in mind about the moral backsliding of his human prey: “He must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.”

I’ve told my students that with every choice they make with their time finds them either borrowing or investing. They borrow from their future every time they spend time in something with little real reward, with something that is a mere distraction from what they must do or what they want to do. I don’t think they really want to hang out on social media for hours on end. I don’t think they really want to get sucked into video games for hours, night after night after night. Those mind-numbing, low cost-low reward, time-killing activities borrow from their futures.

They invest every time their actions improve their future. Reading, for instance. Taking difficult steps towards whatever goals they might have, regardless of who may be watching, who may be impressed, or what their level of comfort happens to be at that particular time. Building relationships and memories.

This quote speaks to that, as well as to every choice we make. We are headed in one direction or the other - closer towards God, or closer towards attempting to fulfill what only God can fulfill with something else. I read a great article the other day addressing the great moral slides of leaders, both in the church and outside of it. Those falls from grace were not immediate, one time “mistakes”; they were, instead, a series of tiny decisions that led to a long-term slide. As a result, these leaders found themselves one day in the midst of scandal, unable to recognize who they had become or who they once were.

This is true in our behaviors and our thinking, in our relationships and in our personal goals. Today we will either invest in our priorities or borrow against them in the future. How we spend our time will draw us nearer to joy and fulfillment, or nearer to accepting much less. None of us will wake up one day, all of a sudden, exactly where we want to be or a million miles away from it. Instead, one day at a time, we’ll slowly travel in one direction or the other.

The old hymn begs, “Nearer my God, to thee.” I can either wish for it, or take responsibility for where my daily actions take me.

Who is This?

Floundering to find time to write as the basketball season begins, I've come to realize that I've got several posts ready-made from some of my responses to the online C.S. Lewis course I'm leading. If you're in the course - sorry for the repeat material. I just need to get something out there. Here goes. . .

A passage from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:

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.

I like to believe that each year I get closer and closer to truth regarding God and faith. In my mid 20's I probably believed that I had it all figured out and that my growth was done, that the only thing left for me was to share all that I knew with those who hadn't attained the same level of enlightenment. A little more mature now (though perhaps, a very little), I just hope to get to more truth; and I understand much of my journey on this earth is that journey for truth about God and faith. That journey will never end.

Having said that, this quote is a pretty good picture of what I've come to understand in the past year or two. Christ is not the means to an end; He is the end to which we all strive. It sounds catchy and trite and simplistic, but I don't think many people get this. Most days I don't. Ultimately what this is saying is that Christ doesn't exist to make our lives better, we exist to find Him. He is the goal. If we're using faith to live a more successful life or have more successful relationships or to be a better person, we've got it all wrong. God doesn't exist to make us better: He exists so that we might know Him, desire Him, and delight in Him. He is what we aspire to.

I think the purpose of all Bible reading can be answered in a brief phrase found in Mark 4:41 (and in many other places). After the wind and waves obey Christ's admonitions, the disciples turn to each other and ask, "Who is this?" And this is what we must ask with each passage of Scripture and with books like this one: who is this? We shouldn't read the Bible focusing on finding ways to fix our lives; we should focus on finding ways to fix our attention on who God is. We shouldn't look to Jesus to find help with our problems; we should look to Jesus to find Jesus, the All in All.

When we find Him, we get all the rest thrown in. At least the stuff that really matters. We will become better, we will have better relationships, and we will have more success in our ventures. Get God, and you get the rest. Go after God as a way of getting the rest, and the God that you'll have will be a watered-down, Santa Claus deity, seeking to keep a whiny child happy. And there is no joy there.

Faker, Faker, Faker

Phony. 

Poser. 

Scam artist. 

Fraud. 

Imposter. 

Deceiver.

Listen to those labels. None are good. In our culture we demand that others are genuine (aside from our presidential candidates, apparently). Few are - lying has become an art form of sorts; however, get caught being less than yourself, and you risk being branded like this, with little way to repair the reputation.

I used to be in this boat, demanding accuracy in all my statements as well as those of others, refusing to pretend. I wanted to "get real" and "just be myself." I think I was wrong.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis encourages Christians to fake it sometimes. The goal, however, isn't to fool others; it's to fool yourself into becoming exactly what you're pretending to be. Writes Lewis, "Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already." Getting more specific: "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."

What I'm beginning to realize is that it isn't just sometimes that we ought to "fake it"; most of us would be better off if we faked it all the time. We are far less than we should be. If I behave as genuinely impatient and self-centered as I actually am, I couldn't function with others. My nature, my natural, fallen condition means that in my heart, daily, I'm out to get mine. I want to know what's in it for me. 

I can begin every day revealing how tired, grumpy, and irritated I really am, or I can decide to at least appear as if I'm loving and excited to be doing what I'm doing. When I remember to pretend, usually I become loving and excited. 

Some days you've just got to fake it, especially those days you don't feel like being good. So go be an imposter. Pretend to be disciplined. Pretend to be patient with your spouse and kids. Pretend to be dedicated to your job, whether you like it or not. Pretend that today, whether it's a Tuesday morning or Sunday afternoon, is going to be a good day. You might just end the day genuine after all.

But I Don't Feel Like It

As evidenced by my last post, I don't feel like going to work on Tuesday mornings. I don't even feel like getting out of bed. I don't feel tolerant, happy, friendly, or at peace. The only thing I feel like, frankly, is bitchy.

That's understandable, as Tuesday mornings are, by definition, the bane of my professional existence. However, there are plenty of really good things in my life that I often don't feel like. I love to write but often don't feel like writing. I love God but don't feel like praying or reading the Bible at times. I love my children but don't feel like reading to them, I love cleanliness but don't feel like cleaning, and I love basketball but don't feel like watching game tape. Mark Twain wrote once that classic books are "something everybody wants to have read but hasn't." That sounds like most of the virtues I seek in my life.

What we want and what we feel like is often at odds. It is rare for us to feel like doing something when it is that something that we most desperately need. I always feel like becoming a more disciplined eater after a huge meal, a couple of candy bars, and a tightening belt. When 10 pm comes around, I'm winding down for the evening, and the bag of Doritos is calling, what I feel like is significantly different. What I feel like I often can't have, and what I most need I rarely desire at the essential time.

C.S Lewis calls this "undulation," or a series of troughs and peaks. He uses this term regarding faith, which is of much greater consequence than Tuesday mornings, dieting, and exercise. And he's right. To rely on "feeling" to feed faith, one has a vision of God that metaphorically operates on a dimmer switch run by a two year old. And this is why when we feel least like praying, it is all the more essential. I used to reason with myself that I shouldn't make God into a chore - if I didn't feel like Bible reading or prayer, then I shouldn't fake my way through it. If God loves a cheerful giver, then surely he only has times for a cheerful pray-er as well. But it's amazing how little I pray when I leave it up to feeling.

God is infectious - the more of Him we have, the more we desire. But more so than infectious, God is unchanging. My mood is not.

Whether it's God, exercise, loving your spouse, or being friendly during the most unfriendly of professional obligations, don't wait until you feel like it. Do what you ought, and then see how you feel.