Austin Hall Library

Come Be My Light

Alice Thomas Ellis said: "Highly coloured sentimentality is a more comforting response to death than acceptance of the stark facts and it was easier to mourn the demise of the Princess of Wales than contemplate the life of Mother Teresa, which might have caused us to examine our consciences."

If, however, one is in the mood to examine one's conscience, I recommend Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, which consists primarily of correspondence between Mother Teresa and her confessors over a sixty-six year period. The correspondence was preserved against her wishes and chronicles her candid "dark night of the soul"--her lengthy and agonizing doubts about God's presence and favor. It may not be comforting, but it is a stark fact that great saints, like some of us, have struggled with their faith. Curiously, however, we mourn the death of the Princess of Wales because she is seen as "one of us," and we recoil from contemplating the life of Mother Teresa because she is beyond our comprehension, or perhaps, her life in the midst of poverty, suffering, and doubts, causes us to examine our own consciences. Here is the way Mother Teresa closed one of her letters to a priest who served as her confessor: "I pray for you that you let Jesus use you without consulting you. Do the same for me." 

C.S. Lewis and Faith

I awoke to thoughts on the writings of C.S. Lewis--for no apparent reason. His Abolition of Man had a significant impact on my thought. It is the book I most often recommend by Lewis. The series of short lectures do not make up a work of academic philosophy, but they do accurately describe the loss of any objective transcendent moral standards in modern man, substituted for the most part by mere statements of subjective feeling. Contrary to the opinions of some, the book is not an apologetic for Christianity. Rather, it is a subtle and popular treatment of principles engraved upon the hearts of all men, whether outwardly "religious" or not.

As for Lewis's faith, he said he came to believe Christianity was true by the   usual combination of authority, reason, and experience. He indicated that he decided to accept the authority of many wise people in different times and places who taught the reality of the spiritual world. And, his reason eventually convinced him that it was more far-fetched to cling to his materialism than to believe in a spiritual reality. He believed feelings alone were totally inadequate reasons to accept or reject anything as true. The practical purpose of faith, according to Lewis, is to retain our hold upon the truth that seems irresistible and obvious during times of special grace, but which seems more or less unclear at ordinary times (Kathryn Lindskoog's observation about Lewis).

On the Locus of Hell

By the way, I happen to love Washington, D.C. (see this post). I find it compulsively stimulating and exciting. "Hell", as I use the term in my previous post is, after all, not a location, and it is not transparently grotesque or unattractive. On the contrary, at some level it presents itself to our senses as charming, attractive, even alluring. It is not at all the failure to get what one loves. It is getting what one loves only to discover too late that one has loved the wrong thing.

What Happened to Advent?

Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, has a short piece in the most recent issue of that journal on the secularization of Advent. It is well worth reading. Here is the introductory paragraph:

"Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale. Every secularized holiday, of course, tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year's has drunk up Epiphany."

We entered yesterday all over the world the four-week period of preparation and hope that begins the liturgical year. This special season, along with Lent, is important to counteract the numbness brought about by the sedatives of modern life.

Is CNN Really Getting Religion?

I am much less fascinated with CNN's recent multi-million dollar primetime series God's Warriors than I am the gushing interpretation of it by some evangelical Christians and the rush by certain of them to be interviewed as part of the series. It seems to be the "talk of the town," so to speak. Which, in my opinion, would be somewhat warranted if the interpretations of the series I keep hearing were sound. But, they aren't.

CNN, and its chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, did not devote millions of dollars and eight months of full-time travel and filming to achieve better understanding and present an objective view of the world's great religions (although they may have seen their mission in that way). They did so because they believe they see a connection--a philosophical and theological one--between the three religions featured, and they want to expose that connection to public view. The popular concept of that connection is "radicalism" or "fundamentalism" (thus the emphasis on violence and the stretch to imply that abortion violence by Christians was on a similar scale with violence by Muslim extremists). The philosophical connection comes from nominalism, and the theological connection comes from voluntarism. I previously made reference to this here and here.

Some postmodern men and women believe they see religion for what it really is: a radical and dangerous threat to public safety and civil order. Or, they believe that a particular form of religion (fundamentalism) poses that threat. And, unfortunately, some well-intended Christian people may be reinforcing these beliefs by failing to understand the weak philosophical underpinnings of some of their own views, while at the same time clamoring for an opportunity in primetime to show it.

The Impact of Religion in the West

Robert Royal's latest book, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is a very interesting read. Against those who decry the negative impact of religion and minimize its influence, Royal asserts that Christianity essentially created the Western mind. He further contends that religion has cultivated the growth of the individual and of Western civilization itself. He concludes that modern democracies are founded upon the Christian view of the dignity of the human person and the necessity of free institutions.

Royal is a very careful thinker and writer, a Fulbright scholar, and the president of Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His book deserves a serious reading particularly by those who discount the value of Christian faith and/or predict the demise of religion. 

Detachment

I am of the opinion that no decent library ought to be without a Bible, and no one can be truly educated who is not familiar with its contents, but I am not often awakened in the middle of the night with a story from the Bible on my mind. Perhaps I ought to be, but I am not.

Morning came even earlier than normal today when I awoke with a start and a distinct passage from the New Testament on my mind. It was a passage from Matthew's Gospel and nothing of the last several days prompted my recollection of that passage. But, it was there, and I was awake, so I got up, secured a copy of the New Testament, and began to turn my way through its pages.

I found the passage in Matthew 19:16-30--the story of the rich young man who makes his way to Jesus and asks an important question. If one reads closely Jesus' reply, and reflects carefully on the words, there is a depth in his answer not obvious at first. In short, the rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to secure everlasting life, and Jesus answers that he must keep the Commandments. The young man assures Jesus that he has done so from his youth and, somewhat surprisingly, Jesus does not challenge that assertion. He seems to take the young man at his word. Taking the truth of the young man's assertion for granted, Jesus proceeds to tell him that in order to achieve his goal, he must sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Him. In perhaps the pivotal sentence of the passage, the New Testament records that, at Jesus' declaration, the young man "went away sad, for he had great possessions."

I am recording this in a blog entry this morning I suppose because it is fresh on my mind, and because of the impression that New Testament exchange left on my mind. It occurred to me that the point of the story was not that the young man was not good enough to acquire everlasting life, but that he was not free enough. His possessions did not keep him from being "good"; they kept him from being "free."