surprised by joy

a few weeks ago i promised a post on my reflections from reading c.s. lewis' biography, "surprised by joy." here it is.

several things struck me, in varying significance.
1) his definition of joy i found intriguing: "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." it made me wonder how often i have tasted something, how often i have caught merely a glimpse of something so grand that i enjoy even the longing for that thing more than any other pleasure. i think i have on occasion. reading "wild at heart" by john eldrege created such a longing in me. occasionally in conversations with people a similar longing has risen. it challenged me to ask myself how often i long after God? rarely, to be honest.

2) the second idea has to do with absolute idealism. consider these lines: "the Absolute...contained the reconciliation of all contraries, the transcendence of all finitude, the hidden glory which was the only perfectly real thing there is." "it is more important that Heaven should exist than that any of us should reach it." "God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself... If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is , 'I am.' ...God is such that if (per impossibile) his power could vanish and His other attributes remain, so that the supreme right were forever robbed of the supreme might, we should still owe Him precisely the same kind and degree of allegiance as we now do."

for me this idea has stuck in my head. God deserves worship simply because he is. other reasons may drive me to worship, but even if God did nothing for me, he is still worthy of my worship. i do not know how to do this. some call it adoration, giving God praise and worship because he is worthy of it. this is beyond my comprehension at this point. i understand the concept, but i do not know how to do it. it makes my brain all fuzzy to think about it.

3) the third concept is more that of an experience of c.s. lewis' that i am finding myself relating to. once again, his own words: "You must picture me alone in that room at 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."

for lewis, this marked his conversion from atheism to theism. for me, the past few months have been as near as i have ever come to a living hell. for the first time in my life i wanted to run from church, from the christian faith. i did not want to be a christian. i was not sure that i even wanted to follow God, let alone attempt to lead others to do so. out of this experience i have discovered that i cannot run. i cannot be anything but a christ follower. to do anything less would make me the most miserable man imaginable. i cannot be anything but what i am - a Christ follower and a pastor. it is who i am, and i can be nothing else. i often wish i could, more than ever before in the past few months, but i cannot. to attempt such would pit me against myself in a way that would destroy me. i cannot believe there is no God - it is impossible for me to conceive of. i cannot believe any other religion but that of christianity, even with it's faults and failings. it is the only one that seems true to me.

thus i am left with a choice: misery or discipleship. i choose life.

a question: what is it to love God? at this point in my life, i do not feel love for God. i follow Christ not because of love, but because (as lewis discovered) i can do nothing else. and for now it is enough. God by his grace can use even me: perhaps, this night, the most dejected and reluctant pastor in ontario.


there were a few other thoughts from "surprised by joy" that i enjoyed, but this is all i have to say tonight.