Greetings All,
I once jokingly told someone, "Every so often I need a good dose of C. S. Lewis to get me thinking." I offer these thoughts, taken from some of his books, for that purpose. 
Lazy minds drift into giving pat answers. Pat answers frequently seem
trite and can even
offend someone looking for answers with substantial content. Lewis
rarely gave them. He seems to have taken the scriptural command
seriously when it tells us: "Love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind..."
To neglect using all the powers of a sanctified intellect to earnestly
wrestle with the deep issues of our faith is to fail to love God as He
commands or as we should. Given that greatest of all commands,the
Christian faith, of all faiths, should never (biblically speaking) be
accused of being "anti-intellectual" or furthered by people who
"hide their heads in the sand."
In this regard, Lewis
(along with Ravi Zacharias, Os Guiness, Josh McDowell, Tim Keller and
many others) has been an invaluable resource. I offer these thoughts
not simply for you to read, but for you to ponder, interact with, and be
challenged by. Enjoy.
"The
infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did
not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. The value
of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God,
is zero. As St. Paul
writes, to have died for valuable men
would have been not divine, but merely heroic (Rom. 5:7); but God died
for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is
love." (The Weight of Glory, pg. 115).
Lewis
is right. Let us not put the locus of saving merit in us. To say that
each human soul is of infinite worth conveys the idea that we human
beings are indeed "worthy" and have such high value before God that in
some sense He owes us salvation. "I'm worth it," as the
commercial says. In some ways, we could even make the case that God
would be unjust not to save such infinitely valuable people.
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"God is not merely good, but goodness. Goodness is not merely divine, but God."
"There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it
looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and
mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac [sic] it will be
if it rebels. It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons,
but out of bad archangels." 
"The
more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe
that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be
bribed --
might grow tired of his vile sport -- might have a temporary fit of
mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. BUT suppose
[instead] that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are
wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more
inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yeilded to your entreaties, if
he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that
point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities
of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The
tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad
one. If there is a good God, then these tortues are necessary. For no
even modestly good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they
weren't."
(Christian Reflections, pg. 80 / The Great
Divorce, pg. 97 / A Grief Observed, pp. 49-50)
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"The
Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is "to glorify God and enjoy
Him forever." But we shall then know that these are one and the same
thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him,
God is inviting us to enjoy Him."
(Reflections on the Psalms, pg. 96-97)
Are
you "glorifying" Him? Often it comes through more in your everyday
attitudes than any specific actions. We can pray and study the Bible
and do many religious or spiritual things
without enjoying or delighting in God. The question is, do we delight
in the God we pray to, or enjoy the God we serve? Do others view us as
someone who does them because we should, or someone who enjoys the God
we do them for?
John Piper, picking up on this last thought from C. S. Lewis, made these two statements to be his guiding truths for life: "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever," and "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." The questions we must honestly ask are: Do we find our greatest delight and enjoyment in God, and are we supremely content and satisfied in Him?
With the desire for His blessings upon
your week,
Pastor Jeff
