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The Danger Of Testing God

January 27, 2012 in C.S. Lewis, Faith, I'm Learning with 4 Comments

This may sound trivial or “duh” to you, but one of the things that I’ve been re-learning lately, much in part to the book A Praying Life by Paul Miller, is that God really is there on the other end of the line. He is active, engaged, listening…and this is the often forgotten part: responding. It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis says in Miracles:

“An ‘impersonal God’–well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads–better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap–best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband–that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall?…Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?”

Don’t you just love that image? Pulling at the other end…approaching at an infinite speed.

It seems very like God to remind us of this. Especially when we get lost in our rituals and habits, and you lose sight of the fact that there’s a real person on the other end of this relationship, and then He somehow taps on your shoulder or busts open your little bubble and you get that same jolt that you get during scary movies.

Maybe I’m just weird, but I hope some of you know what I’m talking about.

It is a crazy wonderful thing that God pursues. That He taps and whistles and pokes and yells, through a thousand different things to get our attention. Because we drift, forget, become numb and sleepy.

But the difficult thing about God being a real person happens to be the fact that, well, He’s a real person. Not a construct or a fetch-boy, but a real, wise and self-sufficient being. He can’t be pigeon-holed or bossed around. He can say “No” and not do things exactly like we want Him to. Just like other people.

If He was a robot, you could make Him yank the other end of the rope when you wanted Him to. (But you’ll be glad to hear that He’s not a robot.)

If you don’t believe me, do an experiment. Go up to a random stranger and instruct them to take off your smelly shoes and give you a ten-minute foot massage. See if they comply.

You’re back already? That didn’t take long…

So…that fact makes me really wary when I hear people talk about testing God. Specifically when people get really stressed, frustrated, or confused and they’re like “Okay, GOD–if you’re really out there then I need you to do _______ to prove to me that you’re really there.” It’s essentially drawing a box, giving God a time-frame, and then standing there to watch the box.

And I suppose that sometimes God goes along with it. I’ve heard stories.

But I’ve also heard stories of bitter and cynical people who believe God bailed on them because He didn’t show up in their box in their timeframe. Like a story I heard recently about a guy who was laid off from a ministry, and after praying and searching for a job for several years, he didn’t find one that he wanted. So he bailed on God and doesn’t want to talk about Him at all now, with anyone.

And that makes me cringe. Because if I’ve learned anything about God, it’s that He generally doesn’t fit into boxes.

So, please remember that the next time you are standing there, staring back and forth between your watch and a box in the sand, growing more bitter and jaded by the minute.

You just never know.

He may be doing jumping jacks behind you.

 

something other than God

August 19, 2009 in C.S. Lewis, Quotable with 0 Comments

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first–wanting to be the centre–wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race…What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’–could set up on their own as if they had created themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

no bargaining

April 14, 2009 in C.S. Lewis, Quotable with 0 Comments

For He claims all(of us), because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.

C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory

daily repentance

February 5, 2009 in C.S. Lewis, I'm Learning with 2 Comments

“I do not think any efforts of my own will can end once and for all this (sin)…  Only God can.  I have good faith and hope He will.  Of course, I don’t mean I can therefore, as they say, ‘sit back.’  What God does for us, He does in us.  The process of doing it will appear to me…to be the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night….  And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun again every day.”

C.S. Lewis, from “A Slip of the Tongue” (The Weight of Glory)

you have to lose in order to find

November 6, 2008 in C.S. Lewis, Luis, Quotable with 0 Comments

“When you find God, you find yourself. You find out who you really are.”

Luis said this to me tonight. He has been a Christian for 9 months or so and he is unknowingly quoting C.S. Lewis!

“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully….In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils….Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

take our living rooms back

September 12, 2008 in C.S. Lewis, Random, Venting Time with 2 Comments

People who live without TV–This article says that the average American watches 3 hours of television per day. That absolutely blows my mind. That means that the average person wastes 45.625 solid twenty-four hour days a year watching TV. That is terribly sad. Its no wonder so many Americans are depressed–a plastic box that lights up makes for a terrible friend. Come on America–don’t waste your life watching TV! Go outside more. Read a book. Go to coffee and have conversations with real people. Let’s take our living rooms back from shiny dictators and learn to spend time with people doing things that actually matter.

I’m so angry right now…if it weren’t for college football and Lost I would go throw my TV out in the street! I might do it anyway. I bet I could invite myself to someone’s house anytime Lost or a football game I want to watch comes on? But what about those noisy people who make you so mad during Lost? Oh my soul is torn!…

I know that TV can be a good escape at times, and a way to connect with others. But clearly it has gone way too far in our culture and we as Christians need to find creative ways to expose that and redeem it. Our enemy is crafty indeed in his schemes to pull us away from living Gospel-centered lives that resonate with significance. A very wise man once said that “murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.” Indeed, murder is also no better than TV, and it seems that for many it has done the trick.

Let’s lead the way for others to step off of satan’s gentle slope to nothing and reclaim our homes for Jesus-centered community.

the pride of comparison

August 15, 2008 in Books, C.S. Lewis, Heroes, Quotable with 1 Comment

“If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive–is competitive by its very nature–while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”

-C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

with every choice we turn

July 10, 2008 in Books, C.S. Lewis, Quotable with 1 Comment

“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

when he shakes his mane

June 7, 2008 in Books, C.S. Lewis, Quotable, The Gospel with 2 Comments

I finally got to see Prince Caspian tonight! I wish I could tell you how much I love these stories. I decided tonight that Aslan is absolutely my favorite character in any movie I’ve seen or story I’ve heard. When Aslan comes to the rescue I turn into a little child jumping out of my seat in wonder. For real, ask my friend Jay. Aslan’s roar terrifies me, grips me, and produces an inexpressibly profound hope all at the same time. What an amazing Christ-figure he is. I think it is so incredible how millions of people around the world are seeing the Gospel by reading and watching the Chronicles of Narnia.

Here are my favorite quotes from the movie:

Aslan: “Rise, Kings and Queens of Narnia….All of you.”(to Prince Caspian)

Prince Caspian: “I do not believe I am ready yet.”

Aslan: “That is precisely the reason why you are ready.”

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Lucy: “If I would have come to you sooner, would all of those people have died?”

Aslan: “We can never know what would have happened. But we do know what will happen.”

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Lucy: “When Aslan shakes his mane, we shall see spring again.”

clive staples

May 23, 2008 in C.S. Lewis, Quotable with 0 Comments

I’m fairly sure that C.S. Lewis is my favorite writer/theologian of all time. God has used his work to teach and shape me more than I even realize. Here is a great quote from him:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it careful round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell.”

Thanks to my friend Sean for sharing this with me.

I can’t wait to go see Prince Caspian. On a side note, if you’ve ever been frustrated trying to find the symbolism in the Narnia tales, I would encourage you to read this incredible article about the imagination of Lewis.