Monthly Archives: February 2012

Lewis on the role of husbands

Posted by on February 29, 2012 1 comment

The Business of Heaven

Referring to Ephesians 5:25-33, Lewis observes the following:

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church—read on -and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is—in her own mere nature—least lovable.

All at once he follows her…

Posted by on February 27, 2012 Comments Off

In a recent Bible reading I took some notes on Proverbs 7:22.  Proverbs 7 is a warning against adultery and provides us with many insights into both the adulteress (who is portrayed as seeking the man) and the man who falls for her wiles.

22 All at once he follows her,

as an ox goes to the slaughter,

or as a stag is caught fast

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If there is a God…

Posted by on February 24, 2012 Comments Off

Mere Christianity

Another quote from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis:

What can you ever really know of other people’s souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call ‘nature’ or ‘the real world’ fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?(pp. 216-217).

I look forward to the “anaesthetic fog” lifting.

Lewis on the atheist’s straw man

Posted by on February 22, 2012 2 comments

C. S. Lewis

In Mere Christianity, Lewis warns about over simplifying Christianity (something some people who call themselves Christians sometimes do) and the straw man that Atheists often build from this.

Very well then, atheism is too simple. And I will tell you another view that is also too simple. It is the view I call Christianity-and-water, the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right—leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption. Both these are boys’ philosophies.

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The flesh won’t sit still

Posted by on February 20, 2012 Comments Off

If only the flesh would sit still so that we can slay it!  In The enemy within, Kris Lungaard reminds us that it will fight all the way.  He likens it to a wounded badger that will scratch and claw at us.  He gives three specific ways that the flesh will fight back along with a provocative response to it.

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Quotes from the Screwtape letters

Posted by on February 17, 2012 Comments Off

The Screwtape Letters

There are some great quotes in the Screwtape letters.   I posted a few on Wednesday, but I wanted to share one more.

The Screwtape letters are a series of letters written by a senior demon to a junior demon penned by Lewis and released in 1941.  The senior demon is mentoring his young apprentice in the finer points of directing men to hell (and away from the “Light”).  We see the subtlety of demonic thinking in his book, but we also see that Lewis was very aware of where certain thinking would end up going.

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Screwtape and the flesh

Posted by on February 15, 2012 2 comments

While reading C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape letters” in chapter 12, I came across the advice of the demon Screwtape about repentance and sin for the believer:

And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately.

The distinction Screwtape is making here is critical. Read more »

The enemy within

Posted by on February 13, 2012 Comments Off

Kris Lungaard spent some time reading John Owens work on the mortification of sin and shrunk it down into a book that all believers should read, The Enemy Within. This is a great book. In it he focuses on how the mind, affections and the will are all involved in sin.

“Each of the faculties of your soul has duties before God.  The mind is the sentinel, commanded to watch carefully over the soul by questioning, assessing, and making judgments: ‘Will this please God?’ ‘Is this according to God’s Word?’ If the mind determines that an action is right the affections should then fall in line and desire, long for, and cling to that which the mind said was good.  Last, the will puts the soul into action, carrying out what the mind said was good and the affections hungered for.” (p56)

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Create Your own Drag and Drop File Sharing Service

Posted by on February 10, 2012 Comments Off

upload.png

I found this tip from LifeHacker useful.

My web host gives me unlimited storage, and all the other drag and drop file sharing services have some limitations (size of file uploaded, total space available, etc), so this gives me a great way to get value from my hosting provider with very little effort.

But then I figured I’d add my own URL shortener.  To do that, I ended up installing dropzone, then modifying one of their many user contributed extensions to upload and then shorten the url using my own yourls URL shortener.  So, now I can drop a file on it, it will upload it to my server and then copy the short URL into the clipboard so I can paste it into an email or whatever. Fun.

It’s always satisfying to get these sorts of hacks up and running.  Right!, back to writing C. S. Lewis book reviews…

How to Roll Your Own Awesome Drag-and-Drop File Sharing Service

Out of the Silent Planet

Posted by on February 8, 2012 Comments Off

Out of the Silent Planet

C. S. Lewis’ 1938 Sci-Fi novel Out of the Silent Planet chronicles the voyage of three men, two of whom are partnering for their own reasons and a lone philologist on a walking tour who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and won’t be missed if he disappears. Weston and Devine drug Ransom (the philologist) and take him to the planet of Malacandra (which turns out to be Mars). Weston and Devine have been there before, and were asked them to bring back another person with them as (they believe) a sacrificial offering.  Their belief that the Malacandrians are unsophisticated savages and that humanity represents the most highly advanced civilization in existence makes them willing to sacrifice Ransom for the greater benefit to come from Malacandra.

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