Thanks. This is a difficult quote. I think that, as Macdonald said it was better to not believe in God than to believe in an evil one. My suspicion is that he would agree with Lewis’ idea in “The Last Battle,” that whatever one does with godly intent, is what God accepts–so that we worship the true God in life, even without knowing it.
Self, accepted as the law of self, is the one demon-enemy of life; God is the only Saviour from it, and from all that is not God, for God is life, and all that is not God is death. Life is the destruction of death, of all that kills, of all that is of death’s kind.
Thanks for including more of MacDonald’s sermon from around that quote. I often do too, but this morning just thought I would let Lewis’ sharp focus on just that one phrase prevail. So I put it in almost as Lewis had it (other than that he made it a complete thought all of its own by making it its own complete sentence: “All that is not God is death”, whereas I put in the ellipses to stay truer to the original sermon text.
It could be read with an attitude of restriction, as in: Most of the world is all about death then, since only some sacred remnant (‘precious jewell hidden in field’ motif) is sufficiently religious for us to think: “Now that’s of God”. Or (and this is the way I think I prefer) it could be taken as a liberating recognition that anything we see in God’s creation that is worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8 motif) - that all of such things are about Life and about God whether they are cloaked in pious language or not. I think Lewis nicely showcases this revelry in God’s lavishly prolific goodness - and his character Emmett from the Last Battle, as you noted, is a good example.
Thanks, Mervin. I really enjoy MacDonald, and this is an example of how he shows a joyful approximation to God in opposition to what is not Him. It’s a balm to my soul, too.
His [Job’s] friends, good men, religious men, but of the pharisaic type–that is, men who would pay their court to God, instead of coming into his presence as children; men with traditional theories which have served their poor turn, satisfied their feeble intellectual demands, they think others therefore must accept or perish; men anxious to appease God rather than trust in him; men who would rather receive salvation from God, than God their salvation…
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Voice of Job. (148-154 will be from this sermon)
In short, men more concerned with their own dignity possessed by a strong sense of entitlement for whom religion is just another box to tic but peripheral to their self love. The kind who would embrace with pleasure the opportunity to tell me how my failure to conform to the dictates of their sensibilities doom me to a fate much worse than the cold hearts with which they endure the world and their neighbors. A nice distraction from the hell they have fashioned for themselves.
Pretty much … though I think MacDonald is perhaps being more charitable than even the biblical narrator was with Job’s friends. It probably isn’t entirely fair to think they had malicious intent toward Job. And remember that even from among the Pharisees there were those who eventually did take the challenge and finally look in the mirror.
That’s why some of these hidden matters can only be determined by a judge who sees the heart, which you somehow agree exists, but cannot explain how it exists apart from ‘us’.
As the Apostle Paul would say, my conscience is clear, but that in no way acquits me. 1 Corinthians 4:4.
As I think has come up from these sorts of authors here before, anything that fits inside yours or my ‘god-box’ could not possibly be God. God will always be bigger than any box we build, no matter what heights your intellectual cathedral purports to reach.
Thanks for the reference! I’ll confess Bob Dylan was never my thing growing up – not that I ever really tried him or had him recommended to me. My great loss - I know. But I think I can taste just a bit here how people found his lyrics profound and powerful. I’m guessing that this particular song came out of his “Jesus period”.
