MacDonald (as selected by Lewis)

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(235) The Art of Being Created

…I will try to wake them. To those who are awake, I cry, 'For the sake of your father and the first-born among many brethren to whom we belong, for the sake of those he has given us to love the most dearly, let patience have her perfect work. Statue under the chisel of the sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel, let the fingers of the divine potter model you at their will. Obey the Father’s lightest word; hear the Brother who knows you, and died for you; beat down your sin, and trample it to death.

As found in the unspoken sermon: “Righteousness ”

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Statue under the chisel of the sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet.

This correlates well, ‘coincidentally’ :

“Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work.” Psalm 92:4

Do you believe that your sins are forgiven, and that Christ has made a full atonement for them? Then what a joyful Christian you ought to be! How you should live above the common trials and troubles of the world! Since sin is forgiven, can it matter what happens to you now? Luther said, “Smite, Lord, smite, for my sin is forgiven; if thou hast but forgiven me, smite as hard as thou wilt;” and in a similar spirit you may say, “Send sickness, poverty, losses, crosses, persecution, what thou wilt, thou hast forgiven me, and my soul is glad.”

C.H. Spurgeon

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(236) When We Do Not Find Him

…beat down your sin, and trample it to death.

Brother, when thou sittest at home in thy house, which is the temple of the Lord, open all thy windows to breathe the air of his approach; set the watcher on thy turret, that he may listen out into the dark for the sound of his coming, and thy hand be on the latch to open the door at his first knock. Shouldst thou open the door and not see him, do not say he did not knock, but understand that he is there, and wants thee to go out to him. It may be he has something for thee to do for him. Go and do it, and perhaps thou wilt return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.

As found in the unspoken sermon: “Righteousness ”

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(237) Prayer

…perhaps thou wilt return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.

Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to him. To wait till thou go to church, or to thy closet, is to make him wait. He will listen as thou walkest in the lane or the crowded street, on the common or in the place of shining concourse.

Remember, if indeed thou art able to know it, that not in any church is the service done that he requires. He will say to no man, ‘You never went to church: depart from me; I do not know you;’ but, ‘Inasmuch as you never helped one of my father’s children, you have done nothing for me.’ Church or chapel is not the place for divine service. It is a place of prayer, a place of praise, a place to feed upon good things, a place to learn of God, as what place is not? It is a place to look in the eyes of your neighbour, and love God along with him. But the world in which you move, the place of your living and loving and labour, not the church you go to on your holiday, is the place of divine service. Serve your neighbour, and you serve him.

As found in the unspoken sermon: “Righteousness ”

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

But the world in which you move, the place of your living and loving and labour, not the church you go to on your holiday, is the place of divine service. Serve your neighbour, and you serve him.
[emphases added]

This!
                                         

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(238) On One’s Critics

…Serve your neighbour, and you serve him.

Do not heed much if men mock you and speak lies of you, or in goodwill defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs upon you. Only take heed that you turn not from them. Take courage in the fact that there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

And so concludes MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Righteousness ”

[Kendel]

I’ll listen through one more time today. There is a lot of good stuff in this sermon.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(239) Free Will (starting at the very beginning of the next sermon)

For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.–MATTHEW x. 26; Luke xii. 2.

God is not a God that hides, but a God that reveals. His whole work in relation to the creatures he has made–and where else can lie his work?–is revelation–the giving them truth, the showing of himself to them, that they may know him, and come nearer and nearer to him, and so he have his children more and more of companions to him. That we are in the dark about anything is never because he hides it, but because we are not yet such that he is able to reveal that thing to us.

That God could not do the thing at once which he takes time to do, we may surely say without irreverence. His will cannot finally be thwarted; where it is thwarted for a time, the very thwarting subserves the working out of a higher part of his will. He gave man the power to thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have been possible to him. God sacrifices his will to man that man may become such as himself, and give all to the truth; he makes man able to do wrong, that he may choose and love righteousness.

From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Final Unmasking” (239 - 249)

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

He gave man the power to thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have been possible to him.

Oh, Merv! You’ve done it now! It will be interesting to see how many new calves are born during the course of readings from this sermon.

As one who has a fairly loose and non-philosophical concept of “Free Will,” I am always puzzled at the heated arguments that revolve around it with all the “If-Thens.” I like how MacDonald is starting out here, considering that God actually sets his will aside for the the sake of our development. That God sees no need to force us, although he could.

This is consistent with MacDonald’s discussion of righteousness in the previous sermon. God accepts as righteous our acts of faith, and calls us righteous as we develop in righteousness, all the while increasing the demand for ever greater righteousness.

He seems very process-oriented, which requires a great deal of patience.

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Regarding Kierkegaard and GM - was there any evidence that they knew of or read each other? I notice they were contemporaries, with K being the older one - but with significant overlap in life. It would be fascinating to know what authors they may have together been reading in common - or what might have been common to the spiritual air of the day they might both have been influenced by.

Returning to this interesting question:
Kierkegaard was not introduced to the English-speaking world until 1908, 53 years after his death. See this article.

HOWEVER, George MacDonald was fluent in German, so much so that he translated German poetry into English!!! See this article

Parts of Kierkegaard’s work were available in German as early as 1872! See this article.

I haven’t dug more for proof that GM read SK in German, but THAT is entirely possible.

Or they shared similar influences.

Or they came to a number of similar ways of thinking by different paths. (As if that has never happened before in the world of thought!)

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@Kendel

Or they came to a number of similar ways of thinking by different paths. (As if that has never happened before in the world of thought!)

I’m not as impressively active in researching this out as you have been … but I’ll be keeping my ear out for what those ‘common influences’ may have been for both of them from their own recently contemporary times. It’s a bit like trying to trace back a family tree, only for philosophical influence (discipling) instead of for biology (fathering and mothering). E.g. So many notable, thinking Christians today < C.S. Lewis < MacDonald < … ? … < … ? … < this or that early church father < apostles and gospel writers <<< Christ.

(240) On Idle Tongues

To the honest soul it is a comfort to believe that the truth will one day be known, that it will cease to be supposed that he was and did as dull heads and hearts reported of him. Still more satisfactory will be the unveiling where a man is misunderstood by those who ought to know him better–who, not even understanding the point at issue, take it for granted he is about to do the wrong thing, while he is crying for courage to heed neither himself nor his friends, but only the Lord. How many hear and accept the words, ‘Be not conformed to this world,’ without once perceiving that what they call Society and bow to as supreme, is the World and nothing else, or that those who mind what people think, and what people will say, are conformed to–that is, take the shape of–the world. The true man feels he has nothing to do with Society as judge or lawgiver: he is under the law of Jesus Christ, and it sets him free from the law of the World. Let a man do right, nor trouble himself about worthless opinion; the less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men. Let him comfort himself with the thought that the truth must out. He will not have to pass through eternity with the brand of ignorant or malicious judgment upon him. He shall find his peers and be judged of them.

From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Final Unmasking”

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

I’m not as impressively active in researching this out as you have been

A little dinking around with Google is not research. But itks fun, when the dinking is fruitful.
Now to read MacDonald for the day.

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

[slightly altered] Let a woman do right, nor trouble herself about worthless opinion; the less she heeds tongues, the less difficult will she find it to love others. Let her comfort herself with the thought that the truth must out. She will not have to pass through eternity with the brand of ignorant or malicious judgment upon her. She shall find her peers and be judged of them.

Well, this is perfect in light of Moore’s book and so many others (Noll, Carolyn Custis James, Kobe duMetz, and and and).
It feels like a hard time to be a Christian today, but more from the inside than the outside, at least in my geographic and ecclesial location. It would be nice to find those peers before eternity, though, and locally, too. I have found a few, but we are a dispersed bunch.

[St.Roymond]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Whereas the right excommunicates anyone that doesn’t conform to whatever the right-most party line is at the moment, so that only one voice is allowed to be heard on the right.

That hasn’t always been the case. I think it started in the U.S. anyway with the “Moral Majority” and the attendant self-righteousness.

[St.Roymond]

@Kendel

he understands righteousness as both a state and a process

That’s kind of how I reconcile the Reformation “saved by faith” with the Orthodox view: we are in a state of righteousness by imputation but we do not stay there, we must also acquire active righteousness.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@Kendel

…but we are a dispersed bunch.

The proverbial ‘remnant’, as it were! If it isn’t too presumptuous to hope oneself could be so identified with that group. Or likely as not, the portion within me that grows or needs to grow in righteousness may be an all-too-tiny remnant within myself that does battle with my fleshly desires.

@St.Roymond

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Whereas the right excommunicates anyone that doesn’t conform to whatever the right-most party line is at the moment, so that only one voice is allowed to be heard on the right.

That hasn’t always been the case. I think it started in the U.S. anyway…

I repent a bit of those words of mine; since I personally know many whom I consider to be on the right but who nonetheless are far, far from being the right-most sorts that constantly make the news. And while perhaps my acquaintences don’t do enough (in my opinion) to restrain or criticize those to their right, they would make exactly the same charge about many on the left, revealing more symmetry in the whole situation than what their critics have acknowledged.

And in that very spirit, I need to rise up in front of the mirror, and take in Lewis’ next choice from among MacDonald’s words …

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

(241) Do We Love LIght

Do you so love the truth and the right, that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself–an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble? It may be, for instance, that you were wrong in regard to those, for the righting of whose wrongs to you, the great judgment of God is now by you waited for with desire: will you welcome any discovery, even if it work for the excuse of others, that will make you more true, by revealing what in you was false? Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong? If you can with such submission face the revelation of things hid, then you are of the truth, and need not be afraid; for, whatever comes, it will and can only make you more true and humble and pure.

Does the Lord mean that everything a man has ever done or thought must be laid bare to the universe?

So far, I think, as is necessary to the understanding of the man by those who have known, or are concerned to know him. … all things will be working toward revelation, nothing toward concealment or misunderstanding. Who in the kingdom will desire concealment, or be willing to misunderstand? Concealment is darkness; misunderstanding is a fog. A man will hold the door open for anyone to walk into his house, for it is a temple of the living God–with some things worth looking at, and nothing to hide. The glory of the true world is, that there is nothing in it that needs to be covered, while ever and ever there will be things uncovered. Every man’s light will shine for the good and glory of his neighbour.

‘Will all my weaknesses, all my evil habits, all my pettinesses, all the wrong thoughts which I cannot help–will all be set out before the universe?’

Yes, if they so prevail as to constitute your character–that is, if they are you. But if you have come out of the darkness, if you are fighting it, if you are honestly trying to walk in the light, you may hope in God your father that what he has cured, what he is curing, what he has forgiven, will be heard of no more, not now being a constituent part of you. Or if indeed some of your evil things must yet be seen, the truth of them will be seen–that they are things you are at strife with, not things you are cherishing and brooding over. God will be fair to you–so fair!–fair with the fairness of a father loving his own–who will have you clean, who will neither spare you any needful shame, nor leave you exposed to any that is not needful. The thing we have risen above, is dead and forgotten, or if remembered, there is God to comfort us. ‘If any man sin, we have a comforter with the Father.’

From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Final Unmasking”

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

The proverbial ‘remnant’, as it were!

No. That’s not what I was trying to say, but your feedback is helpful. It shows how easy it is to fall into the “Remnant” thinking. Even when I don’t intend to.

In the conservative churches I’ve spent my life in, there are plenty of people who see themselves as part of the “tiny faithful remnant,” the few who are being saved. And for different reasons. This kind of thinking doesn’t make sense to me. It minimizes faith and the work God does in a person. It creates doubt in people, who already have faith, that their faith is deficient or wrong somehow rather than helping them produce fruit.

It gets old quickly to feel like one is constantly living under the judgement of human standards, while growing in faith and maybe even sanctification. I like MacDonald’s hopefulness, that the time is coming when the mean-spirited, human judgementalism will end.

[Kendel]

Thanks, that’s helpful.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@Kendel

It shows how easy it is to fall into the “Remnant” thinking.

Thanks for the correction. I think I see it now! You hope to or wish you could find more of those companions (peers) now, even while still on this side of judgment, who can more truly understand you - and without malicious and wrong judgments?