MacDonald (as selected by Lewis)

Indeed I had not! I was thinking it was already running in parallel with your prior post!

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MacDonald had three series of unspoken sermons. Todays (and the next nine: 53 - 62) are from the first sermon beginning his 2nd series of sermons.

(53) Goodness

The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of his own goodness than an honest man thinks of his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does he think of his goodness; he delights in his Father’s. ‘Why callest thou me good?’

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

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Another theme dovetailing with Hart’s idea that what does or should motivate by drawling us on is always something beyond the immediate. Nothing in itself is enough except that it serves to keep you focused on what is beyond and subsumes the particular object in an ideal conception.

But to my mind that is a recipe for misery. Nothing is ever enough. Should my wife only have value to me in that she reminds me of what more there could be? Should I always take note of my friend’s deficiencies and use that to draw me on toward better friends. Sounds like bait and switch consumerism. Rather than exalt the ideal I’d rather give thanks for each fellow imperfect creature who like me must find his way amid the insistent call to be and have more. I’d rather have less and accept myself as I am. Everything actual is so much more precious to me in its just so/ness than the hollow category label of ‘that which is defined as ‘more’.

I think it’s a fairly Christian conviction that judgment should always start (and end?) at home. Meaning I had better judge myself (and myself only, or at the very least myself first) as to how I can be a better friend rather than how can my friends be better to me.

So it would seem the people we most admire probably have something of a double standard (and we tend to applaud them for it - if it goes the right way). I.e. They are hard on themselves, but then easygoing on those around them. If they do it the other way, we all easily recognize them as hypocrites. But it seems okay (even expected) to hold oneself to a higher standard than one’s neighbors or friends. And that is a minefield. If I’m successful at holding myself to high standards, then isn’t that nothing more than rehearsal for me to also then judge others? We feel self-conscious in the presence of somebody who is so well-accomplished at some particular area of their life because we more than half expect, then, that they will see our mediocrity or even failure in the same area and judge us harshly. But that isn’t necessarily so. Somebody who has had to work extraordinarily hard to conquer something can, for the very reason of their experience, freely lavish grace for those currently less successful in that area.

All I know is that the whole “nothing is ever enough” formula is a recipe for relationship disaster at every turn, especially if it is an attitude aimed at others - but even if taken and focused on the self; I’m not so sure it doesn’t wreck us even there too.

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The following might be a quite appropriate one regarding all our flurries of resolutions we all make about this time of year. Happy new year everyone!

(54) Christ’s Disregards

The Lord cared neither for isolated truth nor for orphaned deed. It was truth in the inward parts, it was the good heart, the mother of good deeds, he cherished. It was the live, active, knowing, breathing good he came to further. He cared for no speculation in morals or religion. It was good men he cared about, not notions of good things, or even good actions, save as the outcome of life, save as the bodies in which the primary live actions of love and will in the soul took shape and came forth.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

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Better and better each time I read it, Merv. Thanks. This is an excellent New Year’s focus.

I think it pairs well with a bit of Kierkegaard:

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(55) Easy to Please and Hard to Satisfy

That no keeping but a perfect one will satisfy God, I hold with all my heart and strength; but that there is none else he cares for, is one of the lies of the enemy. What father is not pleased with the first tottering attempt of his little one to walk? What father would be satisfied with anything but the manly step of the full-grown son?

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

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This one follows directly in the text from the post above.
(56) The Moral Law

When the Lord has definitely mentioned the commandments he means, the youth [replies] at once that he has observed those from his youth up: are we to take his word for it? The Lord at least takes his word for it: he looked on him and loved him. Was the Lord deceived in him? Did he tell an untruth? or did the Master believe he had kept the commandments perfectly? There must be a keeping of the commandments, which, although anything but perfect, is yet acceptable to the heart of him from whom nothing is hid. In that way the youth had kept the commandments. He had for years been putting forth something of his life-energy to keep them. Nor, however he had failed of perfection, had he missed the end for which they were given him to keep. For the immediate end of the commandments never was that men should succeed in obeying them, but that, finding they could not do that which yet must be done, finding the more they tried the more was required of them, they should be driven to the source of life and law–of their life and his law–to seek from him such reinforcement of life as should make the fulfilment of the law as possible, yea, as natural, as necessary. This result had been wrought in the youth. His observance had given him no satisfaction; he was not at rest; but he desired eternal life–of which there was no word in the law: the keeping of the law had served to develop a hunger which no law or its keeping could fill. Must not the imperfection of his keeping of the commandments, even in the lower sense in which he read them, have helped to reveal how far they were beyond any keeping of his, how their implicit demands rose into the infinitude of God’s perfection?

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

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There is much here to ponder and I appreciate your words Mervin. I went back to read the passage and saw that Jesus showed the young man love. That doesn’t fit so easily with the sarcasm I had thought Jesus showed him.

I have long connected this story to A.W. Tozer’s classic chapter The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing:

“So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.”

A.W. Tozer

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And know that we made it! The rich ruler walks away sadly. One hopes that it wasn’t the last time such a choice was offered him, but we aren’t told. But he knew he lacked something, which might put him ahead of many today who walk away - but aren’t even sad about it. (This continues to be visited - indeed you anticipate #58 coming tomorrow.)

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(57) Bondage

As the thing was, he was a slave; for a man is in bondage to what ever he cannot part with that is less than himself.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

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Nicely put… What if the problem is more fundamentally that we are slaves to our self being like God apart from God? And yet that is what we become more like in worshiping him. Such paradoxical concepts!

Addicted to power! Or imagining that we ourselves are more significant participants than we actually are. There is a lot to think about there. We certainly do like exercising power - especially over others.

And on one hand we’re mere animals, and yet on the other, a little lower than angels. It seems psalmists of old also were aware of both perspectives and maybe some pitfalls that attend each.

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Like clay in the potter’s hand… and yet able to choose.

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An article came to my attention today giving me more insight into a part of C.S. Lewis’ life I had never before been aware of. And indeed, it sounds like the biographers are actually far from sure what to make of it either though apparently recent evidence has come to light to make the conjectures seem plausible.

I’m not putting this forward as some sort of reason to posthumously censure Lewis for any impropriety that may have happened - indeed that our heroes (and he will always be one of mine) have messy lives makes me more hopeful that we can more than survive such things - but maybe, despite their taxing, even debilitating effects on us in the moment, God yet shapes us through it all despite ourselves.

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Interesting article. I have been thinking about going to a C.S. Lewis stage production this spring, makes me want to buy tickets.

That does look good! I remember my first online encounter with Eric Mataxas was to watch him interview Walter Hooper, Lewis’ secretary and American fan. It was an excellent interview - and one that endeared me to Mataxas at the time (I mourn the loss of his keen mind to the control of faddish partison demons of the moment). But that interview too (Socrates in the City series Mataxas was hosting at the time) opened me up to how Lewis’ fame developed (or almost didn’t) in decades after Lewis’ death.

The following includes considerably more than Lewis did, who started his inclusion mainly just with the thought: “It was time… that he should refuse, … and should know it.”

I chose to go earlier in MacDonald’s text and let this pick up directly after the last (very short) quote posted yesterday.

(58) The Rich Young Man

He could have taken his possessions from him by an exercise of his own will, but there would have been little good in that; he wished to do it by the exercise of the young man’s will: that would be a victory indeed for both! So would he enter into freedom and life, delivered from the bondage of mammon by the lovely will of the Lord in him, one with his own. By the putting forth of the divine energy in him, he would escape the corruption that is in the world through lust–that is, the desire or pleasure of having .

The young man would not.

Was the Lord then premature in his demand on the youth? Was he not ready for it? Was it meant for a test, and not as an actual word of deliverance? Did he show the child a next step on the stair too high for him to set his foot upon? I do not believe it. He gave him the very next lesson in the divine education for which he was ready. It was possible for him to respond, to give birth, by obedience, to the redeemed and redeeming will, and so be free. It was time the demand should be made upon him. Do you say, ‘But he would not respond, he would not obey!’? Then it was time, I answer, that he should refuse, that he should know what manner of spirit he was of, and meet the confusions of soul, the sad searchings of heart that must follow. A time comes to every man when he must obey, or make such refusal-- and know it .

Shall I then be supposed to mean that the refusal of the young man was of necessity final? that he was therefore lost? that because he declined to enter into life the door of life was closed against him? Verily, I have not so learned Christ. And that the lesson was not lost, I see in this, that he went away sorrowful. Was such sorrow, in the mind of an earnest youth, likely to grow less or to grow more? Was all he had gone through in the way of obedience to be of no good to him? Could the nature of one who had kept the commandments be so slight that, after having sought and talked with Jesus, held communion with him who is the Life, he would care less about eternal life than before? Many, alas! have looked upon his face, yet have never seen him, and have turned back; some have kept company with him for years, and denied him; but their weakness is not the measure of the patience or the resources of God. Perhaps this youth was never one of the Lord’s so long as he was on the earth, but perhaps when he saw that the Master himself cared nothing for the wealth he had told him to cast away, that, instead of ascending the throne of his fathers, he let the people do with him what they would, and left the world the poor man he had lived in it, by its meanest door, perhaps then he became one of those who sold all they had, and came and laid the money at the apostles’ feet. In the meantime he had that in his soul which made it heavy: by the gravity of his riches the world held him, and would not let him rise. He counted his weight his strength, and it was his weakness. Moneyless in God’s upper air he would have had power indeed. Money is the power of this world–power for defeat and failure to him who holds it–a weakness to be overcome ere a man can be strong; yet many decent people fancy it a power of the world to come! It is indeed a little power, as food and drink, as bodily strength, as the winds and the waves are powers; but it is no mighty thing for the redemption of men; yea, to the redemption of those who have it, it is the saddest obstruction. To make this youth capable of eternal life, clearly–and the more clearly that he went away sorrowful–the first thing was to make a poor man of him! He would doubtless have gladly devoted his wealth to the service of the Master, yea, and gone with him, as a rich man , to spend it for him. But part with it to free him for his service–that he could not-- yet!

And how now would he go on with his keeping of the commandments? Would he not begin to see more plainly his shortcomings, the larger scope of their requirements? Might he not feel the keeping of them more imperative than ever, yet impossible without something he had not? The commandments can never be kept while there is a strife to keep them: the man is overwhelmed in the weight of their broken pieces. It needs a clean heart to have pure hands, all the power of a live soul to keep the law–a power of life, not of struggle; the strength of love, not the effort of duty.

One day the truth of his conduct must dawn upon him with absolute clearness. Bitter must be the discovery. He had refused the life eternal! had turned his back upon The Life! In deepest humility and shame, yet with the profound consolation of repentance, he would return to the Master and bemoan his unteachableness. There are who, like St. Paul, can say, ‘I did wrong, but I did it in ignorance; my heart was not right, and I did not know it:’ the remorse of such must be very different from that of one who, brought to the point of being capable of embracing the truth, turned from it and refused to be set free. To him the time will come, God only knows its hour, when he will see the nature of his deed, with the knowledge that he was dimly seeing it so even when he did it : the alternative had been put before him.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way

I inadverdently included the next day’s excerpt in yesterday’s long post - in my excitment with the subject matter at hand. So I’ll repost just that bit here, but then also include a fresh one for today too.

(59) Law and Spirit

The commandments can never be kept while there is a strife to keep them: the man is overwhelmed in the weight of their broken pieces. It needs a clean heart to have pure hands, all the power of a live soul to keep the law–a power of life, not of struggle; the strength of love, not the effort of duty.

(60) Our Nonage

… the number of fools not yet acknowledging the first condition of manhood nowise alters the fact that he who has begun to recognize duty, and acknowledge the facts of his being, is but a tottering child on the path of life. He is on the path; he is as wise as at the time he can be; the Father’s arms are stretched out to receive him; but he is not therefore a wonderful being; not therefore a model of wisdom; not at all the admirable creature his largely remaining folly would, in his worst moments, that is when he feels best, persuade him to think himself; he is just one of God’s poor creatures.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Way