What a profound observation, and recognition of the extreme humility always characterizing even our best and highest thoughts. If I’m not mistaken, he gets this almost straight from MacDonald, who uses much the same language (in one of his sermons, I believe) - regarding prayer.
Thanks for sharing that, Kendel.
Do you think that it’s a hard one? Maybe that what God wants most is that his children come to Him–and that also, once we learn more about Him, we are asking for Him to teach us to pray as we ought?
Thanks.
Some would refer to it as the analogous use of language… one can still pray to our Father in heaven and exclaim what is revealed about him in the Bible without uttering a blasphemous word.
I once had a conversation (yes, a real live conversation on a podcast) about pseudo-Dionysius and the problem with the via negativa. There was a slight pushback against me and a reference was made to the Orthodox tradition… I have yet had a chance to follow up on that.
It’s false humility, when you question whether you can pray to your Father in heaven
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream
This strikes me as something someone would say who has spent more time thinking about prayer than actually praying.
Leonard Ravenhill was a man known to be a prayer and I like this quote from him:
Now I say very often—and people don’t like it—that God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer! Your prayer life denotes how much you depend on your own ability, and how much you really believe in your heart when you sing, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling….” The more self-confidence you have, the less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the more you have to pray.
Then it’s a good thing nobody here (including the poet author of the words) has suggested anything remotely like that. In fact - the poem says exactly the opposite.
Please explain, as it wouldn’t be the first time that I misread something… but given the history on this subject and the subsequent comments… I’m doubtful
The author insists that none of us carries any image of God in our heads that could be said to be in any way complete - or even accurate. We may “see” some bearded old man when we close our eyes or the more sophisticated may have made a conscious attempt to “switch up” their image to some vague spiritual ‘ineffability’. But - no matter. It will all be “wrong” (or in various small ways, ‘right’, as every image probably also catches some small bit of truth in it) But the point is, none of us have it. And even if we had 90% (and 90% right!) … it would then still carry falsehood in it (and even 10% falsehood cannot be God). So the point is, when we worship our image of God, we worship an idol. We blaspheme. But human minds being what they are, we can’t help it, and God knows this. So our prayers are heard on their own heart terms, in discarding much which God chooses to overlook because of love.
Imagine that a young child comes up to you earnestly asking you a question. And they don’t get your name right - or perhaps address you in some awkward or inappropriate way. But you know this child and you know they mean no disrespect by it - in fact their innocent heart (such as it is in ‘innocence’ anyway) is inclined toward you and they genuinely want you to like them and they like you. Would you not as a loving adult overlook whatever delicacies of language were probably still beyond them, and take delight instead in the earnestness of their wanting to be around you and listen to you?
The point is that when we pray according to his Word, we are not blaspheming. Obviously we often get it wrong, but not by the definition of uttering words.
I think that you’re right–the words might be right (though English probably doesn’t carry the same message as the Hebrew of the tiem)–but the principle may be the same. My impression of a “father” isn’t clearly right–nor is it the same as I used to have. However, I bet that Jesus knew that the ancient Jewish idea of a father wasn’t likely correct, either–but that’s the image He chose to come closest, I imagine. Hm. Thanks for the interesting meditation.
I’m glad you see that. Another point of contention would be whether Jesus blasphemed when he prayed.
Well, hm, maybe given His being fully human, he opted not to employ the entire amount of knowledge He had elsewhere.
It’s not a sin–I want to emphasize that, I think. My parents were really good about pointing out that mistakes are never sins.
would you agree with that?
I think that Lewis is asking for help.
One correlation, which I think you would agree with, is that concern that by making ourselves out to be evil would also be a criticism of God–He doesn’t make junk. Not that it’s a sin to make a mistake abou that, either!
Thanks.
Of course all guardians of orthodoxy must exercise their obligatory recoil at any suggestion that Jesus ever did anything wrong.
To the point of prayer, though, the passage comes to mind (just after Jesus raises up Lazarus) where Jesus even just explicitly admits in his prayer that he’s “only saying some of this stuff out loud for the benefit of those listening.” We’ve all had the experience of sitting through each other’s prayers where we go on to spell out “for God” all the details of some situation, as if God didn’t already know - or the prayer turns into yet another sneaky way for the prayer-speaker to sneak in a sermonette. Obviously they are not talking to God any more but using the occassion to sermonize a bit more to their captive audience. And apparently that’s not always a bad thing … since as I just mentioned - Jesus did it.
A take-away for me in that is that prayer is a complicated thing, and often involves more than just the speaker and God. There is accommodation that goes on in prayer too - allowance for us to make use of our images (like ‘Father’), which strikes me then as more of a perk granted toward anyone who wants earnest conversation with God, and not to be taken or used as some new doctrinal bludgeon to weild to ‘prove’ to everyone else, for example, that the Creator has male anatomy.
So of course nobody is going to accuse Jesus of blasphemy. That doesn’t mean though that we don’t do things with our prayers and mental images that effectively become blasphemy - especially if we fall more in love with the “rightness” of our own appraisal of what all God must be like, than we do with our neighbors and anybody else we’re called to love.
I don’t entirely agree with it though.
He has graciously answered more than one of mine that were not desperate, as a Father would. Here’s a memorable case in point: Request and Articulate Reply.
(One sorry guy I am familiar with thinks the idea of God as a Father is laughable.)
I find myself in the unusual position of not emphatically endorsing something from Lewis, whom I would normally laud. The poem may sound or feel theologically profound and appropriately humble, and as an abstraction it may be. In more than one line though, if not the whole thing, it belies what I noted above, but doesn’t it also minimize God’s personhood, and any idea of friendship or intimacy?
That should be humbling, that he deigns to call me his child and Jesus my brother and friend.
I am busy with other things right now and haven’t had time to add on to Mervks excellent explanations.
Dale, please try this exercise with the ooem and see if it helps. Look through the poem and identify all the actions that Lewis attributes to God in the process of receiving Lewis’s prayers. What part does God play according to Lewis?
Something which no person who has ever prayed in “spirit and truth” would disagree. But to call “all prayers” blasphemous would be to the original point of contention.
I suspect you may be trying to take a poetic profundity, and turn it into some sort of doctrinal thesis. Which of course will cause you to see all sorts of “wrong” conclusions in the poem.
I’m not sure how to draw the line. Mistakes can still be offensive and costly. Sometimes even the most unintended actions need to be made up for.
As far as sinning, my big aha moment came a number of years ago where I first understood how badly I intentionally acted and would continue to do so perpetually. Zero confidence in my righteousness. I was desperately without hope and asked Jesus to still let me have a place under the table like a mangy dog next to him. He let me come and a subtle thing changed for me as I now had a curiously new way of seeing God through an understanding of grace.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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