For the few who read this blog, I’m sorry for the long absence. Its just been a hectic two weeks, mainly with recently going home to preach (a wonderful experience). In any case, I plan on returning to the blogosphere with the normal stuff this week. However, it was Ched’s tagging that finally pulled me out of my lazy stupor…thus…my response to his game of “Literary Lucky-Dipping.”
To recap, here are the guidlelines:
1) Skillfully grab the book closest to you
2) Quickly open to page 123, go down to the fourth sentence
3) Post the text of the following three sentences
4) Name the author and book title
5) Tag an indefinite number of people to do the same (so, it could be ‘0’)
The book that just happened to be closest to myself is the second volume of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. This volume in particular is subtitled, “Books, Broadcasts, and the War (1931-1949)”. This set is a wonderful insight into the mind of a truly brilliant individual, and I highly recommend it. With that said, in a letter to Arthur Greeves on September 12, 1933, Lewis writes:
Let us go back to the original question – whether and, if so in what sense God contains, say, my evil will – or ‘understands’ it. The answer is God not only understands but shares the desire which is at the root of all my evil – the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it. Be He knows, and I do not, how it can be really and permanently attained. He knows that most of my personal attempts to reach it are actually putting it further and further out of my reach. With these therefore He cannot sympathise or ‘agree’: His sympathy with my real will makes that impossible. (He may pity my misdirected struggles, but that is another matter.)
An interesting quote indeed, and one in which the whole letter truly needs to be read. Perhaps I shall write out the letter in its entirety later this week. In any case, since I’ve fulfilled my end of the deal, I now tag Brandon, Bret, and Chris. No Tagbacks!
Zach Bowden 