Lessons From Mere Christianity: Recap

I finished writing my series on Lessons for Mere Christianity... and here is a brief recap, or all of the links...

Introduction
Mere Christianity Quotes

- Charity
- Creating a Christian Society
- Help From Others
- Judging Others
- Living A Perfect Life
- Love
- Pride
- Self-Improvement
- Trust In God
- Turning It Over to God
- Using Our Gifts
- Virtue

Take a look and let me know what you think! If you haven't already, read the book!

"You Got A Friend In Me"

A nice feel good song :)



"You've got troubles, well I've got 'em too
There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you
We stick together and we see it through
You've got a friend in me"

We could all use lots of friends like that!

Being a Disciple of Christ

We are all called to be Disciples of Christ, to place him first in importance and follow Him. But how do we do that? I once read a quote that sheds some light:

"Discipleship only makes sense without a road map, a prenuptial agreement, or a money-back guarantee. If we put our trust in Jesus, that means falling behind Him wherever the road goes. Scary? Leaving home and the familiar always is. Necessary? You bet your life."

Many of us try to have our priorities the opposite... we think that when life is in order, when we are at a good place, then we can start following Jesus, and doing things like going to Mass, Confession, or tithing on a more regular basis. First, we have to get our own life in order, then all of these things will come. Or so we tell ourselves.

However, the rub is that if we are waiting for that perfect time, it will never come. There likely will always be something else that you think should be demanding your time, money, and attention. If we place the safety in first priority, Jesus will not fall in line next, He will slip off the page.

If we are at a place of disorder in life, all the better to start becoming a Disciple of Christ. When you have nothing or have lost everything, that is the perfect time. That is the time to establish routines and beliefs that we will carry with us.

Tithing is a perfect example, I think. Let's say you make $100/week (just throwing out numbers)... if you can't tithe $10 out of that, do you think you will really tithe $100 when you make $1000 per week? I doubt it, but this is what people tell themselves.

If you follow Jesus and become a disciple of Him, it could take you scary places, or cause you to make decisions that will be uncomfortable at the time. That is OK. I am guessing Peter, John, and the rest of the Apostles wrestled with the same decisions that we still face today.

Jesus is the way to get your priorities and life straight. If you wait until you have those things secure before you follow Him, you will keep Him waiting a long time.

Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?

In Peter Kreeft's enlightening book called "The Handbook of Christian Apologetics," he addresses the Resurrection, the most central important event in Christian history. With Easter right behind us, it is time to address a question that is of central importance: Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

St. Paul wrote: "But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (1 Corinthians 15: 13-14) Thus, the question is of the greatest importance to Christians, because if Jesus did not rise, then the faith is futile.

When non-believers think of the Resurrection, they surely must think it is a wild notion, rooted in mythology. Indeed, it is miraculous, that someone would be dead, and 3 days later rise from the dead. Without faith, it is difficult to prove that the Resurrection occurred, because it is not observable. However, in can be proven in that for all of the existing information, the fact that the Resurrection occurred as Christians believe is the only adequate explanation.

Kreeft says this:

"We believe Christ's resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not)... We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies: the existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.

He looks at 5 possible explanations of the Resurrection: that it happened and Christianity is correct, that the Apostles hallucinated, that Jesus' resurrection was a myth, that it was a conspiracy by the Apostles, or that Jesus was not really dead, but simply appeared to be dead. So, to take a look at the other theories, and why [I believe] they are not adequate explanations:

The Swoon Theory
- The Romans were very good at crucifixion, they did it often. Plus, the Roman soldiers had plenty of incentive to make sure the job was done right - they could face severe punishment (even death) if the prisoner escaped.
- Accounts show that blood and water poured out of Jesus' side when he was pierced, which is a sign that he would have died from asphyxiation.
- If Jesus merely resuscitate and was not resurrected, how did he get out of the tomb? He would certainly have been extremely weak, so how did he overpower the guards at the tomb? How did he inspire the disciples to spread his message and eventually die for the cause? How did he move the boulder to get out of the tomb?

The Conspiracy Theory
- If this was true, it is certainly the greatest conspiracy in human history, and laughably so far above the 2nd biggest. None of the Apostles ever told, through torture or bribe, that Jesus was not really resurrected. They were martyred for their faith, whereas if they had simply said that the resurrection was a conspiracy, they would have saved their lives. But none of them said that.
- Think about the Apostles of the Gospels... fishermen, tax collectors, meek, cowardice... and then after Jesus' death they are confident, spreading the Word throughout all of the lands, facing down powerful enemies. Would a lie and conspiracy have so transformed them all?
- There is the obvious question... why would the Apostles have done this? What motive would they have had? They got no earthly benefit out of this. Logically, it is not rational that they would have created this conspiracy.
- If it was all a conspiracy, the Romans simply could have produced the body, and it would have been proven false. Yet they never did this. Why? They would have had no motive to hide the body.

The Hallucination Theory
- It was said that Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, including that most of the people he appeared to were still alive at the time, meaning it could have been easy to refute by asking people if they saw Jesus or not. 500 people do not all have the same hallucination.
- The Apostles needed to be won over, they did not believe that Jesus was there at first, thinking He was a ghost. They were only convinced when they were able to touch him and see him eat. A hallucination would not eat real food.
- Once again, all of this could have been put to a stop if the body of Jesus had been produced. Or if the Apostles had gone to the tomb and found His body, they would have known that it was simply a hallucination. One has to imagine that they checked.
- As CS Lewis writes, "Any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is indeed invention [rather than fact] it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus. Even granting that God sent a holy hallucination to teach truths already widely believed without it, and far more easily taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by this, might we not at least hope that he would get the face of the hallucination right? Is he who made all faces such a bungler that he cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was himself?"

The Myth Theory
- If the Gospels were simply a myth and work of fiction, then four men who are historically seen as a fisherman (John), tax collector (Matthew), doctor (Luke), and "young man" (Mark) independently created stories strikingly similar in a style that was radically different than any other myth of its time. The more plausible explanation is they observed the things that they wrote about.
- Not enough time passed between the life of Jesus and the writings of the Gospels (and letters of Paul) for this to be a myth. If it was simply a myth, it would have been easily refuted.
- All of the writings and accounts from that time period point to Jesus being resurrected. There are no other explanations or stories from that time which talk about the story of Jesus and provide a different explanation.
- Logically it would not hold true that the Gospels could be a myth, because Peter specifically said that they were not a myth. Thus it is either the truth or a lie, it cannot be a myth.

Thus, I believe, it can be proved that the Resurrection is the most adequate explanation for what actually happened.

What are your thoughts? Have you heard other arguments, or do you believe something else? I would love to hear it.

HAPPY EASTER!

Christ the Lord is risen today!! :)

Happy Easter!! I hope you have a great holiday with your loved ones!

"You Were On The Cross"

On this Good Friday, I thought this song by Matt Maher would be appropriate to post...



The description of the song via his website:

"In the Laments of Job, you get this sense of, "everything is lost, everything is gone, everything that I have worked so hard for, everything that I had been blessed with and I have sores all over me" - I think most people don't really stop to imagine what that must have been like for Job. I got to thinking 'God where were you when this happened? He was on the cross.

I realized that not only is the cross in and of itself the atonement for all sin, but the way in which it happened is now a means by which all human suffering becomes a transformational moment. It does not matter how dark your situation is - God himself has been there and as you grieve it and morn it you can find consolation in him because he was there."

A Lesson in Humility and Leadership

On Holy Thursday we remember the story of Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles. To me, this is a great lesson in both humility and leadership.

On the one hand, it is great humility to put yourselves at the service of others in the manner of washing their feet. Many people see feet as "awful," and would not go near another person's feet (let alone a lot of them). Yet there Jesus is, insisting that he be able to get down on His hands and knees and wash their feet. There is nothing that He is not willing to do for another person, and we too must sometimes let go of our pride to help others.

The other thing is that Christ is showing us a great example of servant leadership. Even though He is the teacher of the Apostles (Peter calls Him 'Master') it is Jesus who washes their feet, and not the other way around. This shows us that the best way to lead others is often to serve them, and to set an example for them in that way. He tells the Apostles to go and do the same for others, and teaches them that no master is greater than a slave.

I believe servant leadership to be the most effective manner of leadership. If you would to earn the respect and trust of others, serve them and look out for their needs. This will teach them to do the same for others.

This is a great lesson for us as we prepare for the the Resurrection of Our Lord.

Do Not Judge

I got this little story in an email forward, but thought it was pretty cool, so decided to post it here!

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A young couple moved into a new neighborhood
The next morning while they were eating breakfast,
The young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
'That laundry is not very clean,' she said.
'She doesn't know how to wash correctly.
Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.'

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry,
The young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:

'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly.
I wonder who taught her this.'

The husband said, 'I got up early this morning and
Cleaned our windows.'

And so it is with life.

What we see when watching others
Depends on the window through which we look.

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Do not judge, but only look at others through the eyes of love. Lord, Give Me Your Eyes.

What Keeps You Awake At Night?

Sometime last week I had some type of great idea or something that excited me a little bit before I went to bed, and it got me so excited I had trouble sleeping for a bit. Isn't a great feeling?

So it got me thinking... we need to spend more time thinking about the things that keep us awake at night (in a good way!). Those things that excite us with their potential, these are the things that we need to focus our mind on as much as we can, because those are the things that lead us to happiness and fulfillment.

I once read that those deepest desires that we have, the things we barely even dare to dream, those are the things that God wishes for us, and the things that He wants us to aspire to and achieve. I like to think that these are the same things that get us excited when we think of them. The things that instantly wake us up and cause us to smile at the mere thought of them.

Too many times we find ourselves focusing on the opposite things... things that bring our mind down, things that exhaust us, things that we dread... and as a consequence, we forget how to dream and how to have goals.

So, what keeps you awake at night?

Scripture Sunday: John 15: 18-19

Every Sunday on this site I will take some time to look at a passage from the Bible that I like and think is great... though they could obviously be presented by themselves without further mention, I will throw my two cents in on what the verse(s) mean to me.

Today we look at some of Jesus' teaching from the Gospel of John:

"If the world hates you, realized that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own, but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you." (John 5: 18-19)

Jesus' teaching is clear... if we follow him, we will be met with opposition. There will be people that will think you are crazy (or, gasp, a Jesus freak), and people that will not understand your way of living.

Jesus reminds us and encourages us by the fact that He went through the same thing during his time on earth. He was persecuted to the point of crucifixion, yet we know it was all the will of His Father.

When we are persecuted or seen as an outcast because of our religious beliefs, we know that it is all the will of our Father, and if we are trying to live our lives according to the teachings of Jesus, we could be met with resistance. That is ok. We should rejoice in the fact that we are turning towards the way of God and away from the way of the world.

Always take comfort, Christ is with us always.

"Mere Christianity" Quotes By CS Lewis

In following with my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity, here are quotes from Mere Christianity.

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- "But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." (28)

- "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' This is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic - on a level of a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (52)

- "But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die." (57-58)

- "The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no 'unfair' advantage), it would not get on very quickly." (58-59)

- "But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man." (58)

- "There is a different between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man." (79)

- "But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a 'virtue,' and it is this quality or character that really matters." (80)

- "When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

- "Love in this second sense - love as distinct from being 'in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit' reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

- "A Christian society is not going to really arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to fully want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward - driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home."

- "If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditures excludes them." (86)

- "That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the result;s which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it." (91)

- "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-state of mind." (122)

- "Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride." (123)

- "In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all." (124)

- "Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." (128)

- "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." (131)

- "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of." (132)

- "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." (134)

- "Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." (134)

- "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." (136)

- "All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this. I can't.'" (146)

- "Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

- "When you are not feeling particularly friendly, but you know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we all have noticed, you will be feeling really friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already." (188)

- "If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways, not only through what we think our 'religious life.'" (190)

- "But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." (193)

- "The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

- "For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do." (197-198)

- "When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199)

- "In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

- "And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

- "I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

- "We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

- "That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us." (204-205)

- "Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are 'rich' in this sense to enter the Kingdom." (214)

- "If you are a nice person - if virtue comes easily to you - beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contended with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an Archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above a chimpanzee." (215)

- "If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that matter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?" (217)

- "The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more ourselves we truly become." (225)

- "Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishesevery day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (226)

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Do any of them speak to you?

".. He became a man in love again"

I saw this video and thought the overall message of it was something that we could all take a lesson from.



The key phrase in it, I believe, is, "By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love again."

I have written before about how a way to get a certain behavior or become a certain kind of person is to act as if you already have that trait. Fake it til you make it.

I think, in a roundabout way, a similar message is shown here. As soon as he began to act as if he was in love (by taking his wife to shows, reading to her... all of the things that she loves), he found that he no longer had to act like he was in love - because he WAS in love again.

In the same way, if we pretend we are nice to strangers, kind, generous, patient (or any other virtue which we hope to possess), we will soon find out that we are no longer pretending, but we have become that person.

We are creatures of habit. Excellence, Aristole said, is a habit. If we struggle with patience, but then, in a sense, "pretend" that we are patient. we will become patient. We are what we repeatedly do.

Go And Play

I once read this story in a reflection:

"Recently I read an account of one of those martyrs, St. Saturus, who lived in the third century. Just before his death he had a vision of heaven. Saturus describes an intense light, a garden of lush flowers, tall majestic trees, angels in white robes, and the chanting of heavenly voices. In his vision Saturus actually kisses the face of God who touches the saint's face with his hand and then says, "Go and play."

I loved this story when I heard it. So often we take our lives so seriously... work, work, work, and we never think we have any leisure time or time to enjoy life. But this vision tells us that these things are important.

We need to take time to recreate, to enjoy our leisure time, and to enjoy the beauty of the earth. These activities relax our minds and bodies, and allow us to focus on the simple pleasures of life.

It is my belief that the better we can appreciate and enjoy the simple things in life, the better people we will be, and the happier people we will be.

So, go and play!

Scripture Sunday: Revelations 3:15

Every Sunday on this site I will take some time to look at a passage from the Bible that I like and think is great... though they could obviously be presented by themselves without further mention, I will throw my two cents in on what the verse(s) mean to me.

Today we look at a passage from one of the most debated books of the Bible - Revelations.

"I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot." (Revelations 3:15)

I think it is easy for us to fall in a rut, or to simply become complacent in our spiritual life and in our daily life. When we get comfortable, the tendency (for me, at least) is to coast through things figuring that they will stay the same.

However, God does not want us to get complacent in our life. We must remain hot, or on fire in our daily tasks and activities. If things are going well for you, it is not a time to slack, it is a time to grow in faith and love, and to constantly work on your love of others. In fact, it is the best time, because you will be able to focus more energy on it.

This passage seems to say that if you are not passionate in your pursuit of Christ, you may as well not know Him at all. If you are too secure in time of time of comfort, you will not be prepared for when things might not be going so well.

If you find yourself secure, then stay firm, now is the time to grow.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Living A Perfect Life

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

This will be the last post in the series, and it involves what I think is the most important lesson in the book, as well as one of Lewis' main themes from the book. That lesson is living a perfect life, or, perhaps more accurately, seeking to be like Christ and to follow His example in all things that we do.

Lewis says that this is the purpose of Christianity - sharing in the life of Christ. The way that we can do that is by doing the will of God, and following His example in all things, no matter how difficult.

"Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

Of course, we know that achieving such perfection is an impossible task in our earthly life. We will, no matter how holy we become, no matter how hard we try, fail to live up to the perfect standard of Jesus at some point in our life. However, that should not stop us from trying.

"But when a thing has to be be attemped, one must never think about the possibility or impossibility. Faced with an option question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very perfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone." (101)

We may also be intimidated by the enormity of the task, and feel like if (and) when we fail, we will be letting God down. However, it is of course not how many times you fall, but how many you get back up. If you are a great sinner, God is especially pleased with you when you repent and seek perfection, for He knows how far You have come. He can see in your heart - even if you fail, God will know if You are trying to do His will.

"And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

In my life, I find that I simply focus on trying to be "good," and hopefully it won't interfere with the things I really want to do and the things I really want to accomplish in my life. It seems to me that my natural way of thinking is that these things are in opposition somehow - who God wants me to be and who I think I am meant to be. Of course, this could not be further from the truth. God wants us to become the best that we can be and fulfill our purpose in life. If we find what we think our purpose in life is to be at odds with what direction God is pulling us in, well, chances are He is not the one that is confused. We must give up this way of thinking, that we will do God's will just enough to be "good," and then keep the rest for ourselves. In the end, that doesn't work.

"The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

"For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. (197-198)"

No matter how much progress we make, we are still going to encounter hardships and troubles in our quest for heaven. However, we should not let that get us down or discourage us or think that God is displeased with us and our feeble efforts. He may be merely calling us to a higher level, to a change and holiness we may have never thought possible.

"That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would not be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us." (204-205)

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Most people don't really take that literally, or they skip over that passage, but it is vitally important.

"When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199

"In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

This leads us to the final, overriding theme of this... we should seek perfection and to be Saints. Striving for anything else is not what God intends for us, it is not a proper use of our gifts. I will let Lewis say it, because I believe these are some of his most powerful, most challenging, most poignant lines in the entire book.

"I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

This will never be an easy task... we will always experience difficulties. But if we always strive for sainthood and to perfectly do the will of God, we can't help but became closer to Him and grow in holiness. If we can do this, we can enjoy eternal life with Him.

Amen.

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom Quotes

Mitch Albom's books The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie are very well-known and well read. I personally, at the risk of sounding an elitist, didn't care all that much for Tuesdays With Morrie (it was ok but certainly not life-changing), but I liked The Five People You Meet in Heaven more. Here are some selected quotes from the book:

- "'Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family you have yet to come to know.'" (49)

- "You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father." (93)

- "Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God, or a woman, a boy will devote himself to a father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation." (106)

- "Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand." (126)

- "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." (141)

- "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it." (173)

Do you have any favorite quotes from the book? Have you read the book? What did you think of it?

Attitude Determines Outlook

I have a book about some of the best travel stories for a certain year, and in one of them there is a passage that I thought was extremely interesting. It deals with some of the hardships that come with travel (especially a more extreme version of travel than most of us do)... and the difference in attitude that the author had as compared to the person he was writing about. He wrote:

"Thubrun is a modest and undemonstrative fellow, but he grew animated as he described for me the pleasures of spending weeks sleeping on hard floors, eaing strange and stringy foods, being days beyond the reach of editors and friends. I had always thought of that type of discomfort and dislocation as the price you paid to experience interesting places, but not part of the pleasure. For Thubron it was - he positively rejoiced in it - and for me it was the greatest revelation."

We see in this paragraph the difference that your attitude can have on a situation. On the one hand, the author thought of these types of things as necessary evils, unpleasant but something you had to go through. His friend had the opposite reaction. He looked at them as another adventure, another experience to be lived. It is not hard to guess who enjoyed the seemingly negative side effects of traveling more.

In the same way we can see things in our own life. We can see those unpleasantries as a burden to be overcome, or as part of the joy in living life and growing as a person.

For every time someone cuts you off in traffic, it can be a [very, very] frustrating experience, or it can be a time to grow in patience and understanding.

For every time something does not go your way or how you had planned it, you can view it as an annoyance and frustration, or you can view it as a learning experience and a chance to make something better of the situation.

Trying to find the bright side of any situation is going to make us much happier, much more pleasant people. We will be better friends, better co-workers, and just simply better people. A positive attitude breeds a positive outlook, and that makes all the difference.

Ave Maria

Absolutely beautiful.



Ave Maria Gratia plena
Maria Gratia plena
Maria Gratia plena
Ave, ave dominus
Dominus tecum

Benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus
Et benedictus fructus ventris
Ventris tui Jesus

Ave Maria
Ave Maria Mater dei
Ora pro nobis pecatoribus
Ora, ora pro nobis
Ora ora pro nobis pecatoribus

Nunc et in hora mortis
In hora mortis, mortis nostrae
In hora mortis nostrae
Ave Maria!

Scripture Sunday: Psalm 20: 8-9

Every Sunday on this site I will take some time to look at a passage from the Bible that I like and think is great... though they could obviously be presented by themselves without further mention, I will throw my two cents in on what the verse(s) mean to me.

Today we look at these verses in Psalms, which remind us that while earthly things fade away, God is eternal, and it is He alone who allows us to stand strong.

"Some rely on chariots, others on horses, but we on the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we stand strong and firm." (Psalm 20: 8-9)

We tend to put our hope and reliance in things such as money, other people, or on our work (among infinite other things). The problem is, eventually these things are going to let us down.

No money in the world can buy true fulfillment, no person in whom we trust and love will be perfect (except God), and no work is going to fulfill our full life mission and always fill us.

Only God can do that. It is only He who never fails us or lets us down, who is steadfast always. He might not always give us the answer that we want, but He is always listening and always doing what is best for us.

So we must always be conscious of who we rely on... if it is anything other than God, then we are in for a rude awakening at some point.

"Dream On" Sports Montage

One of the best sports montage videos you will ever see. Warning: goosebumps inducing...