For a class at our church, I am reading the book, Every Thought Captive by Richard L. Pratt, Jr. It is basically a presuppositionalist apologetic of the Christian faith. We have just gotten past the introductory chapters and into what I call the good stuff. During my weekly reading, this caught my eye:
As the restored image of God, redeemed man seeks to do justice to God’s revelation in all of creation and in Scripture. He realizes that it is not enough to know that rain is the condensation of evaporated water. He asks what rain is and how it reveals the character and will of God. If there were no sin, this would be no problem. Man could simply observe the world and know God through it. Yet, because of sin, “it is needful that another and better help be added to direct us aught to the very Creator of the universe.”¹ That better help is Scripture. The Christian is committed to searching the Scriptures for the truths leading to the knowledge of salvation and also those truths leading to the knowledge of creation as it reveals God and His will to man. This is not to say that the Bible becomes a textbook of natural science,as if the Christian did not need to look at the world and could merely read his Bible and arrive at scientific truth. Instead, the Scriptures lay down general principles on which every investigation of the world must rest. The true knowledge of rain, for instance, reveals to us the mercy of God and how God expects us to treat enemies with kindness (Matthew 5:45f). Of course, scientific investigation into the nature of rain will intensify and clarify the Christian’s understanding of these things but true knowledge of rain is discovered by investigation resting on and governed by the Scriptures. As a restored creature, the Christian seeks to maintain the Creator-creature distinction…and thereby gives proper place to the revelation of God. (emphasis mine)
Do we, as Christians, really examine all of nature and life for what it reveals about our Lord’s character and will as made known to us in the Bible? Do we see the rain and ask what it tells us about God? We should.
¹John Calvin, Institutes, I,6,1.
This weekend, Bossy Boy was working on his math lesson. These lessons are usually a time of great struggle for us, because Bossy Boy has decided that this area–math–is where he will test our authority as parents. He will pretend he cannot do things he has been doing all year. He will spend 3 hours on 45 minutes of work. Although he has known his times tables since last summer, he will pretend he cannot multiply 6 x7. Math, in other words, is not fun for him, and it should be since it reveals the mind of our Creator.
In any case, this weekend, Bossy Boy had a problem like the one that follows:
I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t laughed so hard in ages! When we got through laughing, my husband and I were informed that his teacher had told him to answer this way. As a suspicious parent of a boy who has tried to pull the wool over my eyes on many occasions, I have to admit I didn’t believe him, but later, I discovered from a classmate’s parent that his teacher had indeed told the class to answer this way. I don’t know if I am more amused or appalled, but I have chosen to enjoy the laughter. 
Maybe she, too, was driven to her wit’s end!
Update: Apparently Bossy’s teacher simply read the problem incorrectly and thought the text asked what would probably happen. In any case, she corrected it with the children today, and my husband and I continue to get a chuckle out of Bossy’s answer.
For the last week or so, I have seen this sign at a church on my way home.
Okay, okay, I really generated THIS one online, but only because I wanted to make a photo of the actual one yesterday and they had changed it.
The final selection of quotes in a series of three posts from Mere Christianity:
On faith:
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.
After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can only be done by God.
Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
On giving:
If our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. 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 charitable expenditure excludes them. (Lewis denotes charities as particular cases of distress among your own relatives, friends, neighbors or employees to which God forces your attention.)
On failure:
After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again…(from them) we learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection…Virtue–even attempted virtue–brings light; indulgence brings fog.”
On pride:
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only of having more of it than the next man.
It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.
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.
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God.
Pleasure in being praised is not Pride…The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, “I have pleased him [him being someone you rightly wanted to please]; all is well,” to thinking, “What a fine person I must be to have done it.”
More to think about from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity…
On marriage:
The idea that “being in love” is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all.
A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way.
Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.
But of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. 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…the grace which both…ask, and receive, from God.
On loving others:
That is what is meant in the Bible by loving [someone]: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him or saying he is nice when he is not.
I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them…perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco.
The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbour; act as if you did.
On His love for us:
But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.
