Living the Legacy of C.S. Lewis

A Word of Grace – January 30, 2012

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:54:11 +0000

Dear Friends:

This is the fourth message in a series on the Book of Haggai. Visit our blog for the first three messages in the series.

In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts (Hag 2:1-9).

There was likely no one still living in Jerusalem who had witnessed Nebuchadnezzar destroy Solomon’s temple and haul away its treasures 66 years before.

But their parents and grandparents had told them the stories of the beauty and splendor of the symbol of the Jewish people and its unique link to God. With each telling the glories of the temple must have grown in imagination.

Now, the people rebuilding the temple labored under the burden of that former greatness and began to regard their efforts to rebuild as pitiful and shabby by comparison.

Anyone who is going to move forward with the Lord is going to have to get their head out of the past. This may be difficult given the power of history to shape our allegiances and faith and the toxic contagion of bitter resentment over loss.

The past is one of the pieces of luxury baggage that a person rich in pride, guilt or hoarded memories must off-load if he or she is going to enter the narrow gate into the kingdom of heaven.

The people restoring the temple found their vision and materials did not match the stories and in increasing shame and doubt they began to carp, complain and criticize. Discouragement was setting in like an early frost blighting the unharvested crops.

Here is always a challenge– Are we serving God or are we serving the past?

It’s a challenge that must be faced by a spouse who daydreams of a carefree but lost youthful love to escape the realities of bills, diapers, runny noses and the demanding routines of marriage.

It is a spirit-draining temptation to believers longing for the soul-padded comfort of their former pastor and church family rather than thinking and praying through new perspectives and relationships.

Do we humble ourselves to God’s leading in the realities of the present or do we elevate our memories of what was or might have been to first place in our hearts and minds?

Nostalgia for the past is an idol that must fall. Jesus warned us to “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32), because she put her affinity for what lay behind her before following God and thereby forfeited the new life and faith that he was leading her family towards (Gen 19:26).

The children of Israel received a fresh supply of manna every day they were in the wilderness (Ex 16:13-35). They were not to hoard it because that would be a denial of the evergreen grace of God’s presence in the driest desert where their cravings for the savory stews of Egypt were a symptom of the addictive enslavement from which the Lord in his great mercy had delivered them.

Is it wrong to want what those who came before us possessed– a nice home and family, a profitable occupation, a beautiful place of worship, perhaps? Yes, if those desires are the only way we see and measure God.

We think we are restoring God when we seek to mend and revarnish the old furniture that decorated his dwellings with those who came before us, but we cannot relegate God to museums that we visit on the occasional field trip to marvel how it must have been then.

The people working on the temple wanted to restore the glory of the past. When they couldn’t match the material and craftsmanship, they deemed themselves failures and unworthy.

That’s the point when the Lord stepped in through Haggai with the jolt of reality in the form of a question. “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?” (Hag 2:1-3)

Then the Lord followed up with a cascade of grace–

Take courage . . . work, for I am with you according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt . . . My spirit abides among you; do not fear. I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor . . . the silver is mine, and the gold is mine . . . the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former . . . and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts (Hag 2:4-8).

The Lord wants the real thing, not replicas of the past, and he told them so. The very definition of the “real thing” is God’s presence with his people. He is doing something new and everything necessary to his purpose is at his disposal. The splendor of the temple is that he is there, not what we bring to it.

We study the past for evidence of God’s leading, but that evidence is just the dry bone’s of Ezekiel’s vision, unless God breathes new life into us and through us (Ez 37).

The problem with our nostalgic reverence for the past is that it keeps us from seeing what God is doing in us and for us and through us in the present. There is nothing that anyone had from God in the past that he is not willing to give to us now and more (John 14:12;1 Cor 2:8-10).

We are not step-children or poor relations depending on the spiritual “hand-me-downs” of our ancestors. No, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see everything has become new” (2 Cor 5:17).

How great is your God and what can he do for you? Well, you don’t know do you because he hasn’t finished yet. You can know as his child and his handiwork that “The one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). You can know that “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory”( Col 3:4).

His power to do these things is complete. “I tell you, ‘something greater than the temple is here,’” said Jesus referring to himself (Mt 12:6). It is Jesus Christ who is indestructible. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again” (John 2:20). The good news is that we are the living stones of that rebuilt temple (1 Pet 2:4-5).

Don’t resist his work of renewal by clinging to your past or by trying to repeat it in your relationships with the Lord and with others. Regardless of whether you consider your past, good, bad or indifferent, he has one thing to offer you for it–forgiveness, which indicates his judgment about what is required to deal with it.

In place of your past, he gives you a future with hope (Jer 29:11). Until then he gives you steadfast, unceasing love and new mercies every morning. Great is his faithfulness (Lam 3:22-23).

Next week’s message will discuss consecration.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

C.S. Lewis News Roundup

cslewisfoundation — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:51:51 +0000

Since there are several bits of Lewis related news this week, I’ve put them together into one blog post for your convenience.

Lewis on list of those who turned down honors from the Queen

Though I am pretty sure this was already commonly known in Lewis studies (I remember reading it somewhere), C.S. Lewis turned down the honor of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in 1952. Interestingly enough, it also forms another slight connection of Lewis to writer Aldous Huxley, who died on the same day as Lewis on November 22, 1963 (the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated). Huxley turned down a Knighthood in 1959.

Fantasy Author Neil Gaiman posts reprint of his speech on Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton

British author Neil Gaiman, known for his fantasy novels (several of which have been adapted for film), gave a speech in 2004 to the Mythopoeic Society on the influence of Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton on his ambition to be a writer and on their influence on his writing style. He reposted it on his blog today.

“The C.S. Lewis Minute” and “All About Jack: A C.S. Lewis Podcast”

If you haven’t caught them yet, William O’Flaherty, an alumnus of our Summer Institutes and several of our C.S. Lewis Retreats in Texas, has been busy podcasting on C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, including interviews with various C.S. Lewis scholars. He has two podcasts:

“The C.S. Lewis Minute,” in which he gives a quick 60 second audio piece on Lewis (about two a week)
The new “All About Jack: A C.S. Lewis Podcast,” in which he hosts longer interviews with authors of books related to C.S. Lewis.

He has also recently published an article at The Herald Standard titled “The Lasting Legacy of C.S. Lewis.”

A Word of Grace – January 23, 2012

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:42:21 +0000

Dear Friends:

This is the third message in a series on the Book of Haggai. See our blog for the last two messages in the series.

Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of the prophet Haggai, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, saying, I am with you, says the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month (Hag 1:12-15).

Several years ago, I was invited to speak for chapel service at a Christian university. The topic was left up to me and I chose to speak on the Apostle Paul’s declaration to the Galatians: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 5:14). I delivered a 25 minute exposition of the Gospel as viewed through the lens of this verse.

From the response, my talk was well received, but one student’s comments have haunted me ever since. He was a senior. “Thank you for talking to us about Jesus,” he said. “I thought I would hear about him a lot when I chose to enroll here. We long to hear the Gospel, but they keep sending us sociologists.”

A young Christian attorney recently told me about her displeasure with the sermons of a popular pastor at a large congregation in our community. “There’s no substance,” she said. He tells us what he thinks we want to hear, but there’s nothing to challenge us to go deeper with God and meet the secular mind-set head on. It’s like being in the audience of an “Oprah” show.

No one could make these criticisms of Haggai. He didn’t mince words or deliver a carefully nuanced sermon on the stresses of meeting the demands of home and business. He apparently gave them an “elevator conversation,” not a sermon.

An “elevator conversation” is a 15-30 second pitch to a prospective customer, employer, or donor that seeks to impress them with the critical elements of your story and engage them with it. Haggai told Zerubbabel, the governor, and Joshua, the high priest that it was time for the people to return to mission and build the Lord’s house instead of tending to their own interests. Having the wrong priorities was causing them to work harder but receive less for their efforts and it would only get worse with drought and famine.

It was a terse, tough message that caught the attention of the leaders and the people. For twenty years, the remnant of Judah living in Jerusalem had lived complacent lives of religious compliance. They showed up at the temple on Sabbaths and festival days, but seemed indifferent that the place was in ruins. They had long delayed fulfilling their calling to restore it and proposed to delay some more.

Their philosophy apparently was “the Lord helps them who help themselves. Let us get our house in order, and then we will be able to support the Lord’s work.” This idea seems logical and practical, but it puts us ahead of the Lord in planning and execution, and that is always wrong. The Lord does not require us to save up to serve him. He is Adoni-Jireh, “The Lord will provide” (Gen 22:13-14). He is our shepherd, “and we shall not want.”

“Take care of your business and the Lord will take care of you” is not an idea found in Scripture. “Wait on the Lord,” is a common instruction of God. God leads and we follow. Until we hear from God, we stay put. That’s the deal.

What do we do while we wait? First, let’s talk about what we don’t do. We don’t get busier. That’s distraction, not waiting.

We don’t try to earn his favor by better religious performance and bigger offerings. That’s attempted bribery and an insult to grace. The Lord explicitly hates our religious performance and big offerings without a heart committed to God and the justice and righteousness that honors him (Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:8).

The Jews in Jerusalem had tried those things but were left empty of purse and soul with a drought and famine coming on. Even if performed with the best of intentions, good done in human strength and resources is not God-honoring as we know from the stories of men and women like Cain and Abel, Abraham and Hagar, King Saul and Samuel, King Uzziah, Mary and Martha, and Peter with his blustering declarations and slashing sword.

What we do while we wait is to listen for God’s voice and when we hear it, we respond with our “Yes.”

What God wants from his people is not mere religious compliance, but obedience–the whole-hearted action that comes from carefully listening to God and yielding to his will. This is what Samuel observed to a disobedient King Saul –

Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obedience to the voice of the Lord?

Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice

and to heed better than the fat of rams (1 Sam 15:22).

The people heard Haggai. The Lord’s voice echoed in the tired hollows of their souls with the ring of truth. They paid reverent attention to the Lord, not an easy thing to do at the end of summer with what harvest there was to be coming on.

Then Haggai spoke again. Just as the key to hearing from the Lord is listening, we will not continue to hear from him without obedience. “As it is written, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion’” (Heb 3:15). We cannot expect to maintain a relationship with the Lord when we ignore his voice and spurn his direction. Life from the Lord is a sustained flow, not an intermittent stream.

The message that Haggai carried was simple and affirming to convicted and repentant hearts. “‘I am with you,’says the Lord.” (Hag 1:13). It doesn’t seem like much, but the assurance of God’s presence is everything for a people who have exhausted themselves and reached their limits, who realize that they got it wrong and are sorry. It is the evergreen truth of an eternal God whose saving presence is always with us in the forgiveness and mercy of Emmanuel–God with us (Isa 7:14).

New life followed for the people. The Lord stirred up the spirit of the leaders and the people. Within 23 days of the time that Haggai called them to revival, “they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts” (Hag 1:14).

This is a timeless story of grace. I have lived a chapter of it myself. I know that I never tire of it. Proud men and women do their best, but find out it isn’t enough. Worn and broken, the Lord knows they are ready to listen. He calls them back. If they say, “Yes,” he gives them new life and spirit and the assurance of his continuing presence.

It is a testament to the strength of pride and the deception of sin, that so few of us say that “Yes.” The Lord is stronger than anything that would take us from him. If we trust him and say “Yes,” we will receive the light and the strength to make it all the way home.

Next time in this series we will explore the spiritual problem with nostalgia.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Article by Oxbridge Alumnus David Theroux – “Secular Theocracy”

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:54:13 +0000

David Theroux, President of the Independent Institute and an alumnus of our 2011 C.S. Lewis Summer Institute (“Oxbridge 2011″), recently posted the second part of his article “Secular Theocracy:
The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny.” In it, he discusses issues of statism, religion and the public square, and secularism. Special mention is made of the views of authors C.S. Lewis, Rodney Stark, and William Cavanaugh. You can view the article at the Independent Institute’s website.

And if you didn’t catch it, here is David’s article from August 2011 on “C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism.”

A Word of Grace – January 16, 2011

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:00:17 +0000

Dear Friends:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house. Then the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You have looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? says the Lord of hosts. Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the soil produces, on human beings and animals and on all their labors (Hag 1:2-11)

Nebuchadnezzar took everything of value from Jerusalem and burned the city. The exiles returned to devastation. They had to rebuild their homes, shops, government buildings, temple, walls, gates, cisterns, and streets from the ground up.

The work ethic of “these people” was excellent. They planted crops and established businesses. They labored to put roofs over the heads of their families and food on the table. At the end of the day, they hurried home to do the kinds of things that one can only do at home.

What’s not to like about this picture of hard work, entrepreneurship, and family values?

They were prudent too. “Let’s build our homes and our businesses first and then turn to rebuilding the Lord’s house,” was their thoughtful plan. Most observers, then and now, would say that they had the right priorities.

So why were these people struggling so much, getting little return on their efforts; working harder, but getting less? Why was it a dry time for them physically and spiritually?

The people had returned to Jerusalem eighteen years before with a mission –

Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people — may their God be with them! — are permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel — he is the God who is in Jerusalem; and let all the survivors, in what ever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:2-4)

Now on a hot August day of worship and reflection, the prophet Haggai stepped forward to state the obvious — the people were off mission. Their good was getting in the way of God’s best. The flaw in their “no margin, no mission” strategy was that there was never enough margin for mission.

The single most overlooked fact about our life with God is that it begins with God not us. This is the secret of grace expressed in Jesus Christ– “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things come into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:1-4). Grammarians, please note John’s prepositional phrases “with God,” “in God,” “through God”, and “without God,” to gain perspective on the Divine order of life.

When we forget this Divine order and reverse the role of the creature and its Creator, we live graceless, laboring lives full of chaff, but precious little wheat. Haggai was speaking to this grim spiritual and material reality. “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared . . . You have looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? . . . Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses” (Hag 1:7-9).

What is God supposed to fill if we are so full of ourselves? How do we get to God’s new business if our agenda is so crowded with our never-ending old business? We use up our lives with our exertions for our purposes and obtain,at best, nothing more than mere survival when the Lord wants to give us life.

The inevitable result is drought and famine, God said through Haggai. “Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land, on the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the old, on what the soil produces, on human beings and animals, and on all their labors” (Hag 1:10-11).

The popular concept of “idolatry” conjures up thoughts of sybaritic pagans dancing around wood and stone effigies in the woods. In truth, an idol is anything that takes our affections and worship from God. Most hard-working, virtuous people can’t conceive of themselves as idolators, but even work and virtue can become idols if our focus is on our performance rather than on God’s grace.

This can get really tough when our idol is something good like home and family. The most criticism that I ever received for these messages is for one I wrote many years ago on the idolatry of family. My point was summarized, perhaps too tersely by the statement, “We aren’t called to focus on the family. We are called to worship God and trust our families and their values to him in obedience.”

You would have thought that I had blasphemed Jesus on the Cross which really proved my point that the family can be an idolatrous substitute for God. Many of those writing critical comments turned out to be the children of pastors who had ignored and neglected their spouses and children on the pretext that they were doing the Lord’s business. Their emails revealed a lot of pain and anger toward God and their fathers who they kind of had all mixed together, again proving my point.

My response to them was, “If your dad found the temptations of pulpit, the flattery of church members, and addressing other people’s problems more alluring than being home, changing diapers, washing dishes, doing yard work, playing games, and talking with your mom and you, that’s not God’s fault. That’s your dad’s idolatry. I am writing about those who worship a rigid, formulaic image of family rather than the God who blesses us with family and the grace to live within and outside of family. Until you forgive your dad and move on with God, you are perversely making an idol of your dad, expecting him to give what only God can give you.”

These are hard truths, but righteous ones. If God doesn’t come first in our lives, what does?

The people that Haggai was addressing had been exiled to a place where they had no roots and few possessions. Their interest in building and establishing solid homes is understandable, but doing so at the expense of God is not acceptable.

Putting our security and comfort ahead of our service to the Lord does not just dishonor him. When these people said, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house,” they were not trusting him to take care of them. Their hurry and busy activity were a hedge against the possibility that their faith was misplaced, which means, of course, that it wasn’t faith. Here’s the rub–”Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6).

Without faith, the attendance by the hard-working, home-loving citizens of Jerusalem at the religious services that hot August day was only “lip service.” God called them out on it through Haggai.

God calls us out on it as well. Do you ever wonder what God is telling you if you are working harder, but getting less for it, sowing a lot of seeds, but reaping little, eating and drinking, but finding no satisfaction in it, clothing yourself, but finding yourself as cold of soul as you are empty in heart, and your take-home rewards keep being blown away? What is God saying to you if your life is dry and unproductive?

God is calling you to honor him by giving priority to his plans and purposes in your life. That’s probably not a surprise, but are you listening? Do you get it? What are you going to do about it?

The next message in this series on Haggai will discuss what it means to say “Yes” to God.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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A Sonnet for The Kilns

cslewisfoundation — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:38:36 +0000

As I write this, I am staying at The Kilns as a Scholar in Residence through the C.S. Lewis Foundation. It’s my first visit to The Kilns, and it’s marvelous.

The house has been lovingly restored by volunteer labor to be much as possible how it was when C.S. Lewis and his brother Warnie lived here. None of the original furniture is here (it was sold off at auction at Lewis’s death), but I think that’s perhaps how Jack would have liked it, for as it is now, The Kilns is not a museum, but rather a working house for scholars. Some are long-term (perhaps writing a dissertation), some short-term (like me) working on an article or book; but in any case, the house is lived-in and filled with conversation and Christian fellowship as it was in Lewis’s day.

Here is a little sonnet that I wrote a few days after my arrival at The Kilns. You can click on the title to hear my reading of the poem.

Afternoon sunlight on The Kilns. Copyright Holly Ordway 2012.

The Kilns

The wind is howling round the eaves, and through
The bare-branched trees that raise their slim brown arms
Aloft beside the still-green hedge. The view
Is not the same as Jack’s once was: less farm
And more suburban bustle; yet I’d say
He’d laugh and let it go (who hated hymns
But kept to his own parish church to pray
And sing beside his neighbors). Now within
These well-loved walls, I brew a pot of tea
And settle in a shabby chair to read.
The wear of years means that it cannot be
Exactly as it was : nor is there need.
So heed the call of “Further up, and in–”
This is a place where good work can begin.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Holly Ordway. Photo copyright: Lancia Smith, www.lanciaesmith.com

Dr. Holly Ordway

Dr. Holly Ordway has a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an MA in English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an MA in Christian Apologetics from Biola University.

Dr. Ordway’s book Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith (Moody Publishers, 2010) chronicles her intellectual and emotional journey from atheism to faith in Christ as her Lord and Savior.

She speaks and writes regularly on literature, especially fantasy literature and poetry, and literary apologetics.

She is a professor of composition and literature at MiraCosta College in North County San Diego, and is a member of the teaching ministry at St. Michael’s by-the-Sea in Carlsbad, CA.

Her favorite authors are C.S. Lewis and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and she considers a really good cup of coffee to be one of life’s simple pleasures.

Her blog, from which this post was used with her permission, is Hieropraxis. In it, she explores the intersection of literature and faith, and of reason and imagination.

A Word of Grace – January 9, 2012

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:10:13 +0000

Dear Friends:

In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest: Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house (Haggai 1:1-2).

The first day of the month was typically a day of special religious observance for the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem in 539 BCE from their Babylonian captivity by the permission of the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius (Ezra 1:1-4; 5:17-6:5). That meant the people gathered at the temple on the day our contemporary calender would show as August 29, 520 BCE. The problem was that the temple was still in ruins.

It was a big problem because one of the reasons that the Jews were allowed to return was to rebuild the temple that had been plundered and burned by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE (2 Kings 25:8-17). Reconstructing the temple, the religious, economic, and administrative center of the Jewish people was the mission. They people began the building project with enthusiasm (Ezra 1:8; 2:6-8; 5:14-16). But nineteen years later, not much had happened which was readily apparent when they met at the ruins for worship.

It was a time of drought and struggle (Hag 1:11). The prophet Haggai challenged the civil and religious leadership that the people were resetting the priority from the mission to their own convenience to the dishonor of God and their hurt. In the nature of prophets, he was kind of “in-your-face” about it, speaking truth to power. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the message of Haggai was received by the leaders and the people with open minds and hearts. His message and the positive response it received is recorded in the Old Testament book that bears his name.

That book still rings with instructive and inspirational truth for men and women everywhere who are torn between putting God first and what they perceive to be their own best interests of work and home. Haggai loudly and clearly speaks to those who are conflicted about fidelity to mission and the pursuit of secular success.

The next six Word of Grace messages will be drawn from Haggai. I began to read and meditate on his message ten months ago while I was recovering from surgery. Haggai makes me think about the difference between the way things are and the way that they should be which is always the path on which God leads his people.
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The Jews had returned to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, remarkable men of prayer and study who listened for God’s direction and communicated it effectively to their followers. Ezra was committed to reawaken the people to confession, repentance and action in the service of God. Nehemiah was focused on the rebuilding of the temple and the city of Jerusalem. Together, God used them to ignite the last spiritual revival recorded in the Old Testament.

Now, Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the high priest were in charge, but were they leaders or managers?

There is an uncountable amount of literature on what makes a leader and how to be a leader. I have often wondered about the dearth of literature on how to be a good follower since that is the category that most of us are in. Perhaps the lack of instruction on followership is due to the fact that leaders are typically blamed for the poor performance of their followers.

Most of the leadership literature is really about being an effective manager of people and projects. Management is to leadership what compliance is to obedience — transactional versus transformational.

Managers have subordinates. Leaders have followers. Leaders tend to have a vision and inspire their followers to pursue it. Managers have objectives and direct people to achieve them.

There isn’t a question of whether leadership is good while management is bad. Both are necessary to the success of any organization.

I have worked with several truly visionary leaders who accomplished astonishing things, but left chaos in their wake because they didn’t plan for their successors or develop and implement systems of management that would support their success. Many of the managers I have known were competent, reliable, honest administrators who kept their teams focused on the accomplishment of the mission and kept the accounts balanced.

Zerubbabel, Joshua and Nehemiah led out in the erection of an altar in the temple on their arrival in Jerusalem, nineteen years before. They began the work of reconstruction and had completed about half the job.

But on the day of Haggai’s first prophecy, it was questionable whether Zerubbabel or Joshua had any leadership or management ability. The mission had stalled under Samarian opposition. The people were now concentrating on their own work and their own property over the restoration of God’s house.

The people still gathered at the temple for worship even though it lacked a complete roof and walls and furnishings. This made it something like the old cathedrals and chapels one finds around Europe, a romantic monument to a former devotion. What passes for worship in such places is more of a nod to history than an expression of active faith. God moved through Haggai to change that situation.

Scripture gives no personal details about Haggai except to label him a prophet, one who speaks the word of God to a particular people, place and time (Ezra 5:1; 6:14). His message carried one timeless point–we must put God first in our lives over jobs and possessions.

The fact that Haggai’s message endures, even though his biography has been erased from history, is proof of the integrity of that message as the word of God. In the words of the prophet Isaiah –

All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Isaiah 40:6-8)

Haggai’s words must have pierced Zerubbabel to the heart. He was a descendant of King David. His grandfather Jehoiachin was a king of Judah who lives in Scriptural infamy with the words, “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as his father had done” (2 Kings 24:9; 1 Chron 3:16-19)

Jehoiachin had surrendered Jerusalem and the temple to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (2 Kings 24:11). Nebuchadnezzar stripped the temple of its treasures and took them along with Jehoiachin, his family and his retinue back to Babylon. It was one of the lowest times in the history of the Jews, memorialized in the scathingly bitter Psalm 137.

A past like that usually changes a person for better or worse. It can motivate a descendant to live a better life or relegate him to a heritage of shame. There is great danger in this. In my experience, a leader or a manager with something to prove about their reputation will push off the back of someone else. People get hurt when the person at the top is driven to overcome their past, to look good or to maintain a family legacy.

Will the leader take counsel? If so, from whom will the leader take that counsel? Those are critical questions. Insecurity, prejudice and pride all threaten to close off the leader or compel him to listen only to those who agree with him. A secure, grounded leader will pay more attention to the message than the messenger and put the issue before the Lord in prayer. This requires an open mind.

Nehemiah sought the Lord’s guidance in prayer. Ezra was a peerless student of the word of God. Both of them actively sought to know and do God’s will and the result was revival. What would Zerubbabel and Joshua do?

The Lord spoke to these leaders through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. The Lord encouraged them to “take courage” and “work, for I am with you” (Hag 2:4). Zerubbabel was told that the mission would be completed, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,’says the Lord of hosts” (Zech 4:6). Joshua was confronted with his sins by Satan who accused him of unworthiness, but the Lord took away the filth and guilt of his past and clothed him in the clean garments of righteousness (Zech 3).

An insecure leader can misread such encouraging guidance as Divine approval to do whatever the leader desires. At worst, he or she will reject such counsel out of pride as unnecessary. In reality, an insecure leader needs to offer his fears and pride to God for conversion to humility and to learn two all-purpose prayers–

(1) Make haste, O God to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me.
(Ps 70:1)

(2) Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
(Matt 6:10).

A secure and godly leader will gratefully receive the prophetic encouragement of a Haggai and a Zechariah as the empowerment of grace for the task at hand. Zerubbabel and Joshua proved to be secure and godly leaders. They took the Lord at his word, and finished the rebuilding of the temple. Their faithfulness became one more step toward the coming of the Messiah. In ten generations, Jesus would be born and in his genealogy as recorded by Matthew is Zerubbabel (Mt 1:13).

I spoke with a young leader last week about his future. “You have the right education, intelligence and heart for God,” I told him. “Between now and then you simply need to seek God’s wisdom and apply your good sense, but remember that leading is always about people. Sometimes you will see quite clearly what needs to be done, but your people won’t. Your job is to get them to move, but prepare to have your heart broken more than once when their fear and self-interest will cause them to want to settle for far less than the best. Don’t let that stop you from going for the best. Your heart will heal and grow stronger. I know this from experience.

“Stick with God and God will stick with you. At the end of the day, leadership is about faithfulness to God, not giving people what they think they want. You’ll need to show them that what they really need is God.”

That’s the message of Haggai which is also the message of Jesus who says: “Do not worry, saying, ‘what will we eat?’or ‘What will we drink?’or ‘What will we wear?’For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6:31-33).

Next week we will take a look at how the stress of living distorts our priorities and what to do about it.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Tolkien Passed Up for Nobel Prize

cslewisfoundation — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:52:51 +0000

Newly released documentation about the 1961′s Nobel Prize for Literature selection process was just released. Among the revelations: that C.S. Lewis nominated his friend and fellow Inkling, J.R.R. Tolkien, for The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien’s nomination was rejected by the committee, with one of the committee members stating that Tolkien’s prose “has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality.” Also rejected for consideration that year were Robert Frost and E.M. Forster.

2011 Summer Institute Audio DVD Available

cslewisfoundation — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:11:01 +0000

Our 2011 Summer Institute (Oxbridge) audio recordings are now available.

We are selling the full set of 20 recordings on MP3 Data DVD for $80 (plus tax for those who live in CA).

The DVD includes MP3 files that can be played on computers, most DVD and Blu Ray players, and several video game consoles. While the disc will not play on CD players, each file on the disc may be burned to an individual CD for replay or can be transferred to an MP3 player/Ipod.

Click here for more information and an order form.

A Word of Grace – January 2, 2012

cslewisfoundation — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:41:32 +0000

Dear Friends:

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun till dine;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

– Robert Burns, 1788

A lot of us will make resolutions this New Year’s weekend. Behavioral scientists who study these things say that 85% of those resolutions will not lead to permanent change.

Why don’t we change that outcome this year by making a resolution with truly transformative power. We can resolve to forgive.

Some years ago, on the afternoon of New Year’s eve, I gathered with some colleagues at their office to watch the DVD of a movie that we were interested in discussing. We discovered that someone had stolen the office’s DVD player over the holidays. We had no computer available satisfactory to the task. It seemed that our gathering was for naught.

A couple of nights before, I had outlined a study of Jesus’ great parable of forgiveness found in Matthew 18:23-35 and Paul’s insightful advice to two women in conflict found in Philippians 4:1-7.

My outline was handwritten on a couple of sheets from a legal pad. I pulled it out and said, “Here’s something we could talk about.”

Copies were made and we worked through the Scriptures for a couple of hours. The points we covered can be summed up as follows:

One has to know the extent of the debt before one can forgive it and write it off the books. There has to be an accounting or else forgiveness is nothing more than a sham (Matt 18:23).
We owe an enormous debt to God far above our ability to repay it that will strait-jacket us forever, but that doesn’t stop us from begging God to let us repay it (Matt 18:24-26)
God is merciful to us and forgives us without limit (Matt 18:27)
Pride and greed can cause us to force payment and refuse forgiveness to those who owe us relatively petty debts (Matt 18:28-31).
God’s mercy which is limitless and timeless is withdrawn from us when we don’t forgive our debtors because we are putting ourselves in the place of God and holding our interests to be more important than His. He allows us both the freedom of our choice and its consequences (Matt 18:32-33).
Our unforgiveness leads God “to hand us over” to imprisonment and torture until our debt to God is repaid which is never going to happen. By not forgiving those who have sinned against us we are chaining our hearts to the time, place and person who injured us. Every time we think about our injury and the person(s) who owe us redress for it the chain of unforgiveness pulls tight against our heart and opens the wound again to our torment (Matt 18:34).
Our Father in heaven will leave us to our imprisonment to the past and its torments if we don’t forgive our brother or sister from our heart (Matt 18:35) That is because our Father is eternal and beyond time and our insistence that the past must be redressed before we can move on keeps us fixed in time without the release of his mercy. We are giving the person(s) who we are not forgiving more power over us than we yield to God. This is why our prayers are ineffective when we refuse to forgive because we aren’t willing to move in God’s direction (Matt 6:12,14-15; Mark 11:23-25).
We really do suffer wounds and hurts and it is hard to forgive them in our human frailty. We need the Lord’s power to do that. That’s why Paul advised Eudoia and Syntyche, two women believers in the Philippian church who were in some kind of conflict, to get their focus off of each other and on to the Lord in praise and prayer to know his surpassing peace (Phil 4:1-7). In other words, look to God in forgiving, not the person who hurt you.

One of the persons present was Brad, a talented, effective executive known for his quiet, but intense devotion to God and his family, and for his integrity. Brad listened intensely, but didn’t say a whole lot during the discussion. A week later he told me that his heart was convicted of his need to forgive. He left our meeting and went to look for his estranged brother who he hadn’t spoken with in years because of betrayal and disgust.

Brad couldn’t find his brother, so he moved on to a New Year’s Eve party where he asked to speak privately with a friend from whom he’d withdrawn after some offense. He reconciled with the friend who was open and contrite himself. They prayed together in worship and new found fellowship.

Later on, Brad did speak with his brother and began to let go of the hardness of his heart toward him.

Even though I hadn’t known that Brad was troubled by these things, his forgiveness noticeably lightened his spirit and softened his heart. Forgiving those who had wronged him permanently brightened his outlook toward the Lord, others and himself. I was stunned by his testimony because I thought I had made that outline on a whim and had no intention of discussing it when we gathered to watch the movie. Clearly, God had other plans and I was the courier of his message that afternoon.

Love is God’s nature and forgiveness is his policy (1 John 4:7-21). He has forgiven us our offenses even before we’ve asked him to do so (Rom 5:6-11). He calls us to drop our bitterness, righteous indignation, anger, bickering and slander and replace it with the same kind, tender-hearted forgiveness that he showed us in love when “he gave himself up for us.” (Eph 4:31-5:2).

Jesus Christ has specifically given his followers the authority of the Holy Spirit to forgive the sins of anyone (John 20:22-23). If we refuse to do so, what do we think we are going to do with those sins and those sinners? We are going to sentence ourselves to jail and to torture for the offenses committed against us. How absurd is that?

I shared God’s Word on forgiveness with Brad, but its power was unleashed when he chose to apply it in his relationships. Forgiveness cleans out the clutter of resentment from our hearts and allows God the room and light to do his healing work.

It is a wonderful thing to be forgiven and our Father in heaven gladly runs to forgive us. But he wants us to be full participants in his mercy and his joy by passing it on to others (Luke 15:11-32). This will transform our prayers from scribbled notes in the complaint box to bold access to the throne of grace and mercy in our time of need (Heb 4:16).

Forgiving those who have offended and hurt us breaks the chains to the past that hold us back from eternity. Forgiveness is every bit as much about releasing the forgiver as it is setting free the forgiven.

If you want to look toward the future with hope and assurance, then resolve to start 2012 with forgiveness. It is the one New Year’s resolution guaranteed to move you forward.

I can’t tell you that this won’t be a struggle. Forgiveness, like healing, is a process in most cases, not an instant cure. It takes time for calluses and scars to form over abrasions, wounds and breaks. It can take a while to peel and strip that defensive tissue away.

You may be so knotted up or damaged that you do not even know where to begin. I suggest starting right there by telling God the truth: “Lord, I know I need to forgive and I want to be free from the past, but I don’t know where or how to start. I am not even sure that I want to forgive. Your Word promises that “If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV). Please do your creation work in and through me to change my heart to what you want, not what I want or what the person who hurt me wants. May your love have its way with me. In your holy name, I say, “Yes!”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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