Posted on 05/04/2011 4:14:30 AM PDT by spirited irish
However, I can't think of an appropriate strip to post, so let me segue over onto Shakespeare:
Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my doe?
(Fairies appear shortly thereafter to pinch him...)
...speaking of that, Puck, shouldn't you be over in A Midsummer Night's Dream?
Cheers!
From That Hideous Strength:
The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom's own time, begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. Babble about the élan vital and flirtations with panpsychism were bidding fair to restore the Anima Mundi of the magicians. Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. And now, all this had reached the stage at which its dark contrivers thought they could safely begin to bend it back so that it would meet that other and earlier kind of power. You could not have done it with Nineteenth-Century scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and even if they could have been made to believe, their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt. MacPhee was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none of the people at Belbury knew what was happening; but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment. There was now at last a real chance for Fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall. If this succeeded, Hell would be at last incarnate. Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the diuturnity and power of evil spirits. Nature, over all the globe of Tellus, would become their slave; and of that dominion no end, before the end of time itself, could be certainly foreseen.
(Full disclosure: no paragraphs in original source, either. Don't blame me.)
Cheers!
Ping.
Lewis at his well done again.
I know . . . a literary style of paragraphing. Sheesh . . .
Time to quote C.S. Lewis again.
From That Hideous Strength:
The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom’s own time, begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result.
Babble about the élan vital and flirtations with panpsychism were bidding fair to restore the Anima Mundi of the magicians. Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress.
And now, all this had reached the stage at which its dark contrivers thought they could safely begin to bend it back so that it would meet that other and earlier kind of power. You could not have done it with Nineteenth-Century scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and even if they could have been made to believe, their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt.
MacPhee was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none of the people at Belbury knew what was happening; but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men?
The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment. There was now at last a real chance for Fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall. If this succeeded, Hell would be at last incarnate.
Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the diuturnity and power of evil spirits. Nature, over all the globe of Tellus, would become their slave; and of that dominion no end, before the end of time itself, could be certainly foreseen.
May God ever bless C. S. Lewis, so beloved to me as the exemplification of Christian Realism, as evident in his writings, in his quiet yet profoundly efficacious evangelism....
Thank you so very much, grey_whiskers, for letting Lewis speak to us again, through your post.
To me, the man is blessed, now and always.
Thank you so much, dear grey_whiskers, for bringing the excerpt to this thread!
I agree with both of you.
However, there’s a stray puzzle piece in my mental archives . . .
someone’s trip to Heaven included a dialogue with a famous Christian writer—I took it to mean C.S. Lewis though the Heaven visitor refused to say who it was. It seemed to me that their description MOST PROBABLY only fit Lewis. It is conceivable it was someone else, however.
Anyway—whoever it was—considered all their writings as dross, chaff, grossly inadequate for the cause of the Gospel. And, they were reportedly in the lower ranks of Heaven for whatever reason(s).
I remember reading that and being rather stunned at the time. An interesting mystery anyway.
The words of God are spirit and life. The words of men are neither spirit nor life.
For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12
AGREED.
And both points seemed to be the current heaven bound attitude of the graduated Christian writer.
Well.....some catch me in a Midsummers Day Dream....in which case....Puck isn’t the word they Expletive-deletive at me??????
BTTT and placemark for pingout!
ping!
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I like to ping Linda Kimball's articles after I've read them carefully so I can add my teensy little .02 tp the discussion - haven't had time to read this sufficiently but am pinging it out as it needs to get Out There to the list! I hope to get back in a bit after taking the time needed to digest it. One very small .01 - not even the old copper kind - I've seen on a church sign board "There's a God Shaped Hole in Everyones' Heart" and that is a fact. If we do not worship Him, we will worship something else, and that always leads to disaster.
.
Did you mean to write a comment or were just placemarking?
I’ve had a couple of really busy/awful days and will read Linda Kimball’s article carefully tomorrow. Her articles are like huge dinners with many dishes and need a bit of time and reflection to take in.
I have thought that Satan's real goal is not to be king of all things and to allow for rebellion throughout all of eternity but rather his goal is to simply vanish into absolutely nothingness. The Bible says that God's name is I AM. The opposite of being is not being, not existing. It is possible that Satan knows that he cannot overcome God and rule but rather than spend eternity in the lake of fire suffering horribly forever and ever he much rather the alternative which is to simply vanish. He may figure that if he can cause The LORD to fail in any way that all of existence would come apart and simply cease to exist. I have thought this because I have wondered, when Satan must know he is defeated, why he keeps trying and what possibly he would hope to accomplish. It is possibly that if The LORD failed in any way, which we know is impossible and will not happen, that all would cease to exist is his true hope and plan.
I seems that the professional anti-Catholics who make their living publishing and otherwise distributing lies about His Church think that as Christians siding with Satan on some issues is an acceptable expedient. Either that or they're only claiming to be Christian in order to reach audiences who would otherwise ignore them.
It's a real shame how easily Satan gathers allies who, while they claim to be following Christ, readily soak up Satan's lies. Satan will almost always nudge that sort of folks into accepting the same lie he told Eve, that their eyes have been opened and their own understanding is sufficient.
"Peter Jones, author of "Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America" connects progressive Christian Liberalism to ancient devilish Gnosticism, saying they are kindred-spirits. He points to progressive Liberalism as the carrier of the occult spiritual virus (satanic revolt) into the Body of the Church where it acts to divide Christians against each other."
When the only real limit on the interpretation of Scripture is, "to thine own self be true", Gnosticism is bound to creep in as a way for the individual to explain away the vast number of different interpretations that don't agree with their own. Claiming to have special knowledge makes it easy to ignore everything that might limit their behavior or in some way make them feel uncomfortable. From there, it's only a small step to accepting occult beliefs as equal to Christian beliefs.
Just planting a bookmark. ;-)
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