Saturday, August 14, 2010

Falling in Love with CS Lewis (part 2)

On God and Time:

"Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another.  If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not list to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten thirty.  Ten-thirty  -and every other moment from the beginning of the world  -is always the Present for Him.

Suppose I am writing a novel.  I write 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!' For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock.  But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all.  Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary.  I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.

God is not hurried along in the Time-steam of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel.  He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.  He does not have to deal with us in the mass.  You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created.  When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Falling in Love with CS Lewis

*All quotes from various works by CS Lewis

On God and Christian Creeds:
"If a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will be turning from something real to something less real: turning form real waves to a bit of coloured paper.  But here comes the point.  The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic.  In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together.  In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary.  As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses (of God) are far more fun than looking at a map (Christian doctrine).  But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America."