Ch. 1 or...Cruising the Cosmos in My Convertible

While I will continue to blog our weekly discussions, I have to say that it's a shame to give the Cliffs Notes version of the discussion. Everyone brings so many great contributions to the table. There's no way I could capture them all here. So...you'll just have to come see/hear it live!

We began our discussion of "The Weight of Glory" (the chapter not the book) with a discussion of our views of Heaven. Not surprisingly, personalities played a part in how each person thought about Heaven. For some, the hope is that it will be a very social place. We will see God, walk with Jesus, catch up with loved ones and get to know such people as the "thief on the cross." For others it is about getting questions answered and exploring the universe. One brother envisioned cruising the cosmos in a convertible with Jesus--repetitive choruses and joyous throngs aren't really an appeal. Lewis himself admitted that the "natural appeal of this authoritative imagery [the biblical description of heaven with streets of gold, etc.] is to me, at first, very small. At first sight it chills, rather than awakes, my desire." I love his honesty.

In the interest of space, I'll just share a few gems from our reading:

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." (emphasis mine)

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country [I love that], which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence...we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name."

"[I]t is a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere."

This may become a guiding proverb for the Dead Theologians Society: "If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know."

"The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads [regarding Heaven]. It is promised (1) that we shall be with Christ; (2) that we shall be like Him; (3) with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have "glory"; (4) that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and (5) that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe--ruling cities, judging angels, beings pillars of God's temple." Wow--how often do we think about any but the first of these?

Then Lewis shifts his attention. If Heaven is glorious and we are either destined for eternity there or in Hell, where should our present concerns lie?

"The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."

Think on that for a moment...