The Pilgrim's Progress Reading Schedule-Revised 12/3

The following is the reading schedule. Please read the scheduled passage prior to coming to group.

Oct. 24 - through pg. 39
Nov. 1 - pg. 39 - 80
Nov. 8 - NO GROUP
Nov. 15 - pg. 80 - 120
Nov. 22 - THANKSGIVING - NO GROUP
Nov. 29 - 120 - 160
Dec. 6 - 160-191
Dec. 13 - CHRISTMAS PARTY @ PATTY'S
Dec. 20 - 191 - end

The Pilgrimage Begins Oct. 18th

As you may or may not know, the next DTS study will be The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. (No, not the guy with the blue ox. That's Paul, his brother.)

This will be a bit of a departure for us. Thus far we've studied Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory and Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. Unlike these, The Pilgrim's Progress is not strictly a theological work. It is a story, an allegory of the Christian life. Though we are bound to have good discussion and some deep questions, my hope is that this will give us an opportunity to share our own journeys and spur one another on. That is my prayer.

If you'd like to join us, we will have our first meeting on Thursday, October 18 at 7p.m. in the cafe upstairs at New Life. From that point we may well meet in coffee shops and other places in the community. Notices of a change in location will be emailed or posted here.

We have a great deal on the book for this series--$4, half off the retail price. I encourage you to order the version the rest of the group is using so that we can literally be on the same page in our discussions. If you'd like to order a copy, let me know.

Updated Schedule for "The Mind of the Maker"

Updated reading schedule for the remainder of The Mind of the Maker. Please have the selection listed with each date read by that date.

• Oct. 4 - Chapter 10 & 11

Get Into "The Mind of the Maker" This Week

The next book study starts this week--Thursday, August 2nd @ 7pm in the Cafe at New Life Lakeview. The book we are diving into is Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker.

Dead Theologians Society wrestles with works by, you guessed it, dead theologians. While we will typically deal with classic, well-known writers like C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (our last two studies), I think it's worthwhile to occasionally throw in an author we're less familiar with, someone who will stretch our discussion a bit and someone whose perspective we may not already know by osmosis through living in Christian community.

The following is a summary from the back cover of the 1987 version published by Harper San Francisco (this is the cheaper of the current paperback versions, by the way, at roughly $11):

This classic, with a new introduction by Madeleine L'Engle, is by turns an entrancing meditation on language; a piercing commentary on the nature of art and why so much of what we read, hear, and see falls short; and a brilliant examination of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. The Mind of the Maker will be relished by those already in love with Dorothy L. Sayers and those who have not yet met her.

A mystery writer, a witty and perceptive theologian, culture critic, and playwright, Dorothy Sayers sheds new, unexpected light on a specific set of statements made in the Christian creeds. She examines anew such ideas as the image of God, the Trinity, free will, and evil, and in these pages a wholly revitalized understanding of them emerges. The author finds the key in the parallels between the creation of God and the human creative process. She continually refers to each in a way that illuminates both.

Ch. 9: A Slip of the Tongue

This final chapter of this book, and a long-overdue post, is about Lewis' struggle to live out his faith. In it, he begins with a prayer that he prayed. "I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal; I found I had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal." He adds shortly thereafter, "I thought that what I had inadvertently said very nearly expressed something I had really wished."

On some level, if we are Believers (Christians, the Saved, however you want to put it), we truly want to live lives completely sold-out to God. We want to not even blink an eye when He calls us to do something outside of our comfort zone but to jump up and do it. We want long, intimated conversations with Him where we draw close to Him and allow Him to strip away the things that hinder our walk or make us to attached to this world.

And yet, we are attached to this world, and we do resist getting too close to Him. "I come into the presence of God with a great fear lest anything should happen to me within that presence which will prove too intolerably inconvenient when I have come out again into my 'ordinary' life," writes Lewis.

"Our temptation"--one that we've been looking at during New Life's "Revolutionary" series about the Sermon on the Mount--"is to to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted." If I go to church every Sunday, that should be enough, right? If I am charitable to the fellow at the Irving Park exit from Lake Shore Drive, I don't need to be charitable to my neighbor. If I see a woman stranded in a parking lot with a flat tire and it's really hot out, it's sufficient for me to offer up an earnest prayer for someone to help her.

The kicker, though, is that doing the minimum is not enough but neither is doing the maximum. "For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist's worlds are true: 'He must increase and I decrease.'"

Lewis goes to address those living "good" lives without God. "He cannot bless us unless He has us...If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead...Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?"

In closing, he acknowledges the struggle that this Christian life presents but exhorts us. "We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy (the French who cooperated with the Nazis) government. And this, so far I can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere--grant me to make and unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet."

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Thanks to everyone who joined us for these past 9+ weeks. It's been a true pleasure both growing as an individual through our study and growing as a little family together. I look forward to diving into this next study with you.

Ch. 8: On Forgiveness

A reminder to start off--the Thursday, June 21st, meeting of DTS will conclude The Weight of Glory (but not DTS). Please see the prior post and weigh in on which book/author you'd like to read next. We will be taking 2-3 weeks off, then beginning the next work. A schedule will be posted as soon as I nail down details.

In Matthew 6:12, Jesus says/prays, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." In this chapter, Lewis looks at the difference between forgiving and excusing, the giving of forgiveness and the asking of the same. What is stated plainly in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," is not really so simple, according to him.

While I didn't feel that Lewis' treatment of forgive vs. excuse was breaking any new ground, it was very interesting to me that he felt that we may well be guilty of fewer sins than we realize and not more. "Often He must know many excuses that we have never thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surpise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they had thought." Hmm... He adds that we often likely make excuses because we don't fully understand forgiveness.

"Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it."

On giving forgiveness, he continues.

"To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

"[T]o forgive the incessant provocations of daily life--to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son--how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand..."

Book Possibilities for Next Round of DTS

The following are some ideas for the next book to be read by the Dead Theologians Society. Feel free to add to the list or you can simply let me know if any of these grab you.

Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton

The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers

The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill

Others???

Keep in mind that we're looking for classics--tried and true works--but preferably not those we've already read individually. Also, while we want to avoid heresy, we may well read some books that we disagree with. Hopefully this will sharpen us and make for some lively discussion.