WARM YOURSELF.

I listen to far more books than I read because I’m in the car so much. I’m wading through C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and it’ll be worth three more reads at minimum before next year. Needless to say, something jumped out at me as he discussed how free will factors into our existence.

In this particular instance he used the illustration of fire and the natural consequence of encountering it closely and directly. He said that there are certain indisputable outcomes associated with getting close to fire, namely that you are warmed or, in extreme cases, burned. The fire, he said, can’t offer you warmth or injury; it can only be. Proximity does the rest. He referenced a geyser to illustrate the same general point noting that one gets sprayed based again on how near one chooses to get to the fountain.

It’s the simple analogies, right? The visuals effectively articulated how experiencing joy, peace, abashed bravery in the face of certain peril, etc. are all byproducts of moving closer to God. But there are knockoffs of these benefits which can be gained sans the Divine. At least that’s where I went mentally as I listened to the YouTube clip. There is a satisfaction that impedes us, a “cheap impostor” posing as virtue.  In his book Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, N.T. Wright said, “…Made for spirituality we wallow in introspection. Made for joy we settle for pleasure. Made for justice we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment…”  And I take this to mean that we expect God to deliver to us things core to our being without proximity to him. More and more it would seem that people are repulsed by the Christian God with his parameters and fraudulent representatives. But oddly enough, if you take sports for instance, many would agree that travel youth sports is corrupt. Scores would say that ethics in college football are compromised due to financial gain. And while we’re all agreeing, perhaps there’s no discussion about what we really desire when we oppose exploitation, Performance Enhancing Drug abuse, self-destructive behavior and the like.

What we really desire sounds a lot like meritorious outcomes where a guy simply trained to run that 4.45 40-yard dash and outran his counterparts. We really want ourselves and other parents to not schmooze so much about college scholarships while their 11-year-olds shoot the front end of a 1-and-1 free throw. I think we also desire significance, security, peace of mind that we’ve given the best effort we can and pure joy of participating in something we love. Of course these desires are perverted and/or muted the farther we get from the source.

Truth is, the 12-year old who has sex for the first time on a dare just wants to feel like she’s worth something or like he’s some semblance of a man. The 45-year-old middle manager frequents the Gentleman’s club for the same reason given the state of his marriage and job. And the Christian Singer/Superstar touring churches while her marriage spirals toward ruin is in the same genre of human conditioning. Let’s keep going. People who teach so-called sexual responsibility via various forms of conscientious contraception and regular HIV tests are searching for the hope that they are making a difference in lives. Just as an aside, they are. They’re even helping to curb wanton self-destruction but their quest, I presume, winds up voided. Crusades against animal cruelty and social justice advocates who lead grass roots campaigns against abduction/trafficking/child soldiering are also trying to “warm” at the fire.

There is a gross transcendence in God’s offering to his creation. It is both offensive and efficacious. But it is so extreme in its mandate and so simple in his application that it is dismissed as archaic. Where people would consider their own faith in Jesus Christ a failed experiment they’ve made the mistake of moving so far from proximity to, say, scripture and documents that explicate the life of the incarnate Christ that disillusionment quickly occurs. And that’s when we become experts at being offended by God, his virtue and his protective parameters. But the way of God was never meant to be dubbed elementary, pedestrian and obsolete. And it’s certainly not harmful. It’s simply not always fun given the appetite we’ve cultivated. And that’s why “character talk” is boring. That’s why videos about character have to have John Wooden in them to get views. That’s also why coaches think intimidation equals execution. I think this is why Lewis has been so controversial and yet respected. He knew his native England was moving quickly into a post-Christian intellectualism. My mom used to say, “You can be too smart for your own good.” I agree with her and that statement probably just means that when we think we’re so smart we don’t need to rediscover the source of our greatest aspirations and inspirations, we’ve replaced our smarts with something far less noble.