No “Simple” Faith

It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things aren’t simple. They look simple, but they’re not. The table I’m sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it’s really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you will find what we call “seeing a table” lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. …

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we’d always expected, I’d feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it’s not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let’s leave behind all these boys’ philosophies—these over-simple answers.

Citation: C.S. Lewis in The Case for Christianity. Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 4.

(Emphasis added by Truth Seeker)

 

Falling Out Of Love

“People get the idea from books that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they made a mistake and are entitled to a change – not realizing that , when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The thrill you first fell on seeing some delightful place to live dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to live there? By no means! If you go through with it, the dying away will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest.” – C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

So then, when one says, “I’m no longer in love with him”, she really means the thrill is gone. She must now CHOOSE to love. She must choose to cherish and honor. He must choose the same. The wonderful thing is that I believe they will discover they are “in love” on a much deeper, lasting, significant level.

How do you think those 50 plus year old marriages last? They chose to love, they chose to fight for each other, they chose to honor and cherish through the bad times as well as the good (and there will be “bad” times). They become friends, confidants, REAL lovers, sharing everything. They are IN LOVE with each other!

C.S. Lewis goes on to say (the man was a genius! – and I’m so stupid, but I’m learning) – anyway, he goes on to say, “It is simply no good trying to keep the thrill: that is the very worse thing you can do. Let the thrill go – let it die away – go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follows – and you will find that you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.”

Jesus said that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It will remain alone. – John 12.24.

I reckon Jesus is right. I reckon C.S. Lewis is right. I’ve been married for 26 years (my second) and I’m IN LOVE with my wife because I choose her and she chooses me. We choose to love each other every day!

There is no such thing as “falling out of love”! There is such a thing as deliberately deciding not to love. Looking for thrills? For your self-gratification? That is self love – that is pride. And pride is contemptable!