Sit-and-do-nothing day!!?? Ha! Not likely!!

Today, I’d set out to have a sit-and-do-nothing day!!

Those atheists can sure wear a person out with their never-ending debates. And me, not having ever been one for debates, I’ve felt rather stretched of the past few weeks. It’s been good though, in the sense that it has caused me to stop and consider how to give a clear answer, not using the normal jargon and pat answers. It’s taught me to express spiritual things in my own words.

Anyhow, back to my sit-and-do-nothing day!! I decided I needed something to read.

Ahhhh!! “The Spiritual Man” by Watchman Nee, I thought. So I went to get it. But do you think I could find it?? No way!! But I did really want it.

Anyhow, instead, I picked up the huge volume of CS Lewis… his selected books. (Only 12 different books in it… just a bit of light reading!!) Though I still had an urge for Watchman Nee. I asked my sister-in-law (who live with us) if she’d seen it. She hadn’t, but she said I could borrow hers.

So, here I am on my sit-and-do-nothing day, with these two large volumes. I thought I was in heaven!! (Now, do you really think, or did I really think I was going to do nothing?)

So, first off, I pick up “The Spiritual Man”, and flicked through. I found a chapter on faith. He was comparing faith and feelings.

Here’s what he says:

“The life of faith is not only totally different from, but also diametrically opposite to, a life of feeling. He who lives by sensation can follow God’s will or seek the things above purely at the time of excitement; should his blissful feeling cease, every activity terminates. Not so with one who walks by faith. Faith is anchored in the One Whom he believes rather than in the one who exercises the believing, that is, himself. Faith looks not al what happens to him but at Him Whom he believes. Though he may completely change, yet the One in Whom he trusts never does - and so he can proceed without letting up….”

I kept reading that section of the chapter, and he finishes by saying: “What is the life of faith? It is one lived contrary to a life of feeling because it disregards feeling altogether. If Christians desire to live by this principle they should not alter their demeanor or bitterly cry as though bereft of their spiritual life whenever they feel cold, dry, empty, or pained. We live by faith and not by joy.”

Well, I thought that was enough to chew on from Watchman!! Great words!!

So then, for a change, I flicked through the Lewis volume. I came to “Mere Christianity”. For some reason, I’ve had trouble getting into CS Lewis’s writings, but I thought I’d give it another try. Would you believe I found it easy this time.

I read the first chapter, which is about the Law of (Human) Nature, and how we humans have this natural instinct of right and wrong. He summarizes…

“These, then, are the two points I want to make. First, the human beings, all over the earth, have the curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.”

WOW!!! I liked that!! I wanted to chew on that one for a while too. Now to do “nothing”!!

But, before I put the book down, I started flicking pages again. I came to Book 2 of “Mere Christianity”. Now this book I’m reading has twelve of Lewis’s books, and one of them is “Mere Christianity”, which itself is divided up into 4 books.

Book 1 - RIGHT AND WRONG AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE
Book 2 - WHAT CHRISTIANS BELIEVE
Book 3 - CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOUR
Book 4 - BEYOND PERSONALITY: OR FIRST STEPS IN THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

Well, I opened to the first chapter of book 2, “The Rival Conceptions of God”. I read this:

“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply on huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to the sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.”

So that’s how far I got with my sit-and-do-nothing day!!