Good Reads: July 29, 2008

“Imag­ine your­self as a liv­ing house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, per­haps, you under­stand what He is doing. He is get­ting the drains right, and stop­ping the leaks in the roof, and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and you are not sur­prised. But presently He starts knock­ing the house about in a way that hurts abom­inably, and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The expla­na­tion is that He is build­ing quite a dif­fer­ent house from the one you thought of — throw­ing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, run­ning up tow­ers, mak­ing court­yards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent lit­tle cot­tage: but He is build­ing a palace. He intends to come and live in it Him­self.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Chris­tian­ity (Lon­don: William Collins, 1970), 172.

“How dif­fer­ent is the God of the Bible from the God of mod­ern Chris­ten­dom! The con­cep­tion of Deity which pre­vails most widely today, even among those who pro­fess to give heed to the Scrip­tures, is a mis­er­able car­i­ca­ture, a blas­phe­mous trav­esty of the Truth. The God of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury is a help­less, effem­i­nate being who com­mands the respect of no really thought­ful man. The God of the pop­u­lar mind is the cre­ation of a maudlin sen­ti­men­tal­ity. The God of many a present-day pul­pit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring rev­er­ence. To say that God the Father has pur­posed the sal­va­tion of all mankind, that God the Son died with the express inten­tion of sav­ing the whole human race, and that God the Holy Spirit is now seek­ing to win the world to Christ; when, as a mat­ter of com­mon obser­va­tion, it is appar­ent that the great major­ity of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and pass­ing into a hope­less eter­nity: is to say that God the Father is dis­ap­pointed, that God the Son is dis­sat­is­fied, and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated. We have stated the issue baldly, but there is no escap­ing the con­clu­sion. To argue that God is “try­ing His best” to save all mankind, but that the major­ity of men will not let Him save them, is to insist that the will of the Cre­ator is impo­tent, and that the will of the crea­ture is omnipo­tent.” —A. W. Pink (1886 – 1952)

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Good Reads: July 29, 2008 test Filed under Godly Living, Good Reads | Comments Off