Tag Archives: C.S. Lewis

What to Keep, What to Throw Away

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Do you have a room like this in your house?

Do you have a room like this in your house?

Want to try an exercise in self-discipline? Try dejunking and cleaning out a six-bedroom four-bath house after 31 years, and after 47 years of accumulation.

I’m a packrat—the kind who has trouble throwing away something that by any stretch of the imagination might be useful again someday. Anyone out there want a Kodak carousel slide projector or a Super 8 home movie projector still in good working order? How about the collector’s edition of Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI on VHS tapes? Or cassette tapes of Andy Williams Christmas music?

How can I give away books? I was always taught that books are treasures.

How can I give away books? I was always taught that books are treasures.

We’re downsizing, and we can’t keep everything. That includes some of the byproducts of more than 40 years in a satisfying career—notes and clippings, reprints of articles, duplicate copies of magazines, etc. It is hard, sometimes painful; it is like throwing away pieces of my life. But a lot of this stuff just has to go.

There is the problem: “stuff”—things we think we still need for some reason. Some of it seems too dear to part with, and yet we lived perfectly well without any of it while were away for 18 months serving as missionaries in Central America. Why, then, is it so hard to let go of it now?

Perhaps our minds and hearts—the spirits within our bodies—are like this at times.

In Mere Christianity, the great Christian philosopher C. S, Lewis wrote of how God can change us if we are willing. We might believe that if we could change a few things, maybe strengthen our faith a little more, we could become presentable little cottages. But God is interested in making something much more of us—a magnificent palace—if we will let Him. This will require more than minor repairs. It will require major changes, and it will require getting rid of some things we may hold too dear.

I suspect if we would examine ourselves carefully, most of us would be ashamed of the reasons we are holding onto some things—some of those old habits, some ties to past sins, some secret ungodlike longings tucked away in boxes of memories in the dark corners of our hearts.

It’s time to let go of them. It’s time to move on. It’s time to clean out the old place and let God make of us what only He can.

So the critical question for each of us becomes: What do I need to throw away? And if I knew I would have the opportunity to show it to God who is the Father of us all, what would I keep?

What Are We Doing with Our Privileges?

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There is an incredible sense of privilege when we look back over the route we have just traveled. We have driven, more or less in reverse, the route our Mormon pioneer ancestors followed 167 years ago. The journey took them a little more than three and one-half months. We drove it in a day and a half.

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Avard Fairbanks statue of a pioneer couple struggling across the plains, Winter Quarters ceemetery

At freeway speeds on I-80 we covered in one hour about the same distance they covered in a week. We left Salt Lake City early on a Thursday morning and we spent Friday afternoon visiting the pioneer cemetery and the LDS Temple at Winter Quarters, in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska.

As a boy, my father’s father drove the freight road in eastern Utah with his father, transporting goods from Price to the Vernal area. He told me that in a loaded wagon pulled by a team of horses, 10 miles was a good day. Today, we can drive the distance from Price to Vernal in a matter of hours. So sometimes it is hard to comprehend the obstacles our pioneer ancestors faced.

Building on the efforts of pioneers in science, industry, and medicine over the past 100 years, we have created a world in which we are free to do things my grandparents could not have dreamed of.

There is a temptation to indulge in old guy stories here: “I remember when we had to pick up a phone in the nook in our hallway and give an operator the number we wanted so she could connect the call.” I remember when we bought our first 512K Mac computer—allowing us to type electronically and play a few simple games—a generation ago now. My seven-year-old grandson, who has his own small tablet computer, cannot conceive that such a primitive world ever existed.

But the point here is not that the world has changed. The question is: In a world with machines, devices, and systems that make it possible to accomplish so much more, what are we doing with our opportunities? Do we aspire simply to the same things our parents and grandparents hoped to do when so much more is at our fingertips?

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Chimney Rock, pioneer landmark along the Platte River, Nebraska

I no longer have to spend all day plowing or planting so that we have a crop for food in the winter. What, then, am I doing with my time? Since I do not have to spend time in another day of trekking across the Great Plains with my wagon, what is on the wider horizon? Can I perhaps spend my time on something that will benefit others? My wife no longer has to spend all day building a fire, heating water, scrubbing clothes in a tub, and hanging and gathering them on the clothesline. She spends a lot of her time serving others.

Are we doing enough? Is there more I could do to put myself in tune with the infinite—or to be less vague, to learn my Heavenly Father’s will and do it? What would He have me do for others?

Brigham Young, the second prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, once taught that most of us live far below our spiritual privileges. We could receive so much more of what God has to offer us if we were in tune with His Spirit. The great Christian writer C. S. Lewis taught something of the same thing in writing that God could make so much more of our lives, if only we would let Him.

So the question we need to ask ourselves (or at least that I need to examine myself on daily) is: What are we doing with our privileges?

 

Why I Believe

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NativityThe longer I live, the more it seems to me that those who truly believe in God—those who live as though they are actually going to meet Him someday—are generally happier and more productive in life.

They could respond easily to the admonition of Peter to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

Admittedly, I have been shaped by different experiences than other people, but still, it is difficult for me to understand why some people do not believe in God, especially because there seem to be so many things that testify of Him.

I cannot comprehend atheism. It seems to be the most ignorant and most superstitious of all philosophical positions about God—ignorant because it stubbornly refuses to pursue certain avenues of learning about Him, and superstitious because it clings desperately to the need to be right. After all, the alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate.

For a time in high school, one of my best friends was an agnostic who was steeped in science. He said he did not know whether God exists, but nothing in his experience convinced him that Deity was involved in the affairs of mankind. That seemed at least a rational position; he could not affirm the existence of God because he did not know from his own experience.

But it is a big leap from there to the assertion that God does not exist. Every atheist’s argument that I have ever heard boils down in the end to this: “I know that God does not exist because I have not seen him.” That is supposed to be convincing? The most effective, most rational answer I have ever seen to the atheist’s assertion is this from a prophet in the Book of Mormon: “And now what evidence have ye that there is no God . . . ? I say unto you that ye have none, save it be your word only” (Alma 30:40).

A god by definition does not have to respond to man’s demands to prove Himself. Yet all I know of Heavenly Father suggests that He is willing, even eager, to testify of Himself to us, His beloved children—on His own terms.

I am reminded here of the scientific method. When scientists set up experiments to prove or disprove a hypothesis, they try to take into account all the factors that could influence the outcome. They recognize that there may be influences they do not yet understand or have not seen. And yet, with regard to knowledge about God, some will record the result of the experiment without actually carrying it out—without taking into account the factors of faith that would be crucial to knowing God. They say, in effect: “There could not possibly be anything about this situation that I do not yet understand.”

The arrogance of that is almost stunning.

My high school friend and I agreed it would be impossible to “prove” the existence of God by any mortal means.

And yet I know that God exists.

Some would ask if I have seen Him, or heard His voice.

No, I have not seen His person or heard Him speak to my mortal ears.

But I have heard Him. He has answered my pleas very specifically and spoken to me in my heart in ways that were incontrovertibly true. Sometimes He has done it through other people, sometimes He has done it directly. But no one else could have known the specific questions in my heart and mind, nor could anyone else have answered in ways that were so undeniably beyond mortal capability.

Will I share the details? No. Those answers are sacred to me. They were gifts to me alone to strengthen and guide. They would not apply to everyone in general, and I will not risk sharing them with anyone who may not treat them as sacred.

But I will promise you that you can get answers for yourself. All you have to do is set up an experiment in faith that admits the possibility of God. If you truly want to know, He will answer you in His own way—in the way that will be most understandable and plain to you—and in His own time. (I think I can also promise that if you go into such an experiment with the attitude “This isn’t going to work,” you will be right.) You may be surprised at the result of your experiment in faith. My high school friend eventually became a Christian, though I never heard from him how that happened. The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis once considered himself agnostic. His conversion to Christianity and deep faith are a matter of public record.

God would never compel you to believe; that isn’t His way. He allows us freedom to choose what we will believe and how we will act—with the understanding that we will eventually be accountable to Him. But as a loving Father, He is eager to respond if we extend our trust to Him.

Of course we can use the freedom He gives us to live our lives trying to ignore Him. If we do this, we can never know with any mental or spiritually certainty that He is there.

But please do not tell me that you know He is not there because you have not seen Him. That is no evidence. That is arrogance.