Joel Andrews

Why doesn’t love succeed? Hate succeeds. This world gives plentiful scope and means to hatred, which always finds its justifications and fulfills itself perfectly in time by destruction of the things of time. That is why war is complete and spares nothing, balks at nothing, justifies itself by all that is sacred, and seeks victory by everything that is profane. Hell itself, the war that is always among us, is the creature of time – unending time, unrelieved by any light or hope. But love sooner or later forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us, at last, over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child, whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.

Maybe love fails here…because it cannot be fulfilled here.

- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Language is fossil poetry

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music is not ornamented poetry, and poetry is not ornamented prose. Poetry is fallen music, and prose is fallen poetry. Prose is not the original language; it is poetry made practical. Even poetry is not the original language; it is music made speakable, it is the words of music separated from their music. In the beginning was music.

- Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien, p. 162.

I came across this quotation on pg 210 of Paul Miller’s A Praying Life. It captures so well what I love about both C.S. Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien. It comes from Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian.

Lewis’s mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted, and it was this openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life - his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story.

It is this element that characterizes the most godly men I have known and most admire. Smashing cynicism out of the way, they passionately and joyfully embrace the story in which they have been placed, and they are enthusiastic about telling that story to others. This is the fear of the Lord. This is the kind of man that I want to be.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

- Leonardo DaVinci

The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings.

- C.S. Lewis Perelandra

You cannot see things until you know roughly what they are.

C.S. Lewis - Out of the Silent Planet

To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.

C.S. Lewis - Out of the Silent Planet

I am beginning an exploration of the theme of the fear of the LORD in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, starting with the book of Job. I will be writing in Google Wave, so this post will continue to develop and be updated over time as I go. Please feel free to join in the conversation within the wave as you see fit.

Here is the address of the wave: https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252BOJ47qtx4A

I assembled these quotes in a wave as I read through “The Fear of God,” chapter 10 of Murray’s Principles of Conduct since I am using this as one of my sources for my Ethics research paper. There’s a lot of good stuff there, so I thought I’d share it here.

[This is also my first attempt at embedding a Google wave into a blog post, so let me know if you have any problems and just what you think in general of the format. I realize it's a bit crowded and I'm working on a solution for that.]

I think there’s a sense in which one’s systematic theology must be an organic outgrowth of one’s experience and understanding of their life on the one hand, and the Word of God on the other, specifically as that Word speaks into and about their life. You cannot simply cut and paste a whole system of doctrine that has been formulated by someone else, based upon their own interaction with the Word, into your own personal system of theology and philosophy. It just won’t stick unless it has grown up organically.
That is not to say that one cannot learn from another, or that learning systematic theology is a futile practice altogether. Rather, at this point, my sense is that a teacher (in whatever sense of the word) ought to use the elements of their own system of theology to nudge others in the right direction, suggesting paths to pursue and dangers to be avoided. Otherwise, in my experience, you end up with an empty set of propositions and assertions to which one either assents or dissents, but there is no real linkage to the person’s heart - what truly moves and drives them and what will make a real difference in their lives and in the lives of those around them.

Education is the process of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

What! Sirs, shall we despise the blood of Christ? Shall we think it was shed for them who are not worthy of our utmost care? Oh, then, let us hear these arguments of Christ, whenever we feel ourselves grow dull and careless: “Did I die for these souls and wilt not thou look after them? Were they worth My blood, and are they not worth thy labor? Did I come down from heaven to earth, ‘to seek and save that which was lost;’ and wilt thou not go to the next door, or street, or village, to seek them? How small is they labor and condescension compared to Mine! I debased Myself to this, but it is thy honour to be so employed.” Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ’s blood, and therefore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and the most tender affection.

- Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 131-132.

Our actions in and reactions to the quotidian life are far better indicators of our philosophical and theological tenets than any creeds we confess or theological systems we espouse.

Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them, masticate and digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes of hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by putting their meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be “much, not many.”

- Charles Spurgeon, Encounter with Spurgeon by Helmut Thielecke, 197.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

- Alexander Pope

I like the poets whose writings reveal great moral character and passion–such as Tennyson and some of Browning. The works of others have light, but I prefer flame to light. Shakespeare? A mind as clear as a sunbeam–but passionless, light without heat. Shelley? Keats? There’s a sense in which they were perfect poets, but they don’t move me. Beautiful–but wordmongers. There’s an infinite difference between the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty. One leads to the highest, loftiest, most Godlike character; the other often–too often–lead to an orgy of sensation.

- Samuel Brengle, from his biography by C.W. Hall, 269.

Authentic wisdom hooks you into Truth in its living form and Truth drags you off to unfathomable depths. A living truth cannot be hauled home and hung over your mantle. By the time you get it to shore, the sharks of your ignorance and finitude will have reduced it to a skeleton. If you would pursue Truth, you must hold on and let it take you where it will. But there will come a point at which you must let go. For living Truth leads to God himself, and God will not be caught.

Psalm 32 (ESV)

A Maskil [1] of David.

¹Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up [2] as by the heat of summer.

Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!