The good professor...

I've been reading this:

It's a collection of Lewis' "essays on theology and ethics" and it's astounding. I appreciate him because I've always been struck with his ability to explain a thing. This is (part) of one of my favorites.

Meditation In A Toolshed
I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitchblack. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead, I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

If I could, I'd put the whole thing up, but basically, it's this brilliant illustration of how we judge and assume we know better, depending on what side we're ultimately on--be it the one that observes a thing, or the one that is in a thing, when neither one is more noble or correct. But that "one must look both along and at everything."

There's a lot to take in--I'm wading through it. He touches on a lot of topics--and I found some of the more interesting ones are about a Christian view of things like war, crime and capital punishment. I'd post some of it, but, well, I won't debate my politics. So, I'll spare you...for now.

I have to say the thing that's almost mind-numbing is how so much of what in these letters and essays from 1940-1963 is so relevant now. Take this for example:

A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continuously accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible. I cannot understand how a man can appear in print claiming to disbelieve everything that he presupposes when he puts on the surplice. I feel it is a form of prostitution.

Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun...