On Women: Don’t Be Like Tech Support with Me

In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians. – Karl Barth
I can take care of my own tech problems–most of the time. Now and then I have to ask customer service for help. Once they know I’m a woman, I feel like a three-year old: half of my conversation is getting them not to pigeon-hole me. Sadly, in some churches I get the same sense communicated. I feel like texting the 32-year old in the pulpit who is speaking down to women: “I have been studying the Bible, and I’ve been devoted to spiritual disciplines for more than 40 years. Right now I’m using some of the best theologians and bible studies.”
On this note, someone recently asked “where I was” on the complementarian /egalitarian debate in the church. I’ve read both sides and the scriptures in context, out of context, and upside down and I think it’s silly. First, I’m not that political (small "p"). Mostly, it’s a distraction from discipleship and evangelism. As Christ’s Body we have a mission to do–in this era that necessarily involves some women. And some of those women will be teaching men.
The thought that God has segmented the gifts according to gender is unsupported in scripture and in the real life. Of course there may be tendencies, but tendencies don’t apply to all people. Some women hate/are scared to read this—no worries: what God has not equipped you for He does not ask you to do. Others react as if the entire Bible were questioned (which it is not). Scripturally there is support for women: women are judges, prophets, apostles—which makes them teachers. But notice, women make up the minority of these. And that speaks to two separate things: tendencies and cultural context of that era.
What should concern the church is quality: where are the visionaries?  the humble, Spirit-led, God-obsessed ones? Yes, many are in the pulpit. But excluded is the woman who might qualify, and yet the dullard of a man who holds an unsacramental view of the church, the world, women and work is acceptable. This, I do not see as a God-ordained decision.
Might we ask ourselves honest God-honoring questions with regard to genders in the church structure: Do we unthinkingly following an all-male quota system, rather than prayerfully fitting the churches with the best for the pulpit? Can we answer the question is it okay to suppress a person from growth by barring her from teaching a mixed adult Sunday School?
Our theology informs our thinking—or ought to. We should at least dare to ask questions of depth: What is our underlying view of women and girls in general if the church cherishes solely-by-males in all contexts stand with regards to teaching? What about the people who people threaten to quit the church if a woman teaches—and throw a tantrum. So, do we fear the anger of people so much? Is this our problem, or Christ's?
I have heard it said (or insinuated) that a man could not learn from a woman. Of course if the man is arrogant, then this is true—you can’t be taught if you’re not receptive.
Are we afraid of competition (in a bad sense)? Perhaps this fear in us should be treated. Or, is the question a harder one to face: are we not able to trust our Lord in this; He who makes us and gives all gifts and callings? (We aren’t too good at trust, if we’re honest with ourselves.)

I worry that the church is putting out its own eyes when it quashes the God-given gifts and talents of females in the churches. Again, in my experience, most women do not wish or have the time to be preachers or theologians. Yet, there are those few women who have a mind to serve and are ready and willing—but they will be lost to the ages if the church in the West continues as it is.

Can we be honest about who the church is for: it should be for and about Christ. When it is about Him, that is, when the members see Christ as the Only One, the Head of the Body, then (in this context) the calling to teach in a member is energized by the Spirit of Christ. There is no question about gender or background – the Spirit of Christ doesn’t require a “type.” In the rarefied air of the love of the Body of Christ the outcome is beautiful, unforced, and a normal: discipleship occurs, and evangelism happens. I know, I’ve been there.

However, the beautiful unfolding of these revolutionary moments cannot withstand the force of the hands of a board or committee who stick to their notes and pull the plug.

Let’s reflect. It might be painful, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, Church.  

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”– CS Lewis

 (Lest you think I dislike men, it’s not true. My Lord is a man; some of my favorite pastors and theologians are men. I prefer working with men, I was raised by a great father, have a husband of 37 years who is gold, grew up with wonderful brothers, and have the best sons.) -Charity Johnson

Passing On the Pride

At this time of year, magazines and organizations start giving out annual awards. Time Magazine has “Man/Woman/Superhero of the Year” on its cover.  There is one person who won’t see next year’s cover: a famous author and critic, also an antagonistic atheist, has just died from cancer.   Unfortunately, the adjective that came to mind when I saw the death announcement was “proud,” as in “a proud man.”   I hope his memorial service is kinder to his memory than my first thought was.   Surely he was loved, but his words were barbs, more like weapons than winning or even winsome. You need to be an accomplished trickster and author to cover up who you really are when you write. Since he was a writer, my reading of him made me think he was both intelligent and proud. Why was he antagonistic towards God and towards Christianity? Only he and God truly know, so I won’t speculate. More to the point, why is anyone so accomplished as he so antagonistic?  My guess: fear of being seen as weak and sentimental; many intellectuals are afraid of that kind of branding–like a 3 year-old is afraid of a monster.
Religion, at least the Christian religion, teaches us that vengeance should not come from us. (What a wonderful world this would be!) Because restraint from vengeance is seen, not as strength, but as weakness by most men, this makes Christians look weak and weak-willed.  Further, educated intellectuals (and Chuck Norris) wish to be perceived as stronger than all their competitors, the shoe of Christianity doesn’t fit their foot. (In a seeming paradox, Christianity also teaches that timidity should not come from us, either. And, meekness and boldness are both be evidenced in Christian adherents).
But, in the end, it is usually pride (whose root is fear) which freezes the fellow’s heart: when the heart’s frozen, he’s in the iceberg of aloneness. He’s isolated himself on an island of Me, Myself and My Great Ideas. He wants no great spiritual fire to light his insides: he might be misunderstood, or criticized, or not be in charge.  Pride (of the bad sort) is blinds you and it is your own killer, and this kind of pride has no known good side to it.
“Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.” - CS Lewis
Lewis elaborates on this: “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
A proud man or woman can give a reason, or a rationalization, for whatever deceit he or she chooses to tell himself or herself for the apathy, disinterest, and antagonism towards God.  In the end, Lewis puts it bluntly: “Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

(Sorry, Chuck Norris, your name just slipped out of my fingers.)

Difficult Times and Hard Questions

"Where is God?" question can be asked anywhere, and any time, but it is most often asked in the midst of difficulties since when you are content that you have no pressing sense of a need for God, His presence, or He extracting you from the situation(s). In face, being complacent or placid may make the  claims of God on your soul as distraction-an interruption in your life. And, indeed, we often congratulation ourselves when we remind ourselves to be grateful and perhaps then dip into a self-congratulatory moment of warm, fuzzy feelings toward our Maker. 
But what about desperate situations,those crushingly dificult times, prolonged periods of overwhelming grief?  When all help comes up empty-handed, and desperation mounts? Don't you so often feel on the other side of Heaven's door--and it's all silent within?  Waiting seems to make no difference, but the longer the wait, the louder the silence seems.
You wonder, “Did Anyone really care—really?"  Maybe it had seemed so at one time (for some)-but then, how do you interpret that? That you believe God is leading you in good time, but doesn’t even a whisper to us in our trouble?
If you’re in deep grief, though, the danger will not be so much as to cease believing in God—but in believing some strange and twisted things about God. 
The term "I couldn't think straight" is an extremely accurate description of understanding how rattled and irrational our attempt to pray--and understand God's response--will be when we are at our lowest, when we are emotionally crushed. Truthfully, we cannot, in those times of great emotional stress, sort out our panic and desperation from our clearest thoughts. In my experience God does answer, but He allow for times of apparent deadness, for us to travel through the emotions of grief, etc.  In this "pocket" of time, however long it turns into, we can fill with our voice--God is listening, and our prayers become a cleansing, a way of emptying ourselves of the violence we feel the world has perpetrated on our souls.   It'sas if we need to bleach of the stains out of the garment before the we are dipped, immersed and dyed with the great hues of God's speech which will refill the newly cleansed backdrop of our souls.
Prayer, the primary language of the soul, is like saying our phonemic alphabet: though not deeply profound, it is most necessary for it is the foundation of all communication with God.
And this most necessary communication, prayer, is that which brings us into the mysteries still unexplored. - Charity Johnson
“Prayer, in the sense of asking for things, is a small part of it;
confession and penitence are its threshold,
adoration its sanctuary,
the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.
In it God shows Himself to us.
That he answers prayer is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from the revelation.
What He does is learned from what He is.”

• CS Lewis

Best Deal Of The Holiday

This is the Christmas/holiday kickoff weekend. As we go into the wormhole of celebrations and gift exchanges, let us remember that it is not that which surrounds us that makes us wealthy, but the times in communing with God and with encounters with those who He made in His image which supplies our real sense of satisfaction and inner wealth. “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.” ― C.S. Lewis "There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce The Apostle Paul warns, some 2000 years ago, against being excessive in our acquisitiveness (greedy): "...godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content." 1 Timothy 6:6-8 "He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

You Have the Infinite Attention of God

God is not hurried along in the time stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel.
He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass.
You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created.
When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.
The way my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author gets out of one times series (that of the novel) only by going into another times series (the real one).
But God, I believe, does not live in a time series at all.
His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him, it is still, so to speak [a decade ago] and [50 years from now]. For His life is Himself.
If you picture time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then...picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one;
we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind.
God, from above or outside or all 'round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

• C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

CS Lewis on the Great Eventuality

"When the author walks on the stage the play is over. [Eventually] God is going to invade, [and then it will be] something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? ...this time it will be God without disguise...it will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up." "We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear---the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man... a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy."

• CS Lewis

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. I John 3: 1-3

 

Off the Startingblocks Or Still in the Locker Room?

"Therefore, go and make _disciples_  of all the nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Jesus Christ, Matthew 28:19,20

If you're from a Christian background you have likely heard and or read these words. Have you looked closely at the command? 

I underscored the word disciples to emphasize it, notice he never said make converts, nor be someone I can be proud of. Nothing as easy or feeble as that, no. Christ wanted his followers to follow, study, mimic Him in quality of heart and head. Being a mere adherent is not the same; a disciple adds and removes behaviors, stays focused and learns as he goes, just as any one competing in sports or any discipline does.

Grasping for the right principles, keys, outcomes, or sensations does not bring you further along. Controversy over techniques which divide people into factions has no value at all in God's economy.

There are three telltale signs (for me) that a Christian is not working at becoming a disciple: 1 he does not read the Bible, or if he does he does not read it well (it is not a recipe book) 2 he does not understand how the Holy Spirit would operate in his own life today 3 (sadly) there is little fruit such as patience, love, joy, etc.

That is the analysis, what is answer? As the book's title puts it, there are no shortcuts to progress. I always recommend a three-pronged approach, the short version is to 1 remove obstructions and read and act on what the Bible says 2 ask God to teach you what you need to learn, and seek it out at the same time 3 love, love, love. Ask people, listen and give.

I think Lewis nailed it here in referencing the ancients:

"...for the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline and virtue. 
[while we try to discover] ...how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is technique...and in the practice of technique, [we] do the...impious." 

CS Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"

5 Quotes from C.S. Lewis for Summer

You don't really want a big post to read now that the summer's begun, so I'm providing a "sampler" -- a light summer dish as food for thought. All of these ruminations are from someplace in C.S. Lewis' writing. Happy snacking, happy chewing!
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1. "Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..."
2. "God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker."
3. "All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
4. "There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him."
5. "Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal."

How Can Hate And Love Co-exist?

Hate and love never co-exist in equanimity, but they do co-exist. They co-exist in the sense that no one is perfected (and, in Christian doctrine, everyone is a sinner by nature), and so though we love ourselves enough to want the best, we also dislike, and try to improve the worst. This is the essence of Christian self-care (as distinct from selfishness and self-interest.)
Does this mean we are supposed to accept what is wrong just as if it were not? No, we need not accept what is disjointed in this world. CS Lewis clarifies what we too often muddle when he states it difference in a personal vein:
"I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?
But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself.

However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."

• CS Lewis

Got Guilt?

I wish I had a dime for every person in the past 35 years who confided in me something like this: “I feel God is punishing me for….”
Unfortunately, dragging around a conviction that you’re condemned and that God is directing wrath at you looks nearly legitimate complaint when I look at their lives, especially when they hit middle-age. By then their anger or self-pity has pretty much encased them in bad habits.
C.S. Lewis has a good word on guilt and condemnation:
“If God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
When challenged no one can ever come up with a Christian scripture to support his feeling that God’s punishing him.   I suggest that your feelings regarding this don’t matter–take your feelings to the blackjack table. (We all know how that works out.)
Not only is this toxic guilt not Christian doctrine at all but it also is contrary to God’s will for people: this mindset is a kind of cage. People quit growing as Christians when they spend their time looking over their shoulder, waiting for the boom to fall, or for God to boot up them to the ‘next level.’
Christian maturity is something I can do only as I look forward, and walk forward. But people who nest in toxic guilt are too afraid to try new things for fear of failure. Not only has Christ has set them free from the law of sin and death, Christ has set free them from unreasonable fears. Not from the emotion of fear or even of reasonable fear, but from the quirky, guilt-laden fear.
But why–why would Christ ask us to live in freedom? I think it should be enough to say that we’re not automatons and He knows that. Guilt hurts–it’s painful–it’s deadening. It’s because of His love for us that He would not want us to live this way.
There might be a side benefit, too. I think it has something to do with living out His kingdom in this world. For with Christ’s freedom from guilt, we have freedom to do, and a kind of permission to fail-and learn from failure (though I find, it often takes more than one time to figure out why I fail at something!).
Perhaps you wonder if this is really a Christian way to think (I know we don’t get this picture painted too often). I am sure it is. Biblically we’re freed to love-to love people, not our possessions. Loving requires all kinds of talents and all kinds of works. Paul calls it being “formed” as a Christian, in Christ’s image (Colossians).
I’ll let Paul spell it out here, where he reminded the new churches about their freedom and its pertinence to Christian maturity:
“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand!…When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love. You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? This detour doesn’t come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. And please don’t toss this off as insignificant. It only takes a minute amount of yeast, you know, to permeate an entire loaf of bread. … It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom.”
Galatians 5:1-15 The Message (paraphrase), portions

Convenient Lie about Jesus Christ

The best lie is a half-truth. To negate it, is to negate the truth it contains, while to affirm it, bolsters the lie. The greatest lie in our culture is: “Jesus was a simply a great teacher.” I wish I had a nickel for every polite (but wrong) agnostic or atheist who has ever said this to me.
It’s wishful thinking because it’s not true. Read the gospel of Mark and select only the teachings of Jesus, you will find the gospel to be pitifully slim. Or read the gospel of John, which is known to be content-laden with conversation. If you read it wide awake, you will find a good deal of direct instruction to his followers--the apostles. You also find much of the conversation to be prayer to His Father. Yes, there is some teaching in the gospels--but there is a lot of simple exhortation. No one ever says, "Jesus was a great teacher, and he said the Son of God." Somehow the big points in his teachings go missing.

In fact, in the gospels Jesus more noteworthy as
 1) a rabble-rouser who also created problems with most religious leaders
 2) a miracle-worker – of all kinds of miracles
 3) a living fulfillment of many Jewish prophecies
 4) the only man in history who got up from a brutal death and ascended into heaven, as witnessed by more than 500 people. (Why doesn’t this make the Guinness book?) C. S. Lewis adds: “...He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”

Heaven is No Bleak Fantasy

Our notion of Heaven involves perpetual negations: no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art.
Against all these…we set one positive: the visions and enjoyment of God. And since this is an infinite good, we hold (rightly) that it outweighs them all. That is, the reality of the Beatific Vision would or will outweigh, would infinitely outweigh, the reality of the negations.
But can our present notion of it outweigh our present notion of them? That is quite a different question. And for most of us at most times the answer is No. How it may be for great saints and mystics I cannot tell. But for others the conception of that Vision is a difficult, precarious, and fugitive extrapolation from a very few and ambiguous moments in our earthly experience, while our idea of the negated natural goods is vivid and persistent, loaded with memories of a lifetime, built into our nerves and muscles and therefore into our imaginations.

Thus the negatives have, so to speak, an unfair advantage in every competition with the positive. What is worse, their presence – and most when we resolutely try to suppress or ignore them- vitiates even such a faint and ghostlike notion of the positive as we might have had.. The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem the essential characteristic of the higher good. We feel, if we do not say, that the vision of God will come not to fulfill but to destroy our nature, this bleak fantasy often underlies our very use of such words as “holy” or “pure” or “spiritual.”
We must not allow this to happen if we can possibly prevent it. We must believe – and therefore in some degree imagine-that every negation will be only the reverse side of a fulfilling. And we must mean by that the fulfilling, precisely, of our humanity, not our transformation into angels or our absorption into Deity. For though we shall be [in certain ways] “like angels” and made “like unto” our Master, I think “like with the likeness proper to men:” as different instruments that play the same air [song] but each in its own fashion. How far the life of the risen man will be sensory, we do not know. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here, not as emptiness differs from water or water from wine but as a flower differs from a [flower] bulb or a cathedral from an architect’s drawing.



C.S. Lewis in “Transposition”

The Preposterous Christ?

Then comes the real shock. Among the Jews there suddenly turns up a man who
goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it.
But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. [Because] God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else.
And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was,
quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so
often that we no longer see what it amounts to:
... the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.
Yet this is what Jesus did.
He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured.
He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences.
This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. 
God does care. He cares so much that he came among us in human flesh.

• C S Lewis

Space, God and Illogic

The state, nature and origins of the universe have been posited as reasons for disbelief in religion. CS Lewis questions if the grounds for such reasoning is reasonable and responsible:
"When the doctor at a post-mortem diagnoses poison, pointing to the state of the dead man's organs, his argument is rational because he has a clear idea of that opposite state in which the organs would have been found if no poison were present.
In the same way, if we use the vastness of space and the smallness of earth to disprove the existence of God, we ought to have a clear idea of the sort of universe we should expect if God did exist.
But have we?
Whatever space may be in itself - and, of course, some moderns think it finite - we certainly perceive it as three-dimensional, and to three-dimensional space we can conceive no boundaries.
By the very forms of our perceptions, therefore, we must feel as if we lived somewhere in infinite space. If we discovered no objects in this infinite space except those which are of use to man (our own sun and moon), then this vast emptiness would certainly be used as a strong argument against the existence of God.
If we discover other bodies, they must be habitable or uninhabitable: and the odd thing is that both these hypotheses are used as grounds for rejecting Christianity.
If the universe is teeming with life, this, we are told, reduces to absurdity the Christian claim - or what is thought to be the Christian claim - that man is unique, and the Christian doctrine that to this one planet God came down and was incarnate for us men and for our salvation. If on the other hand, the earth is really unique, then that proves that life is only an accidental by-product in the universe, and so again disproves [the] religion.
Really, we are hard to please.
We treat God as the police treat a man when he is arrested, whatever He does will be used in evidence against Him.
I do not think this is due to...wickedness. I suspect that there is something in our very mode of thought which makes it inevitable that we should always be baffled by actual existence, whatever character actual existence may have."

• C.S. Lewis from: God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Ed. Walther Hooper) Originally published as Undeceptions: Essays on Theology and Ethics in the UK)

How Do You Discover...

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning:
just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.
Dark would be without meaning.

• C.S. Lewis (significance of contrasts)

A Marvelous Risk

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.
Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
To love is to be vulnerable.

• CS Lewis  from Four Loves

Untangling Kindness and Love

It's much easier, much less complicated to be kind than to be loving. To be loving is to be thoughtful and feeling; it demands long-term persistence and short-term gratitude. Love binds us and constrains us to localities, duties, and demands rather than mere self-fulfillment. 
Merely being kind has immediate mutual gratification in mind. CS Lewis has some thoughts on both:
“Kindness, as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering…”(CS Lewis)
Contrast kindness with Lewis' reflection on love:
“Love may forgive all infirmities [weaknesses] and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will [to desire] their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved…Of all powers [love] forgives most, but [love] condones least: love is pleased with [a] little, but demands all."

• C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain

Happiness--Why Not Always?

"the settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstacy. It is not our hard to see why.
The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them
for home."

• C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain

Church Might Bore But Heaven Won't

Our notion of Heaven involves perpetual negations:
no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art.
Against these…we set one positive:
the visions and enjoyment of God. Since this is an infinite good, we hold (rightly) that it outweighs them all...that is, the reality of the Beatific Vision would or will outweigh... the reality of the negations.
But can our present notion of it outweigh our present notion of them? That is quite a different question. For most of us at most times the answer is No...[For] the Vision is a difficult, precarious, and fugitive extrapolation from a very few and ambiguous moments in our earthly experience.
While our idea of the negated natural goods is vivid and persistent, loaded with memories of a lifetime, built into our nerves and muscles and therefore into our imaginations.
[And so,] the negatives have an unfair advantage in every competition with the positive. What is worse, their presence...vitiates even such a faint and ghostlike notion of the positive as we might have had.
The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem the essential characteristic of the higher good. We feel... that the vision of God will come not to fulfill but to destroy our nature...[and] this bleak fantasy often underlies our ...use of such words as “holy” or “pure” or “spiritual.”
We must believe – and therefore in some degree imagine--that every negation will be only the reverse side of a fulfilling. And we must mean by that the fulfilling, precisely, of our humanity, not our transformation into angels or our absorption into Deity.
For though we shall be [in certain ways] “like angels” and made “like unto” our Master, I think “like with the likeness proper to men:” as different instruments that play the same air [song] but each in its own fashion.
How far the life of the risen man will be sensory, we do not know. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here, not as emptiness differs from water or water from wine but as a flower differs from a flower bulb or a cathedral from an architect’s drawing.

• C.S. Lewis in “Transposition” -- bolding and italics added

What Lies Ahead?

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him... (The Bible, I John 3:2)
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Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows ups seeing nothing but dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on the beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole, he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. “But,” she gasps, “you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?” “What?” says the boy. “No pencil marks there?” And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition-the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve.
The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.
So with us. “We know now what we shall be’” but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.

• C.S. Lewis in “Transposition”