[BBC List] do you love to read?

[Mike Abendroth]

Here is C. S. Lewis's answer to the question of why we enjoy reading:

 

The nearest I have yet got to answer is that we seek an enlargement of our
being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the
whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness
peculiar to himself. And even when we build disinterested fantasies, they
are saturated with, and limited by, our own psychology. To acquiesce in this
particularity on the sensuous level-in other words, not to discount
perspective-would be lunacy. We should then believe that the railway line
really grew narrower as it receded into the distance. But we want to escape
the illusions of perspective on higher levels too. We want to see with other
eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well
as with our own. We are not content to be Leibnitzian monads. We demand
windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of
the things we feel after reading a great work is "I have got out." Or from
another point of view, "I have got in"; pierced the shell of some other
monad and discovered what it is like inside.

 

Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own.
They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic,
comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entree to them all. Those of
us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous
extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we
talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense,
but he inhabits a tiny word. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are
not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly
would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee.

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.
Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is
still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in
knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

[HT: Chris Brauns <http://gotpreaching.wordpress.com/> ]

C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1965), 137-141. Cited in Jerram Barrs's essay, Christianity
<http://www.covenantseminary.edu/resource/Barrs_ChristianityAndTheArts.pdf>
and the Arts.

 

Thanks.

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

 <http://www.bbcchurch.org> www.bbcchurch.org

 

Ephesians 3:21 auvtw/| h` do,xa evn th/| evkklhsi,a| 

 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

 

"Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician ... Faith is
not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on
Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us;
that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for
our sins.  It is a sin-bearer that we need, and our faith cannot be a
sin-bearer. Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can
pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness. It
brings us to the cross, . but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.
Faith is not Christ, nor the cross of Christ. Faith is not the blood, nor
the sacrifice; . Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between
itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves,
and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing
virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work
done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter
into rest. Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see
the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion
without a misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the "It is finished!"
of the Sin-bearer, and says, "Amen."   

NOT FAITH, BUT CHRIST 

by Horatius Bonar 
(1808-1889) 

 

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