Annie Dillard (HT: Austin Kleon):

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

David F. Ford, commenting on John 13:34-35:

Love among the “little children,” in the Christian family, is to be the primary sign that we really are disciples of Jesus—in other words, that we are learning from him, imitating him, following him, being inspired by him. The mission of the church is inseparable from the sort of community the church is.

C. S. Lewis, from “On the Transmission of Christianity”:

None can give to another what he does not possess himself. No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are sceptical we shall teach only scepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism. Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. We shall all admit that a man who knows no Greek himself cannot teach Greek to his form: but it is equally certain that a man whose mind was formed in a period of cynicism and disillusion, cannot teach hope or fortitude.

C. S. Lewis:

The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that ‘a decent life’ is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed 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, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy. […]

The idea of reaching ‘a good life’ without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up ‘a good life’ as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence. Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are ‘done away’ and the rest is a matter of flying.

C. S. Lewis, channeling his inner Leslie Newbigin:

Christianity claims to give an account of facts—to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.

A portion of my mom’s latest painting

C. S. Lewis, on the apologetic value of Christians writing on various topics from Christian presuppositions (rather than writing overt works of apologetics):

I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work…. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.

I think what Lewis says here is spot on and still holds true in our day. I would, however, like to extend his thought in one direction (and I’m unsure what he would think of it). I’ve been thinking lately about how useful it would be to draw out the latent Christian assumptions in popular books by non-Christians. Some of my favorite popular books over the last few years have been written by non-Christians but, in my view, seem deeply congruent with the biblical imagination. For instance, Four Thousand Weeks—Oliver Burkeman’s anti-productivity book on time management—offers stimulating thoughts on our finitude (creatureliness is really the concept he’s grasping for), the freedom of embracing our insignificance, and the importance of patience. It’s a slightly different angle from Lewis: Demonstrating how the assumptions of these popular books are actually deeply Christian. That, to me, would be a worthwhile endeavor.

I have an essay percolating somewhere in the recesses of my brain about the latently theological anthropology of Matthew Crawford that would fit into this category. And yes, I’m aware that Crawford has recently converted to Christianity. This would not invalidate the approach, since Crawford’s writing to this point has not been expressed in any sort of explicitly theological frame. Though, again, my point is that his working assumptions about humanity seem to resonant with a Christian vision.

Finished reading: The Drama of Doctrine by Kevin J. Vanhoozer 📚

A really good, creative work of theology that moves Lindbeck’s proposal in a better direction. Vanhoozer is always great with words, but it also seemed a bit too wordy. I lost a little bit of momentum by the end.