From "Orthodoxy" - G.K. Chesterton

"But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid." 

"As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.

Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the
one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility."

"Who told you that you were naked?"

"Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself (Gen 2:24-25). The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with his origin (Gen 3). In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that he now knows only himself and no longer knows God at all... The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God.

Instead of knowing himself in the origin of God, he must now know himself as an origin. He interprets himself according to his possibilities, his possibilities of being good or evil, and he therefore conceives himself to be the origin of good and evil, Eritis Sicut deus (you will be like god). ' The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil', says God (Gen 3:22)... Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at this origin and has made himself his own creator and judge. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself..." Bonhoeffer -  Ethics 17-20 Italics added.

"  I believe in Christianity like I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  CS Lewis

Sneezing vs. Sex

"Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntary. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.         

   There is no shame in man giving in to pain, but it is shameful for him to give in to pleasure. This is not because pain comes to us from outside, whilst we seek pleasure, for we may seek pain and deliberately give in to it without this sort of abasement. Why then is it to reason's credit to give in to the effect of pain, and to its shame to give in to that of pleasure? It is because it is not pain that tempts and attracts us; it is we ourselves who voluntarily choose it and allow it to get the better of us, so that we are masters of the occasion, and in this it is man giving in to himself. But in pleasure it is man who gives into pleasure. Now, glory only comes from mastery and control, shame only from subjection."

Pascal - Pensees - 795 

These are some interesting thoughts that Blaise brings up. Makes me thing of several verses, one seems to agree, the other not as much: 

Genesis 4:7

"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”


Sin (flesh, perverted pleasure) - desires to have you. Literally it longs for you, but you must not give into it. You must, just as Pascal writes, master it. This would be soul crushing if we didn't have outside help to give us power to do so. Why? Because Sin/pleasure is attractive. It not only desires us, but often we desire it. I am often complicit. But take heart, you have such a helper. One that not only can help you stand up under the temptations, but one that can enable you to Master sin. 


I struggle with the last sentence of Pascal's thought: "glory comes from mastery and control, shame only from subjection." I believe God is calling us to a form of subjection that is not shame producing but life producing. God invites us to exchange our subjection - from death to life.

Romans 6:16-18

16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey —whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.


We are now free to become slaves in order that we might become masters. A beautiful paradox in which God, our loving master, empowers us to be like him. So now we glory in our subjection because from it we find our strength. 


"Man is most comforted by paradoxes."
GK Chesterton.


"If you set out to seek freedom, you must learn before all things mastery over sense and soul, lest your wayward desirings, lest your undisciplined members lead you now this way, now that way. Chaste be your mind and your body, and subject to you and obedient, serving solely to seek their appointed goal and objective. None learns the secret of freedom save only by way of control." Bonhoeffer - Ethics (Stations on the way to freedom)

Beyond the Blue 

Stand on the shores of a site unseen 
The substance of this dwells in me 
Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep 
But the eye’s of my heart anchor the sea 
Plumbing the depths to the place in between 
The tangible world and the land of a dreams 
Because everything ain’t quite it seems 
There’s more beneath the appearance of things 
A beggar could be king within the shadows, 
Of a wing 

And wisdom will honor everyone who will learn 
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern 
And to do the right thing even when it burns 
And to live in the light through treacherous turns 
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns 
To keep on course from the bow to the stearn 
And throw overboard every selfish concern 
That tries to work for what can’t be earned 
Sometimes the only way to return is to go, 
Where the winds will take you 

And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto 
For the hope, beyond,the blue 

Yellow and gold as the new day dawns 
Like a virgin unveiled who waited so long 
To dance and rejoice and sing her song 
And rest in the arms of a love so strong 
No one comes unless they’re drawn 
By the voice of desire that leads em’ along 
To the redemption of what went wrong 
By the blood that coveres the innocent one 
No more separation 
Between us. 

So lift your voice just one more time 
If there’s any hope may it be a sign 
That everything was made to shine 
Despite what you can see 
So take this bread and drink this wine 
And hide your spirit within the vine 
Where all things will work by a good design 
For those who will believe 

And let go, of all, we cannot hold onto 
For the hope, beyond, the blue 

Said I let go, of all, I could not hold onto 
For the hope, I have, in you

"The Cost of Discipleship" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Notes from Chapter one "Costly Grace"

“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.”

What does it mean to justify sin? Don’t I do that all the time? Like me thinking – “It is ok for me to do this or that. I am ok to drink that much or say those things or hangout there.” “It is ok for me to treat them that way or speak that way” Because I am justified. What is justified? Your actions? Your thoughts? I am justified in my sin?  God help me.

I want to be a justified person – one that is done with sin, not just looking to put perfume on the dung in my life. The thought that comes to mind is 007 a license to kill. Brett Harper, Christian, a license to sin – or at least a theology that allows me to equip my lawyers in order to defend myself when conviction comes….

“Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolation of his grace!”

Why not, thanks Jesus. You took one for the team?! Seriously, maybe it should rather be stolen grace rather than cheap. But you are saved only by faith in what Jesus did on the cross right? Nothing else saves you, not your performance, just his. So faith in cheap grace saves right? Did the thief on the cross understand the difference?  Is this more a directive on how we as believers should live as blood bought sons and daughters? Is this keeping ourselves from becoming ineffective and unproductive (2 Peter 1:3-10). Or a warning to those who are approaching the cross for the first time, this is not fire insurance, this is something so great that it breaks into this life now and beckons you to come and be reconciled – come live life, come and worship. This is why Christ has taken hold of you that you might receive the grace that cost him so much and participate in the divine nature and call in this reality. But does true belief in the saving work of Christ on the cross for the removal of a persons SIN mean that are saved? Or do they also have to understand that this is a life long relationship and is awesome and hard and crazy, but good?

When Moses lifted the bronze Serpent up on the staff and everyone who looked on it was saved from their bites – what if one guy after looking at it started playing with the snakes, even letting them bite him, tying them in knots, being flippant; could he still look at the serpent after that? Foolish comparison, but that is who Jesus compares himself to – just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever looks upon him shall be saved.

“That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation – the justification of the sinner.”

 Interesting comment in that most people were coming out of the old Roman Catholic church and I would presume with the rise of the practice of indulgences and quick fix say 3 of this and 5 of that and you’re cool mentality, people probably always were unsure of their standing before God. If I can cut my time down in purgatory then I will spend x dollars – no wonder cheap grace is cheap. But if Jesus came to justify the sinner once and for all on the cross and now there is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus then, whoa. Things have changed. I will sell all I have to follow that, that is costly grace. Grace that demands a response.

“The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer to try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest fore of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. “

I feel the call of Jesus to swim to the deep end, don’t just be satisfied with the shallows,” I have called you out where it is hard, but hard is a word that I will transform, my yoke is easy my burden light.”

This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience.

For many years it seems I have been a subscriber (in some part) to the notion of cheap grace. I have often wondered why I found myself lifeless in my faith or even worse trying to manufacture some sort of life. Which often would take the form of how the world tries to find life – experiences, substances, and living for ME. When I feel the tug of Christ reminding me in scripture I quickly pull out the cheap grace card and slowly shrink back into my hole of disobedience. Now I hear him say clearly:

I have more for you

I want all of you

Trust me

Risk

Let go

I am with you

This is why I came

They are why I came

Lets go 

Edward Payson - Circa 1813

"The pride of the wicked is the principal reason why they will not seek after the knowledge of God. Pride consists in an unduly exalted opinion of oneself. It is, therefore, impatient of a rival, hates a superior, and cannot endure a master. It is evident that nothing can be more painful to a proud heart than the thoughts of such a being as God. Such a being pride can contemplate only with feelings of dread, aversion, and abhorrence. It must look upon Him as its natural enemy, the great enemy, Whom it has to fear. 

Pride plunged Satan from heaven into hell; it banished our first parents from paradise; and it will, in a similar manner, ruin all who indulge in it. It keeps us in ignorance of God; shuts us out of his favor; prevents us from resembling Him. Beware of pride! Beware lest you indulge it imperceptibly, for it is perhaps, of all sins, the most secret, subtle, and insinuating." Edward Payson  - wikipedia Edward Payson

Though the Earth Cried out for blood
Satisfied her hunger was
Her billows calmed on raging seas
for the souls on men she craved

Sun and moon from balcony
Turned their head in disbelief
Their precious Love would taste the sting
disfigured and disdained

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

So three days in darkness slept
The Morning Sun of righteousness
But rose to shame the throes of death
And over turn his rule

Now daughters and the sons of men
Would pay not their dues again
The debt of blood they owed was rent
When the day rolled a new

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
To Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

He has cheated
Hell and seated
Us above the fall
In desperate places
He paid our wages
One time once and for all