Progress

My friend Al has a C.S. Lewis quote embedded in his email signature. I’m both loving it and stealing it for your pleasure.

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” 

Pascal was a Presuppositionalist

C.S. Lewis quotes Blaise Pascal in his Introductory to The Problem of Pain. Says Pascal:

I wonder at the hardihood with which such persons undertake to talk about God. In a treatise addressed to infidels they begin with a chapter proving the existence of God from the works of Nature…this only gives their readers grounds for thinking that the proofs of our religion are very weak….It is a remarkable fact that no canonical writer has ever used Nature to prove God.

The Great Divorce

So, to take my mind off of the problem of evil yesterday, I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. Two observations: 1. It didn’t really help (rather exacerbated) my dealing with the problem of evil. 2. I love C.S. Lewis. The whole Purgatory thing notwithstanding, this is a fabulously chilling book.

Stolen Treasure

And then there’s this little quote ripped off from BHT:

I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries. -C.S. Lewis

I’ve added Stolen Treasure as a category. Surely there will be more.

On C.S. Lewis

I have a copy of The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis sitting on my desk. I’ve only read the preface, but intend to get into it soon. I just looked down and saw this quote by Harper’s and found it compelling.

“The point about reading C.S. Lewis is that he makes you sure, whatever you believe, that religion accepted or rejected means something extremely serious, demanding the entire energy of the mind.”

Quite right.