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The Light of the World (2): Always Winter and Never Christmas

I have been reading a good bit of Jonathan Edwards lately. At the same time my family and I have been reading the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (again). I am not aware of anywhere in his writings that C.S. Lewis interacts with the writings of Jonathan Edwards. But time and time again I have discovered significant overlap in their thought (I may post on this in the future). I came across one such overlap this week, and a helpful one at that.

Let me say few things to set the stage. When I began reading Lewis, as well as Tolkien, I was struck by an element of seriousness in their writing. Call it a certain ‘melancholy.’ Yet in their melancholy, a certain joy is still evident. They both, but Tolkien especially, had the ability in their writing to make the happiest events seem sad and the saddest events seem happy. It’s hard to describe. It’s a mood more than anything else. You pick it up if you read enough of them.

I am not a big fan of the recent Narnia movies, but there are a few things the movies do well. One relates to the mood I’m speaking of. In the closing scene of Prince Caspian, the image of the Pevensie children walking away from Aslan in Narnia into a crowded train station in the ‘real world’ is striking. I remember, after seeing the movie for the first time, telling my wife that that scene perfectly captured my weekly mood transitioning from Sunday to Monday. Sunday is my favorite day of the week. It’s like Narnia in its brightness and glory. But then on Monday morning I face the real world. Yet Sunday is the real world to me, not Monday. Aslan tells the children later in the Chronicles that they must get to know him in their own world by another name. Narnia is just a glimpse, just one manifestation. In the humdrum of the train station is where they will truly get to know him.

I digress, but this captures the mood I’m speaking of. It’s like a joyful sadness, a happy mourning. I wrote about it HERE and, using Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ expression, called it ‘serious happiness.’ (If you are a regular reader of mine and haven’t read that post, I’d encourage you to do so. That post is as clear an expression of my thinking as anything I’ve ever written).

In Narnia, in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the land is bewitched so that it is ‘always winter and never Christmas.’ That is, until Aslan returns and the thaw of spring begins. In Jonathan Edwards sermon on John 8:12, where Jesus says, ‘I am the light of the world,’ he expresses he same idea about the return of Christ:

Is Christ Jesus the light of the world? What glorious times will those be when all nations shall submit themselves to him, when this glorious light shall shine into every dark corner of the earth, and shall shine much more brightly and gloriously than ever before. It will be like the rising of the sun after a long night of darkness, after the thick darkness had been ruling and reigning over all nations and poor mankind had been groping about in gross darkness for many ages. When this glorious morning comes, then those that never saw light before shall see it and be astonished at its glory. Then the world, which has been in a kind of dead sleep for this many ages, shall rouse up and begin [to] open their eyes and look forth to behold this glorious light of the world; then will the sweet music of God’s praises begin to be heard.

Then will Christ say unto his spouse, as in Isaiah 60, at the beginning:

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For the Gentiles shall then come unto her light, and kings to the brightness of her rising.” Now, indeed, darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon his church and his glory shall be seen upon her. Then shall “the light of the moon be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold” (Isaiah 30:26). The world has had a long winter of sin and ignorance; for many ages has the Sun of Righteousness been in the Tropic of Capricorn; but when this time comes the world will enjoy a glorious spring: then holiness and God’s kingdom shall revive as the fields and trees revive in spring. Then shall the time come when all creatures shall praise the Lord, and the mountains shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands…

The light that is Christ is already shining in this world. The thaw of spring has already begun. Dark, blind, cold, dead sinners are already having their eyes opened, are being warmed by the love of Christ, are coming alive by his Spirit. We see him, and we see that he is light. But we wait for a day when that light will shine so brightly as to swallow up all the darkness. And so we pray, ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’ Then the melancholy will disappear, but joy will be more serious than ever.

The Turn of the Tide

Here’s some of the inspiration for the name of my blog – a favorite poem and a favorite quote:

C.S. Lewis, The Turn of the Tide:

Breathless was the air over Bethlehem. Black and bare
Were the fields; hard as granite the clods;
Hedges stiff with ice; the sedge in the vice
Of the pool, like pointed iron rods.
And the deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem. It was shed
Wider each moment on the land;
Through rampart and wall into camp and into hall
Stole the hush; all tongues were at a stand.
At the Procurator’s feast the jocular freedman ceased
His story, and gaped. All were glum
Travellers at their beer in a tavern turned to hear
The landlord; their oracle was dumb.
But the silence flowed forth to the islands and the North
And smoothed the unquiet river bars
And levelled out the waves from their revelling and paved
The sea with cold reflected stars.
Where the Caesar on Palatine sat at ease to sign,
Without anger, signatures of death,
There stole into his room and on his soul a gloom,
And his pen faltered, and his breath.
Then to Carthage and the Gauls, past Parthia and the Falls
Of Nile and Mount Amara it crept;
The romp and war of beast in swamp and jungle ceased,
The forest grew still as though it slept.
So it ran about the girth of the planet. From the Earth
A signal, a warning, went out
And away behind the air. Her neighbours were aware
Of change. They were troubled with a doubt.

Salamanders in the Sun that brandish as they run
Tails like the Americas in size
Were stunned by it and dazed; wondering, they gazed
Up at Earth, misgiving in their eyes.
In Houses and Signs Ousiarchs divine
Grew pale and questioned what it meant;
Great Galactal lords stood back to back with swords
Half-drawn, awaiting the event,
And a whisper among them passed, ‘Is this perhaps the last
Of our story and the glories of our crown?
–The entropy worked out?–The central redoubt
Abandoned? The world-spring running down?
Then they could speak no more. Weakness overbore
Even them. They were as flies in a web,
In their lethargy stone-dumb. The death had almost come;
The tide lay motionless at ebb.

Like a stab at that moment, over Crab and Bowman,
Over Maiden and Lion, came the shock
Of returning life, the start and burning pang at heart,
Setting Galaxies to tingle and rock;
And the Lords dared to breathe, and swords were sheathed
And a rustling, a relaxing began,
With a rumour and noise of the resuming of joys,
On the nerves of the universe it ran.
Then pulsing into space with delicate, dulcet pace
Came a music, infinitely small
And clear. But it swelled and drew nearer and held
All worlds in the sharpness of its call.
And now divinely deep, and louder, with the sweep
and quiver of inebriating sound,
The vibrant dithyramb shook Libra and the Ram,
The brains of Aquarius spun round;
Such a note as neither Throne nor Potentate had known
Since the Word first founded the abyss,
But this time it was changed in a mystery, estranged,
A paradox, an ambiguous bliss.
Heaven danced to it and burned. Such answer was returned
To the hush, the Favete, the fear
That Earth had sent out; revel, mirth and shout
Descended to her, sphere below sphere.
Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost,
His beard, Niagara-like, unfroze;
Monsters in the Sun rejoiced; the Inconstant One,
The unwedded Moon, forgot her woes.
A shiver of re-birth and deliverance on the Earth
went gliding. Her bonds were released.
Into broken light a breeze rippled and woke the seas,
In the forest it startled every beast.
Capripods fell to dance from Taproban to France,
Leprechauns from Down to Labrador,
In his green Asian dell the Phoenix from his shell
Burst forth and was the Phoenix once more.

So death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless’d
Nothing greater could be heard
Than a dry wind in the thorn, the cry of the One new-born,
And cattle in stall as they stirred.

From The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien:

‘Gandalf,’ the old man repeated, as if recalling from old memory a long disused word. ‘Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.’
He stepped down from the rock, and picking up his grey cloak wrapped it about him: it seemed as if the sun had been shining, but now was hid in a cloud again. ‘Yes, you may still call me Gandalf,’ he said, and the voice was the voice of their old friend and guide. ‘Get up, my good Gimli! No blame to you, and no harm done to me. Indeed my friends, none of you have any weapon that could hurt me. Be merry! We meet again. At the turn of the tide. The great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.’

Sad Christians? No, Seriously Happy

Of all the cultural mandates I despise, fake smiles might be at the top of the list. I work with the public and I see it every day. I remember one time consciously pondering the fact that a lady I worked with, years ago, could go from being the grouchiest, snidest person I’ve ever been around to being the nicest person you’ve ever met, with the brightest smile, at the drop of a hat – as soon as a customer came around. Let’s call it glibness, or, perhaps, an external joviality.

I struggle with glibness. I see it often. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much, I think, what’s expected of most people on a day to day basis, at least in some settings. You may be having the most miserable day of your life, but you’re called upon, by others or by yourself, to do a 180 and put on the smile, fire up the small talk, and be happy. After all, you don’t want to be considered a grouch.

Have you ever faked a smile, a laugh, a good mood when your soul was really in the depths of despair? Have you ever seen a picture of someone on Facebook whose life is an absolute train wreck? I bet they looked perfectly happy in the pictures. Whoda thunk it?

The implicit problem with acting such a way is hypocrisy. Christians are called to be truthful, not hypocritical. I was always of the opinion that it would be better to keep a straight face in truth than to smile as a hypocrite. But not all agree with this.

Of course this raises problems for me. I am a self-professing Christian Hedonist. I agree with John Piper that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. I agree with the Westminster Shorter Catechism that man’s chief end is not only to glorify God, but to enjoy him. How can I reconcile the fact that it is my joy that glorifies God with the fact that I am not always joyful?

The major touchstone of the issue is that Christian joy is not the same as what the world considers to be joy.

The Apostle Paul does not shy away at commanding Christian’s to rejoice (see Philippians 4:1). Yet it is clear that his idea of joy is not one of glibness or outward joviality. He never commands anyone to smile.

Twice he charges to Thessalonians to be ‘sober.’ For instance:

  • 1 Thessalonians 5:8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

The word sober in Thessalonians means something to the effect of ‘even keeled’ or ‘even tempered’ (it can be translated ‘temperate’). To be sober is to be in the middle, not too far up, not too far down. Paul commands this multiple times elsewhere including his letters to Timothy and Titus. The Apostle Peter similarly charges us:

  • 1 Peter 1:13 ¶ Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Aside from this, Paul speaks of Christians as ‘groaning’ :

  • Romans 8:23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

He speaks of himself as having the appearance of being sad:

  • 2 Corinthians 6:10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

His point here is that outwardly the world looked upon him and counted him as one who was full of sorrow. But in truth, in the inner man, he was full of joy. I would not deny that inward emotion has any effect on outward appearance. But perhaps that effect is a bit overrated.

Jesus himself said,

  • Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4)

The Christian life is a life of mourning and a life of joy, and the two cannot be disconnected. We mourn because of our sin. We mourn because of death and loss and the sad state of the now. Yet underneath this mourning and alongside of it is an abiding joy in Christ and the salvation he has wrought. In, and because of, the gospel, we are constantly mourning, and constantly being comforted.

C.S. Lewis’ idea of ‘Joy’ is helpful here. There is an innate longing in all mankind – even in the Christian – for another world. There is a longing for a happy ending, a longing for peace, a longing for bliss. The gospel breaks into the now and gives us a glimpse of it, and an assurance of its ultimate accomplishment, yet we still do not see the happy ending in full view. Even the departed Christians, the martyrs, who have entered into the full joy of their Master in the presence of God, continue to long that, in the words of Sam Gamgee, all sad things will come untrue:

  • Revelation 6:10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

So the already and not yet rings true. We’re already rejoicing, but not yet fully, for the longing remains. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is a crash course in the joyful longing of the Christian (in Middle Earth terms) – so much melancholy, so much loss, so much uncertainty, so much mourning, and yet such hope, bravery, boldness, fearlessness, friendship, joy, happiness.

Likewise, when you read C.S. Lewis you cannot escape the idea that committing yourself to Christ is to commit yourself, in some sense, to sadness. For it is to commit yourself to self-destruction (the mortifying of the old man) and self-denial. As C.H. Spurgeon put it,

When we took Christ’s cross to be our salvation we took it also to
be our heavenly burden.

Yet in the midst of this self-destruction, self-denial, and cross-bearing there is a true joy. And it is a joy that broods within, and cannot always find expression outwardly (or at least its expression is not the glibness and joviality the world expects).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it well in his sermon on Matthew 5:4:

…Christians ought not to affect this appearance of such a wonderful joy that they always wear a bright smile on their face in order to show the world how happy they are (Sermon on the Mount, p. 47).

In other words, joy isn’t something you put on, it’s not a bright smile, it’s not glibness. Whatever it is, it’s not that.

He goes on,

[The Christian] is always serious; but he does not have to affect the seriousness. The true Christian is never a man who has to put on an appearance of either sadness or joviality…The Christian is not superficial in any sense, but is fundamentally serious and fundamentally happy. You see, the joy of the Christian is a holy joy, the happiness of the Christian is a serious happiness. None of that superficial appearance of happiness and joy! No, no; it is a solemn joy, it is a holy joy, it is a serious happiness; so that, though he is grave and sober-minded and serious, he is never cold and prohibitive (Ibid, p. 51).

That last quote is pure gold, and a balm to my soul. Our happiness is a serious happiness, a solemn joy. It is grave, but not cold. Why do moderns condemn ‘puritanism’ (which is really only a caricature of Puritanism)? It was cold, joyless, looking to keep people from having a good time. God forbid. They were just more serious about their joy than most of us are.

Does this mean that Christian’s can’t smile? Of course not. It means we don’t fake smiles – or frowns for that matter. It means we are who we are, by the grace of God, and can be nothing else without betraying the truth.

Consequently, if you see me and I don’t fake a smile, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you, and it certainly doesn’t mean I’m not happy. I’m seriously happy and solemnly joyful – fundamentally serious, fundamentally happy. I am not under the tyranny of the smile police. I have been set free from such nonsense. The freedom of the gospel is a freedom to mourn, and yet have happiness in the midst – that’s one thing the world can never have apart from Christ and his gospel.

Recent Reading: Tolkien: The Authorized Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter

The Summer of Biographies has turned into the summer of Lewis and Tolkien biographies. It seems I often head in certain directions during my summer biography reading. Last year it was an exploration of men from the Great Awakening. This year it is Lewis and Tolkien. I’ve already shared my thoughts on The Narnian. I also just picked up two more books (one on Lewis, one on Tolkien) from the library. But today I want to write down some thoughts about Humphrey Carpenter’s book on Tolkien.

As always, I’m not trying to review this book. Rather, I simply want to record the areas I found most interesting or applicable to my current situation.As for the book, I found it to be extremely well written. I’m not a huge Tolkien buff so I cannot commend or condemn its accuracy. I can only give you my impressions.

One thing I found interesting was that Carpenter’s account of the rift that occurred between C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (after years of friendship) was quite different from that of Alan Jacobs in The Narnian. Strangely, at least to me, Tolkien’s biographer seems to put the blame for this rift mostly on him, while Lewis’ biographer places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Lewis. Even more strangely, I think I believe both of them. It seems that it all depends on which angle you approach the situation from.

Carpenter is very even handed in this book. He is not afraid to point out Tolkien’s flaws. You’re left with the impression that Tolkien was unorganized, a great procrastinator, unconcerned about deadlines, bull-headed (when it comes to taking criticism), dogmatic in his religion (whether this is good or bad is an open question), was unwise in how he languished many of the hours he could have been working, and that he was a sentimentalist to a great degree. You also get the impression that he and his wife almost lived separate lives for most of their long marriage (he points out several times that they kept different hours and slept in different bedrooms).

Yet at the same time you see that he is brilliant thinker and writer who accomplished a massive amount of brilliant work, that he was a devoted husband and father who loved his family greatly, that he was a true friend while friendship lasted, that he was steadfast in his religious practices, and that he was a valuable instrument in the conversion of C.S. Lewis.

He was also a staunch perfectionist in his writing (I don’t know whether that’s a positive or negative necessarily, so I put it by itself).

I for one appreciate a biography that weighs a man so evenly. This is no hagiography. But neither is it a smear job.

It is precisely because of the balance of the book that I found myself both attracted and repelled to Tolkien. I found myself relating to him and yet being aggravated by him. I related to him mostly in the hours he kept. He stayed up late. He worked late into the night. He piddled too much. The same can be said for me. With two small children and a full time job to go along with my preaching duties, most nights I find myself having to stay up to the wee hours of the morning to study and read and write. I feel Tolkien’s pain. So much work to do, so little daylight, so much unwinding that needs to be done while the work continues to pile up.

That’s about as far as my relating to him goes. He is a different creature. He was a brilliant philologist (that kind of goes without saying). I’m not a word-man myself. But he makes me want to be one. Very rarely do I think of words as beautiful things, things worth wrapping myself up in, immersing my thoughts in. Tolkien spurs me on. He shows me a world I don’t know or appreciate as well as I ought.

Of course his dogmatic Roman Catholicism annoys me. I’m a true blue Protestant, what do you expect? I won’t linger on this. I hate that he didn’t see the genius in much of what C.S. Lewis was doing and writing. His religious presuppositions (and some literary presuppositions) wouldn’t allow it. But I can’t necessarily blame him for this – his reasoning certainly justified this in his mind – and what a great mind it was.

All in all I appreciate Tolkien the man a little more after reading this book. I find myself encouraged to engage words and language more, and to work hard and repent of my procrastination. I also find myself both wanting to be more of a perfectionist and yet less staunch a perfectionist. There is a time to demand the best in precision and clarity, and a time to just let it fly and face the criticism afterward like a man. But you better pick your spots wisely.

I appreciated the book and recommend it.

Anthropomorphism, Unlikeness, and Reality in Fiction: Opening the Eyes of the Blind

This is a follow up to my post on the Wind in the Willows.

I didn’t want to include this line of thought in my initial thoughts on the Wind in the Willows. I think it deserves its own post, so here goes.

I often reference C.S. Lewis’ statement to the effect that fantasy literature does not make children (and I would say adults as well, so long as they’re not prone to pure escapism) forget, or despise, the real world. He said basically that a child who reads of an enchanted forest does not thereby begin to hate real forests. Instead all forests take on some of this enchantment. For instance, I’ve never thought of forests in the same way since reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I’ve never looked at peaceful walks the same since I read the Princess and the Goblin (I’m always ready to sing a goblin song should the proper situation arise). I’ve never looked at lions the same since reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I could go on, but I won’t.

I bring this up here because one might think of a story about a bunch of animals with human characteristics as mere silliness and entertainment (the Narnia books should show the falsity of such a notion). The Wind in the Willows is a perfect example of how a work of fiction (and impossible fiction at that) can actually tune us in to reality in a way, perhaps, more significant than if the book were ‘realistic.’

In Orthodoxy, Chesterton wrote (I’m paraphrasing) that we sometimes need to read of golden apples to remind us that apples are really green (or red, or yellow), and of rivers of wine to remind us that rivers are, in fact, filled with water. In our position, taking these things for granted, we tend to forget such wonderful facts.

In the case of the Wind in the Willows we get anthropomorphism as well as sheer unlikeness, for the animals are made human-like, and yet are utterly different because they remain animals. Yet, taking Chesteron’s point, it is precisely in this fact – the animals are different from us, and yet the same as us (because of the anthropomorphism) – that we are led to see actual reality more clearly. In other words, to paraphrase Chesterton again, sometimes we need prideful, idolatrous toads to remind us that humans are prideful and idolatrous.

It’s absurd to think of a toad obsessed with cars. It’s laugh out loud funny. But we wouldn’t laugh so hard if he were a human. Perhaps then we should be laughing at more humans.

It’s absurd to think of a toad who is arrogant and self-absorbed, always wanting the attention focused on him. It’s hilarious. But it’s not as funny when we see a prideful man. Perhaps it should be.

Idolatry and pride are, you guessed it, idolatry and pride – no matter the situation. They are scandalous regardless of the person or circumstances. Sometimes it takes fantasy (say, talking animals) to point this out to us. When I laugh at toad, when I think of his pomposity and absurdity, I’m laughing at myself – and so are you. The question is, do you realize it? You are that guy.

David had a ‘Wind in the Willows’ moment before the prophet Nathan. We all need moments like that. Sometimes it takes a story that takes us completely out of our comfortable context for it to happen.

2 Samuel 12:7 ¶ Nathan said to David, “You are the man!