Reflections on the Intimate Dialogue Between Man and God
By: C.S. Lewis
Libby eBook 22 chapters
Published: 1964 (this version 2011)
Genre: non-fiction theology
This book was mentioned in another title I recently read. I love C.S. Lewis and wanted to read what he had to say about prayer! Sadly, much of it was hard for me to understand. I used to think I was quite smart and had a sharp mind . . . now I find that my brain struggles to wrap around difficult concepts. I think if I had this in print and could spend time poring over it and paraphrasing it, I'd grasp more. On the other hand, the parts that I did grasp felt like the proverbial light bulb going on!
So I highlighted a LOT of passages, but there are not highlights from the sections that went over my head. Perhaps one day, I'll return to this book (in print, with a marker and pen) or perhaps as part of a book club! For now, here are the passages I wanted to note.
Chapter I: "No living language can be timeless. You might as well ask for a motionless river."
I love how effectively he uses language to make a point. When talking about liturgy changing, he insists that language changes, therefore liturgy must also change.
Chapter II: "One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured."
I love this! Criticizing how someone else worships the Lord (or even noticing how someone else worships) should not happen.
Chapter II: "When the golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift? But He does not give it - anyway not to me - day in, day out."
Lewis is writing to his fictitious friend Malcolm about praying with words versus praying silently. This is one of the sections that got a bit too theoretical to me. The sentence after this one was part of what made me say, "Huh?"
Chapter II: "My mistake was what Pascal, if I remember rightly, calls 'Error of Stoicism': thinking we can do always what we can do sometimes."
It's not that I don't understand what he's saying so much as "Who cares?" If I pray silently and experience a Holy Spirit moment, I rejoice! I know that will not happen every time I pray, whether silently or aloud. But Pascal and the "Error of Stoicism" . . . ? I don't plan to try to learn more about this! I don't know that I've ever read Pascal.
Chapter IV: "As if, though God does not need to be informed, He does need, and even rather frequently, to be reminded. But we cannot really believe that degrees of attention, and therefore of inattention, and therefore of something like forgetfulness, exist in the Absolute Mind. I presume that only God's attention keeps me (or anything else) in existence at all."
I remember reading once that you should never pray for something more than once. It just showed that you didn't have faith that God could answer the prayer. But the Bible also tells us to "pray without ceasing." I know I should go to God's Word for answers to my questions, but there's so much I don't understand. To me, prayer is a conversation. I can talk to God about anything. I need to listen to His answers - they usually come in the form of a conviction in my heart and mind. I also love the way Lewis can use humor to make a point.
Chapter V: "The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God's will but also that I may vigorously do it. I must be an agent as well as a patient."
Lewis is talking about the Lord's Prayer and "thy will be done." He points out that "a great deal of it is to be done by God's creatures, including me." Salvation is NOT by works, but God does say that our faith will be shown through what we do. (James 2:14-26)
Chapter VII: "If you meant in your last letter that we can scrap the whole idea of petitionary prayer - prayer which, as you put it, calls upon God to 'engineer' particular events in the objective world - and confine ourselves to acts of penitence and adoration, I disagree with you."
Lewis is a masterful writer! Part of me wanted to read the letters that "Malcolm" wrote to him! I wanted to know more about Malcolm's wife Betty and their son George. They were fictional characters! Sometimes, when I get the sense that my prayers are primarily petitions, I make the conscious choice to praise God! I like the acronym ACTS (Adoration / Confession / Thanksgiving / Supplication). It reminds me to do more than just ask God to intervene for people I care about.
Chapter VIII: "You remember that the ancient Persians debated everything twice: once when they were drunk and once when they were sober."
That just struck my funny bone. I don't know if there's any truth in this statement, but he's making the point that one can talk "too lightly" about things and one needs to think about what they're thinking. It reminded me of learning about metacognition as a teenager.
Chapter IX: "The body (bless it) will not continue indefinitely supplying us with the physical media of emotion."
He writes this in response to Betty's wire and Malcolm's letter. Lewis comments that "I'm not at all surprised at your feeling flattened rather than joyful. That isn't ingratitude. It's only exhaustion." This really struck me because different people react differently to fear and trauma. At some point, emotions can just shut down.
Chapter XIII: "Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege."
I think this is one of the chapters that was confusing to me so I grabbed onto a statement I understood. As I read back over the preceding paragraph and the following, I'm still asea. I like "We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint." Then he goes on to write about the "ontological continuity" and I'm lost again.
Chapter XIV: "I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven."
What an interesting statement! If you have belief in Heaven and an eternal home, you must also believe that there is a literal Hell. He goes on to write about people's purely carnal and "self-centred fear and hope" as reasons to dig deeper.
Chapter XV: "For those in my position - adult converts from the intelligentsia - that simplicity and spontaneity can't always be the starting point. . . . We have to work back to the simplicity a long way round."
This spoke to me! I'm NOT a part of the intelligentsia (though my 15 year old self definitely thought I had a Big Brain) but I LIKE the simplicity of prayer and just talking to God! Before this quote, Lewis wrote, "On the present point she is right. I am making very heavy weather of what most believers find a very simple matter. What is more natural, and easier, if you believe in God, than to address Him? How could one not?" Yay, fictional Betty! I agree!
Chapter XV: "A stage set is not a real wood or drawing room: it is a real stage set, and may be a good one. (In fact we should never ask of anything, 'Is it real?,' for everything is real. The proper question is 'A real what?,' e.g., a real snake or real delirium tremens?)
This reminded me of talking with my husband! He's very clear and specific about words and their meanings!
Chapter XVII: "You first taught me the great principle 'Begin where you are.'"
I love how Lewis opens this chapter on worship and adoration. Praise God! It's so easy to look around you and find reasons to praise Him.
Chapter XVII: "I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it."
He goes on to get deep into the theology again, but adoring God is more than just saying "thank you" for all the things that bring us joy.
Chapter XVII: "I don't always achieve it. One obstacle is inattention. Another is the wrong kind of attention."
Lewis goes on to describe all the ways it can be difficult to have an attitude of adoration toward God, even though He deserves it.
Chapter XVII: "You feel it a brutal mockery of every martyr and every slave that a world-process which is so desperately serious to the actors should, at whatever celestial apex, be seen in terms of frivolities. And you add that it comes with a ludicrously ill grace from me, who never enjoyed any game and can dance no better than a centipede with wooden legs."
Okay, I freely admit I just wanted to include the part about the centipede. I love that image! But he's writing about having a frivolous versus a serious attitude toward prayer and eternity. Again, parts of his argument go over my head, but I like the image of the dancing centipede . . .
Chapter XIX: "You ask me why I've never written anything about the Holy Communion. For the very simple reason that I am not good enough at Theology. I have nothing to offer. Hiding any light I think I've got under a bushel is not my besetting sin! I am much more prone to prattle unseasonably."
This made me laugh. I love his humility, but I disagree with him. Also, I wonder what my "besetting sin" might be. Also, I prattle unseasonably far too often.
Chapter XX: "I believe in Purgatory."
This is one statement I disagree with and I won't go through his scholarly arguments on this point. Having grown up Roman Catholic, there's a whole lot of theology that doesn't seem to be Bible-based. Granted, I don't know much, but I'm pretty confident we don't get second chances after death to change our mind about our eternal plan. I guess I'll find out for sure one day!
Chapter XXI: "For while we talk about it, all the rest of our experience, which in reality crowds our prayer into the margin or sometimes off the page altogether, is not mentioned."
Ouch. This reminded me of a book I read that talked about Muslims' prioritizing prayer several times a day. As a Christian, prayer should be a priority not an afterthought!
Chapter XXI: "Well, let's now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a cross-word puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us."
Ooh. At first, I resented this statement. Did he truly believe that prayer is "irksome?" Or was he trying to hook his readers? What is my attitude toward prayer? Do I eagerly seek time with the Lord, or is it a chore to get over with? On re-reading this chapter, I'm reminded that it was Betty's letter that triggered the "irksome" comment. Also, Lewis writes, "The truth is, I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life." And he writes, ". . . by talking at this length about prayer at all, we seem to give it a much bigger place in our lives than, I'm afraid, it has. For while we talk about it, all the rest of our experience, which in reality crowds our prayer into the margin or sometimes off the page altogether, is not mentioned." This idea of prayer being crowded out . . . strikes home. Though I remind myself that the Bible tells me to "pray without ceasing," (1 Thessalonians 5:17) I certainly have times where I'm NOT "taking every thought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5)
Chapter XXI: "Much of our backwardness in prayer is no doubt due to our sins, as every teacher will tell us; to our avoidable immersion in the things of this world, to our neglect of mental discipline. And also to the very worst kind of 'fear of God.' We shrink from too naked a contact, because we are afraid of the divine demands upon us which it might make too audible."
He goes on to joke about an old Christian writer who says "many a Christian prays faintly 'lest God might really hear him, which he, poor man, never intended.'" The way I've heard it is, "Be careful what you pray for! God might tell you to change."
Chapter XXI: "If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be delight. Some day, please God, it will be."
I think that's a good prayer. God, please help me to see prayer as a delight. Amen!
Chapter XXII: "Liberal Christianity can only supply an ineffectual echo to the massive chorus of agreed and admitted unbelief."
Chapter XXII: "The liberals are honest men and preach their version of Christianity, as we preach ours, because they believe it to be true. A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave."
There was a lot in this chapter about the supernatural, the Christian life, freedom, comfort, resurrection, glorification, and doctrine. For such a short little book, it is packed full with ideas! He ends it with
"Thank Betty for her note. I'll come by the later train, the 3:40. And tell her not to bother about a bed on the ground floor. I can manage stairs again now, provided I take them 'in bottom.' Till Saturday."
This honestly reads like a conversation in letters!
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