Category: Education

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What’s the Bible All About?

I was raised in a denomination that took the Bible very seriously: “We speak where the Bible speaks, and are silent where the Bible is silent!” In many ways, it was a great advantage, because I had quite a bit of knowledge by the time I graduated high school graduation: not only could I name all 66 books by sixth grade, but I could also sketch the life of Jesus, Paul’s missionary journeys, the kings of united Israel and major kings Israel and Judah, the miracles of Elisha, the plagues of Egypt , and the sons of Jacob. Name the twelve apostles? No problem. Find Jerusalem, Samaria, and the Sea of Galilee on a map? I could draw the map.

But I didn’t really know what the Bible was about. I would have said it was about a lot of things—mostly Jesus, right? I didn’t see how it all held together. My first glimmer of the unity of scripture came during my sophomore year in a denominational college, in a course called “Old Testament Literature.” My professor was known for choking up in class. A lot of my fellow students were embarrassed by him, but I will always be grateful for the way he pushed me down the road to salvation.

I can’t go into all the insights and convictions of that pivotal class, but the light first came on when he mentioned the two trees. Skimming over Genesis, he paused to point out the description of the garden in Genesis 2. The Tree of Life at the center usually gets little notice, because of all the snaky glamour of that other tree, but he referred us to Revelation 22:2: “on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” I don’t remember whether he implied it or said it, but the connection clicked: the tree of Revelation was the same tree that appears in Genesis. The beginning tied directly to the end.

The discovery that the Bible was a unified narrative led to my conviction that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied throughout scripture, and hence, my savior. Wasn’t I taught that before? Sure, but I wasn’t listening too closely, and the central teaching was surrounded and often obscured by secondary issues. It’s ridiculously easy for the church to tilt off-center and lost sight of what she’s all about. But to this day, I peg my salvation from that class, and the revelation that scripture tells one story. It tells the story.

Several years ago I joined forces with Emily Whitten, my blogging partner at RedeemedReader.com, to write a one-year through-the-Bible study guide for ages 10 and up.  Our aim was to plant a sense of the scriptural unity in the minds of young students, or new students. A lot of people had the same idea at that time, such as Phil Visshur (creator of Veggie Tales) who produced a new series to teach kids What’s in the Bible? R. C. Sproul’s book by the same title was selling briskly.

We wanted to create something in the middle—for kids old enough to be independent readers, as well as new Christians of any age who don’t have a clue where to begin. (I wrote the lessons I’ll be posting; Emily adapted the material for younger kids.) We wanted the study to be accessible, easy to use, not too burdensome, and not too long.  In a year, a family or study group or individual could get a firm grasp of all the major themes and chronology of scripture.

Lots of excellent Bible curriculums pace slowly through the depths; we frankly aimed at the highlights, but also for building a framework for deeper study.  God’s revelation in history unfolded over time: beginning with hints, followed by covenants, followed by systems, followed by types and prototypes, followed by prophesies coming into ever sharper focus before the reality bursts through the screen. As we enter the brisk pick-up season of fall, huddle up during the winter, emerge from our caves in spring, and wind slowly down at the end of summer, we can watch His story unfold.

HERE’S THE PLAN

If you’d like to join me, the reading challenge will come in forty-nine installments, roughly four per month, to be posted on Tuesdays. Obviously, this leaves three weeks out of the loop, so I’ll skip Christmas week, Easter week, and the week of July.

The study follows a chronological rather than a canonical pattern. That is, rather than marching through the books of the Bible in the order they’re arranged, we’ll look at Job in connection with Genesis and selected Psalms of David along with I and II Samuel; team Daniel with Nehemiah, Joel and Malachi with the first chapters of Matthew and Luke, and so on.

Each week’s challenge will include 3-6 Bible chapters (or the equivalent), a short overview with further relevant scriptures, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-4 suggested activities for kids.  The readings can be divided up for family devotional times, homeschool Bible classes, or personal study times.  The approach might also work well for a discipleship or mentoring situation where you meet with a new Christian once a week over coffee.

What does this look like?  For a sneak peek at a sample weekly challenge, click here.

And click here for an overview chart of the whole year, including themes and readings.

We’ll kick off with Challenge One next week.  Come along for a thrilling ride!

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The Abolition of Man, Part Two

Last weekend, all eyes turned to Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia–“Mr. Jefferson’s university”–where violent right-wingers faced off against violent left-wingers.  A similar clash occurred in Seattle that same day, an event completely overshadowed by the Charlottesville ugliness, and Portland saw more of the same the weekend before.  Shaking my head over the videos of people yelling and swinging at each other, I turn from the computer screen and pick up my copy of The Abolition of Man to read this, the first sentence in the second chapter: “The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.”

Oh.

The Green Book, as you’ll recall (see The Abolition of Man, Part One) was a high school text sent to Lewis for his comment or recommendation.  It got a lot more comment from him than it was looking for.  The purpose of the authors was to teach young people to “see through” sentimentality and dogma and disregard traditional virtues as meaningless.  The authors call for the “subjectivizing” of values—that is, proving that any sentiments judged to be commendable, or worthwhile, for their own sake are “merely” (fatal word!) expressions of the speaker’s own biases.  But there would be no point in debunking suspect values unless you have other values in mind that are not so suspect, right?  Lewis sketches the “correct” approvals and disapprovals as indicated in The Green Book.  Approved: peace, democracy and tolerance.  Disapproved, or at least outgrown: courage, patriotism, and courtesy.

(We have our own lists of approved and disapproved.  One such system is derisively called “Political Correctness.”)

But the authors are fatally blind to the fact that without the latter (i.e., courage, patriotism, and courtesy), the former is impossible.

“It will be seen that comfort and security, as known to a suburban street in peace-time, are the ultimate values; [but] those things which can alone produce or spiritualize comfort and security are mocked.  [It’s as if] Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker’s van; peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers.”

What they don’t see is that under all lists of Approved and Disapproved is a deeper system, and that’s what Lewis addresses in Part Two of The Abolition of Man: “The Way.”

The Way goes by many names: Hindus refer to it as the Rta, to which even the gods are subject.  In Western tradition it’s known as Natural Law.  For the purpose of his argument, Lewis calls it the Tao: “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”

We all believe this, don’t we?  For all our talk of relativism and finding our own truth, everyone has some sense of absolute right and wrong.  Political discourse these days is nothing if not moral: to one side, the other side is not merely mistaken but nefarious or downright evil.  I have to say, I see this kind of militant morality more on the left than on the right, and could it be because the left (much more than the right) has explicitly rejected Natural Law for a new improved system?

For the rest of “The Way,” Lewis shows how modern attempts to base our preference for peace, democracy, and tolerance on some solid footing other than Natural Law are doomed to fail.  Appeals to utility (the greatest good for the greatest number), community, and common instinct all come up short, as he shows after close examination of each one.   Nothing can perform the service of the Tao except the Tao itself.  When we ditch it, what’s the last resort, our ultimate appeal?

Power.  That’s what the street fights in our cities are all about–who has it, who wants it, who ends up with it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In That Hideous Strength, two sets of characters stand in direct opposition to each other.  The little band at St. Anne’s have pledged their loyalty to the Director, who defers to his “Masters.”  The Masters, in their turn, are subject to the highest power, understood as the Lord Himself, originator of Natural Law.

Jane’s conversation with Ransom in chapter 7 underscores this.  “I don’t think I look on marriage quite as you do,” she says, in her best “sensible” mode.  To which he replies, “Child, it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.”  Natural Law is not merciless or unyielding: when Jane’s life is threatened, she is admitted to the circle without her husband’s knowledge or consent.  That is not in defiance of the Law, but rather obedience to another part of the Law—to save her very life.  “Only those who are practicing the Tao can understand it” (AoM, “The Way”), including what parts supersede others.

At Belbury there’s a group of “progressives” dedicated to replacing Natural Law with a set of “new, improved” values.*  Mark is one of them, following the lead of Curry and Busby at the University; others are Steele, Crosser, and all their underlings and bureaucrats.  Their goal is “reconditioning” society to think the way they do.  But they don’t realize that conditioning works on them, too.  Recall Miss Hardcastle in Chapter 5.1 on the subject of newspaper propaganda: “Don’t you see that the educated reader can’t stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do?  He can’t.  He’s been conditioned.”

The progressives think that they’ve replaced outdated values with new ones, but they’ve actually undermined all value.  That’s why, when Filostrato waxes eloquent about sexless reproduction and metal trees (Chapter 8.3), no one at the table can come up with an argument against him.  They’ve scrapped the Tao.  By selecting only the parts of it they like, they’ve weakened all of it and left themselves no firm principles to stand on.

But there’s a third group at Belbury, the “Inner Ring” whose purpose is not reforming humanity but remaking it. ** They are, in ascending order of venality, Filostrato, Straik, Wither, and Frost.  (Feverstone belongs to a group of one, and Hardcastle is a special case.)  To understand them, we should look at Lewis’s conclusion at the end of “The Way”:

[Some will say,] Why must our conquest of nature stop short, in stupid reverence, before this final and toughest bit of ‘nature’ which has hitherto been called the conscience of man? . . . You say we shall have no values at all if we step outside the Tao.  Very well: we shall probably find that we can get on quite comfortably without them . . . Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that . . . Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny.

If you say this, says Lewis, you are at least not guilty of self-contradiction, like those who suppose they can replace Natural Law with a better law.  But you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to something far worse, as we’ll see in the third quarter of That Hideous Strength.

____________________________________________________________

* This is exactly the progressive agenda in the US today: the old values led to slavery, discrimination, and oppression.  Therefore, we must rebuild on new values stressing tolerance for everyone, except everyone who disagrees with us.

**Today we call it  transhumanism.  Lewis did not foresee the rise of Silicon Valley and eager young tech moguls like Sergy Brin and Elon Musk.  Their faith is in technology, not the dark forces of magic, but will they end up in the same place?

 

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That Hideous Strength: Development

If you’re just joining us, you might want to get oriented with the Introduction and Setup.

Almost all the main characters have been introduced and the potential conflicts are in place.  Now development: that phase of a novel that builds tension and raises the stakes.  All the major plot elements will be rounded up and herded in one direction, although the reader should feel that options are still open.  In that sense, a novel is like a conspiracy theory: the unfolding plot looks like the best conclusion from the facts, but the facts have been carefully selected.  Let’s look at how Lewis chooses incident to build tension and invest the reader in the story.  (I thought this post might be shorter than the last one, but oh well . . . .)

CHAPTER FIVE: ELASTICITY

5.1 The Institute’s S.O.P. is to keep underlings off-balance: this is what Wither calls flexibility and Miss Hardcastle calls elasticity.  Her advice to Mark is to get with the program, and understanding will come in time.  This is a brutalization of Jesus’ words in John 7: 17: “If any man seeks to do God’s will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.”  That is, one must willingly join in order to know.  Jesus has authority to say that, but Miss Hardcastle’s version should be a clue to Mark that the aims of the N.I.C.E. are more expansive than mere social reform.  He doesn’t pick up on it, possibly because, as she cynically observes, “it’s the educated reader who can be gulled . . . He’s been conditioned.”  What do you think? And what does that say about what’s commonly understood as “education”?

The paragraph beginning with, “The confidential tone,” solidifies, perhaps unnecessarily, what we already know about Mark’s main motivation.  In fact, Lewis makes his motivation more explicit than any other character’s.  That’s because it was close to his heart.

In an address called “The Inner Ring” (1944) Lewis expanded on the theme: “I don’t believe that the economic motive and the erotic motive account for everything that goes on in what we moralists call the World.  Even if you add Ambition I think the picture is still incomplete. . .”  He identified this missing factor as “the lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside . . . [T]his desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action.”  He experienced it, and so have I.  It goes way back: when Eve’s hand finally reached out for the fruit, it was a lust for forbidden knowledge that drove her.  Mark is not precisely aware that the knowledge is forbidden, only that it’s denied to him.  In order to acquire it, he’ll have to stretch his principles, such as they are—and that’s where the real “elasticity” comes in.

5.2 Does he seem like a rat in a maze?  Or a mouse between a cat’s paws?  I almost feel sorry for him, especially when reading Curry’s letter.  Compare Curry’s praise of David Laird with the doubts expressed in 4.7—is Curry prevaricating or has he convinced himself that this mediocre scholar is really the best man for the position?  “He got a third” (Mark’s letter) refers to the lowest-degree university diploma. ~ Feverstone’s “nasty,poor, brutish, and short” is a slightly misquoted description of primitive man from Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan (1651).  Mark is learning he can’t really trust anyone–Feverstone’s easy manner can turn on a dime and Wither is impossible to pin down.

The Pendragon, Arthur’s family crest

5.3 Unlike Mark, Jane is defined more by what she doesn’t want than by what she wants (making her a weaker, i.e. less memorable character, in the opinion of some critics).  What she doesn’t want is to be messed with; she’s defensive about her self-image as an independent modern woman.  (Lewis described himself this way in Surprised by Joy.)  Though Jane is sincerely drawn to the Dennistons, they make her angry . . . and what else? ~ The Sura they mention is probably based on an actual Indian mystic, Sadhu Sundar Singh, who converted to Christianity in 1904 and lived as an itinerant evangelist until his disappearance in Tibet. ~ You may know Pendragon as King Arthur’s family name, but its earliest origin is in Wales, where it means Chief or Head.  According to legend, Merlin bestowed it as a surname on Arthur’s father.

In the paragraph beginning, “You must see it from Mrs. Studdock’s point of view,” notice how Arthur Denniston echoes Miss Hardcastle’s advice in 5.1: Jane must first commit to the organization before she can understand what it’s all about.  (Remember John 7:17).  Matters of cosmic significance can only be understood from the inside.  Do you believe this is true?

CHAPTER SIX: FOG

6.1 In fiction, weather is often a metaphor.  Fog in this chapter is a metaphor for . . . what? ~ Feeling trapped, Mark finds his only recourse is to “do what he’s told” and maybe something will come of it.  Notice how he tries to feel better about it by blaming Jane.  Have you ever done that with your spouse?

6-2 Bracton College is totally out-maneuvered by the N.I.C.E.  The last vestige of grace and tradition that the University is supposed to protect is destroyed, and the question returns: why do they want the wood, even that last little strip?  A growing crisis in Edgetow is clamoring for a response.  It’s not clear that Mark wrote the first newspaper article suggesting something must be done (and isn’t that always the way government is invited to take more control?), but we’re meant to assume that he is. ~ How does Hingest’s funeral contribute to the mood of this chapter?

6-3 The scene in the library represents Mark’s full conversion to the dark side.  His pleasure at being received is so intense it dulls any twinge of conscience about what he’s asked to do.  This is how even decent men are corrupted–step by step. We learn later that Rev. Straik was a much better man than Mark until led astray by bad theology, demonstrated here by his understanding of the resurrection. (Lewis hinted earlier that he was driven to fanaticism by the death of his young daughter.) ~ Ad metam properate, “Hurry on to the finish.” ~ Professor Frost is one of the inner Inner Circle, and alert readers will recognize him from the description as someone we’ve met before.  In the very first chapter–remember?

6-4 Mark’s two editorials are very long (hard to imagine any newspaper that would publish them today). They can be skimmed, but it’s worth noting what audience he’s aiming at in in each and the different means he uses to reach them.  He’s actually a talented writer, as the management perceives.  In some circles, talent is everything, and its main purpose is to advance one’s own ambitions.  Also, recall what Miss Hardcastle said about the educated being most vulnerable to “conditioning.”  Mark has already learned that lesson.

6-5 Jane has another dream and soon after meets a nightmare in real life.  No more question of holding herself aloof; one way or another, someone is going to mess with her, and she’d rather it be people she knows and likes.  Notice the weather again . . .

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE PENDRAGON

7-1 The Fisher-King is a mysterious figure in Arthurian legend, associated with gentle, naïve Sir Percival during the Grail quest.  Percival first meets the Fisher-King as an old fisherman who directs him to the right path.  Later, the knight encounters him as a king with an incurable wound attended by keepers of the Grail itself.  Our “Mr. Fisher-King” is none other than Dr. Ransom, who traveled to Mars and Venus and returned from the latter with an incurable wound in his heel.  Meeting him marks Jane’s conversion: “Her world was unmade” (note the repetition).  Ransom is obviously meant to represent Christ (though, unlike Aslan, he is not Christ in another form).  How many resemblances do you see?

7-2 His conversation with Jane seems to touch on several issues but it’s really only one: love.  That’s what all the talk about equality is about, though expressed more succinctly in Lewis’s essay “Membership” (from The Weight of Glory): “Equality is a quantitative term and therefore love knows nothing of it.”  Equality is about giving everyone a “fair share”; love has no concern with fairness, or even sharing.  Otherwise any couple will fall into the tired routine of blaming each other for their problems, as Mark earlier blamed Jane and now she wants to blame him. ~  I was once shaken to the core by Ransom’s observation that “Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions [i.e., equals].  Those who enjoy or suffer each other are not [emphasis mine].”  Marriage has no place for keeping tabs or trading favors; each is totally in debt to the other.  And (as the mice demonstrate) it’s not meant to be a lifelong burden, but more like a dance. ~ The sensual trance that steals over Jane as he’s talking (“Stop it!” said the Director, sharply) is not explained but we’ll get some idea later of what it means.  I think. ~ Brobdingnag, mentioned at the end of the section, is the land of giants visited by Gulliver.

7-3 Why does Lewis have to examine all of Jane’s feelings in such detail?  Well, he probably doesn’t.  He means to show her divided state of mind, and got carried away.  But “the state of joy” that is Jane’s overarching emotion is central to Lewis’s religious thought (see Surprised by Joy), and soon enough that state will change.

7-4 Lewis may lay it on a little heavy in this section (such things as Rubens might have seen in delirium? Not going there!), but thankfully he curtails the torture scene, like most contemporary writers wouldn’t do.  The segment accomplishes at least three purposes: ramps up the tension, shows the real violence and destruction of the Institute’s “engineered” riot, and provides excellent justification for Jane to flee to St. Anne’s.

CHAPTER EIGHT: MOONLIGHT AT BELBURY

8-1 We’re getting close to the heart of the matter at Belbury—the real Inner Ring.  Readers may guess who “the Head” is, but Lewis is not going to spring it just yet.  The conversation between Wither and Hardcastle hints that Mark was invited to the Institute not for his writing ability but for his wife—certainly the last thing he would have expected, and we should be rather surprised, too.

8-2 Jane’s introduction to the full circle at St. Anne’s.  It’s an “equal” society, in the way discussed in 7-2, but note how Jane’s bland defense of equality to the Director doesn’t extend to her attitude toward Ivy Maggs.  As for Mr. Bultitude—he may seem like comic relief, but he’ll serve a purpose later on. (Mr. Bultitude takes his name from a central character in the classic 1880s school story, Vice Versa).  MacPhee is the “resident skeptic,” a hard-headed agnostic of the sort Lewis seems to have had great affection for (in Surprised by Joy, he describes his beloved tutor W. T. Fitzpatrick in similar terms).  William Hingest, who was bumped off in Chapter 4, is cut from the same cloth.  You can grasp the drift of MacPhee’s conversation without understanding all his references—I certainly don’t.  Most of this section can be skipped as not essential to the plot, though interesting in its ideas.

8/3 Mark’s dinner conversation with Filostrato goes on too long as well, but it’s more directly related to Lewis’s theme.  The “Italian eunuch” finds organic life distasteful: his ideal is the clean, white moon.  Note that he is a physicist rather than a biologist, which doesn’t seem to jibe with his experimental tinkering on animals and plants.  Physics is the science of “elegant” theories and big pictures, such as the non-organic dream that Filostrato is sketching here.  It’s not an appealing dream, but nobody at the table can find a reason to refute him.

Well, we can: he is calling good evil, and evil good (Is. 5:20; cf. Gen. 1:31) ~ The moon, bringer of madness, bears down hard on Belbury.  Filostrato’s discussion of life there sounds like fanatical raving, but we’ll hear more of it.  In fact, we’re hearing of it now, with “CRSPR” gene editing to remove inherited diseases.  A benevolent motivation can easily become a ravenous desire to redesign humanity.  And it will.

Finally, Mark comes close to the secret: compare his approach to the Head with Jane’s introduction to the Head of St. Anne’s in the last chapter.  Remember that they are following parallel courses in radically different settings; though neither realizes it yet, they will be confronted with equally crucial decisions very soon.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Lewis described That Hideous Strength as a novelistic re-working of ideas he set out in the three essays that make up The Abolition of Man.  I’ve also begun a read-along to The Abolition of Man, which dovetails nicely with THS.  Even if you don’t have time to read the book (which is very short, but very dense), it’s interesting to see how the novel is reflected in the meditation, and vice versa.

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The Abolition of Man: Reading Along, Part One

In February of 1943 C. S. Lewis delivered three evening lectures at King’s College in Newcastle.  Later that year the lectures were published in book form under the title of the third: The Abolition of Man.  Over time Lewis came to regard this slender volume as his most significant work.  It’s very short, only 91 pages plus an appendix.  You could read it in an evening–but don’t.  It’s incredibly packed: every sentence could be pondered over or discussed in an evening’s literary circle.

Lewis described the third volume of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, as “a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ that I tried to make in my Abolition of Man.”  The point was that humanity is in danger of becoming inhuman.

The first essay of AoM, “Men without Chests,” raised the alarm about certain educational trends.  He begins with Exhibit A: a literature textbook sent to him by an educational publisher who was probably hoping for an endorsement.  Instead of a favorable blurb, the volume got to go down in history (though anonymously) as the notorious Green Book by “Gaius and Titius,”* educated barbarians who were contributing to the gutting of national character.  G & T had bought into logical positivism, which generally holds that a statement has meaning only if it can empirically proved or objectively demonstrated.  What we today call “values” (and an earlier age called “enduring principles”) are meaningless.

As an example, Gaius and Titius reference Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s story about the waterfall.  There were two visitors besides Coleridge at a certain well-known tourist attraction, one of whom said the waterfall was sublime and the other said it was pretty.  The poet mentally endorsed Tourist A—“sublime” was the proper value given to such a sight, while “pretty” was wholly inadequate.  But G & T informed the young readers that value statements have no objective reality: isn’t one man’s sublime another man’s pretty?  Thus, statements about feelings, metaphysics, or religion are meaningless in the public square, and the sooner English schoolboys and girls learn the difference between fact and value (and disregard the latter) the better off we’ll all be.

Lewis  wasn’t buying it.  As a classical scholar he could marshal the finest minds in Western tradition—and even Eastern tradition—to support his contention that hearts must be educated as well as heads, that emotion has as great a stake in human progress as reason.  While allowing for individual preferences, there are right and wrong ways to feel.  There are qualities that should be encouraged and qualities that should be condemned in no uncertain terms.  If a man’s emotions are not trained along with his intellect, there will be no arbiter between his brain and his gut (the seat of animal appetite).  That’s what the expression “Men without Chests” relates to, along with the much-quoted observation that we’re asking young people to demonstrate those very qualities we’ve educated out of them.  “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

In That Hideous Strength (see my post on The Setup) Mark Studdock, his wife Jane, and his colleagues at Bracton College are all victims of this sort of “progressive” education.  Jane, immersed in quality literature (though she insists on putting her modern interpretations on it) is a little more sensitive to beauty and virtue.  Mark the sociology major is unwittingly swimming with the sharks, for where there’s no objective scale of value—no authoritative word on whether loyalty is preferable to treachery or chastity to unfaithfulness—what’s left is survival of the fittest.  Or the coolest, or the trendiest.  You may have experienced a scale of value of this sort in high school (especially if you were considered the opposite of cool).  If teenagers grow out of this phase it’s relatively harmless in the long run.  But Mark clearly hasn’t.  Because his education has given him no higher star to steer by, his one guiding light is to come out on top of whatever heap he’s in.  He has set aside any real pleasure and enjoyment in things for their own sake; they only get in the way of striving and climbing.  During his visit to Cure Hardy with Crosser he feels the unassuming charm of the place.  It tugs at his better nature, but he pushes aside charm for the sake of “progress.”  Education has almost nibbled his chest away.  We see he still has a bit left, but will it be enough?

After Chapter 4 the action will shift away from the College and its resident Huns, Curry and Busby, but it’s worth taking a last look at these men lacking in the chest department (Chapter Two, “Dinner with the Sub-Warden,” section 1).   They’ve become so involved with the process of education that they’ve lost sight of the content, except as it relates to creating soulless young academics like themselves.  Feverstone–the epitome of cool, by the way–is on to them: “I see.  In order to keep the place going as a learned society, all the best brains in it have to give up doing anything about learning.”  “Exactly!” says Curry, before realizing he’s been had.  Stamping out approved young minds has become the College’s business, and the educated people of Edgetow, as we’ll soon see, are by far the most gullible.

* * * * * * * * * * *

But it appears as though even intellectuals–or many of them–can’t live without honor and virtue for long.  The devaluation of value that lumbered to its feet after the first World War, marched through academia throughout the 20th century and spread its poison through public education, has perhaps met its match in passionate political activism.  The anti-war, anti-discrimination protesters of the 1960s and 70s demanded the right to feel. There was a right and wrong, only . . . they get to decide what it is.  And they get to decide without reference to long-standing tradition, religion, or philosophy.  How does that work out?  Lewis will ponder the question in the next essay, “The Way.”

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*Hereby unmasked (via Wikipedia) as The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing, published in 1939 by Alexander (“Alec”) King and Martin Ketley.  Doesn’t that sound exactly like the title of a paper (almost any paper) published by the Modern Language Association today?

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That Hideous Strength Read-along: The Setup

In Chapters 1-4, we situate ourselves in a time and place: modern Britain sometime in the 1950s, with the memory of World War II’s devastation fresh and vivid.

The action takes place at three fictional locations: Edgetow, a university town similar to Cambridge, but smaller; St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill, a nearby village; and Belbury, a village in the opposite direction, currently undergoing a process of modernization.  The plot is immediately tangled in University politics, so it helps to know that the University of Edgetow is composed of four separate colleges, each with its own administration and disciplines .  Bracton College is the one that will concern us, because of the characters associated with it.  In these first chapters Lewis, like any good novelist, is introducing his major characters and moving the conflict elements into place—like setting up a chessboard and marking out a strategy.  The problem for contemporary readers is that he takes an awfully long time to do it and assumes a literary and history background that most Americans don’t have.  So here, with the help of notes obtained from the Lewisiana website, are a few pointers.

CHAPTER ONE: SALE OF COLLEGE PROPERTY

1.1 Jane Tudor Studdock, a thoroughly modern post-war young woman, is at the beginning of a marriage that has already proved disappointing.  The words she recalls in the first paragraph are from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the traditional ringing tones of which contrast sharply with Jane’s “improved” attitudes.  She’s not a believer, but Anglicanism was the state religion (still is) with some authority over civil institutions like marriage.  The clash between tradition and fashion sets Lewis’s theme, and Jane’s disturbing dream puts the plot in motion.  She and her husband Mark will be the contrasting poles between which the action will shift and build.

The title page of Bracton’s book, which fellows of his namesake college would have done well to heed

1.2 Mark Studdock is intent on advancing his academic career.  He’s a sociologist, a relatively new field of study at the time, and Lewis doesn’t seem to think much of it.  Mark’s conversation with Curry shows how the academic world (then and now) is obsessed with position: the whole of point of an academic career is levering oneself into a cushy sinecure where one can collect a handsome salary without doing a lot of work (nothing has changes).  Henry de Bracton (ca. 1250), for whom Mark’s college is named, was the author of a book on common law, in which he argued that secular authority is subject to the law.  This also plays into Lewis’s theme.  If you haven’t read Out of the Silent Planet, it’s important to know that Dick Devine (Lord Feverstone), whom Curry mentions as the one who got Mark his position, is the same Devine who accompanied Drs. Westin and Ransom on their trip to Mars.

1.3 This is a lovely section that you can feel free to skip, because there’s a lot of history and atmosphere that you may not be susceptible to at this point.  Suffice it to say that Bragton Wood, a small enclosure within the college, is redolent with mystery as well as history, because it’s the location of “Merlin’s well.”  Merlin is not just a character in the Arthur legends, but rather the character around whom the legends collected.  The earliest references to him (ca. 800 AD) suggest that he had no father, giving rise to the rumor that he was the devil’s son.  More of this later.  What Lewis suggests in this chapter is that the College, feverishly modernizing, is sitting on a vast reserve of ancient power and knowledge that will not be swept aside.*

1.4 Lewis draws this chapter out so long it’s like you’re sitting in on an actual college meeting!  But it’s worth reading for the clever way in which the “progressive” element maneuvers the fellows into voting to sell Bragdon Wood–a sale they would never have approved on a straightforward vote.  This section also introduces the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments, or N.I.C.E., the collective villain of the piece. (Lewis obviously named the Institute with the acronym in mind, but it’s worth a mention that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a division of its National Health Service, also takes the acronym NICE.)  Why does the N.I.C.E. want Bragdon Wood?  That’s the question . . .

1.5 Introducing Dr. and Mrs. Cecil Dimble, sympathetic characters who already have a connection with Jane.  They happen to live on Bracton College property, though Dimble teaches at another college.  The couple have recently learned that their lease is not being renewed, no telling why.  Notice how the tension slowly builds as change comes quickly to this sleepy little town, and how the Arthur legend comes up again in the conversation over tea.

*The heedless modernization Lewis saw in the fifties–or actually after the first World War–came into its own during the sixties.  He pictures the change being wrought by an axis of government and academic bureaucracy; he might not have foreseen the wave of radicalism that hit college campuses in the mid-sixties, fueled (in America) by the Civil Rights movement and the VietNam war.  But it was brilliant of him to perceive the corruption of the University as the eventual collapse of civilization.

CHAPTER TWO: DINNER WITH THE SUB-WARDEN

2.1  Non-olet is Latin for “it doesn’t stink,” ascribed to Emperor Vespasian’s reference to tax proceeds from public toilets.  The Sub-warden, remember, is Curry; the college bursar (treasurer) is Busby: these are two Bracton hot-shots who will be edged out of prominence as Lord Feverstone circles like a shark around Mark.  Notice his mention of Dr. Westin, the antagonist of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.  The “respectable Cambridge don” is Dr. Ransom, hero of those books. Feverstone’s talk of “taking charge of our destiny” is exactly what some contemporary scientists–as well as futuristic entrepreneurs like Elon Musk–mean by taking control of evolution.  The catchword today is “transhumanism.”  The theme is coming clearer now, and Mark will not be able to claim that he wasn’t warned.

2.2 and 2.3  Jane has another dream; her fear grows even as she despises herself for it.  Mark is totally out of his element with her.  We will see them together only one other time (briefly) during the course of the novel, and it’s interesting analyze their relationship here: what are the danger signs you see?  Have you noticed anything similar in couples you know?  Remember that Jane and Mark are the two poles of the narrative: the action will shift back and forth between them, with ever-growing light and ever-increasing darkness.

2.4   Mark motors to Belbury, N.I.C.E. headquarters, with Feverstone: “a big man driving a big car to somewhere where they would find big stuff going on.  And he, Mark, was to be in it all.”  Already we’ve seen Mark’s hunger to be in the inner circle, a lust that goes back to high school for almost everybody—I can certainly sympathize.  Incidentally, Lewis’s description of the sights may go on too long here, but I love his hinting at the ineffable potential of passing scenery: it’s like peeking into lighted windows as you walk by them.  Belbury might have been based on Blewbury, a village south of Oxford that became the site of the first nuclear reactor in Europe.

The picturesque side of Blewbury: doomed by forward-thinking bureaucrats?

CHAPTER THREE: BELBURY AND ST. ANNE’S-ON-THE-HILL

3.1 and 3.2  Out of the frying pan, into the fire, though Mark recognizes only that he must find his way to the real power source here, just as he did at Bracton College.  He is first introduced to John Wither, Deputy Director of N.I.C.E. who can’t seem to direct a cogent thought.  William Hingest, whom Mark knew at Bracton, strikes the first sour note.  Crosser and Steele are the kind of mediocre talents that bureaucracy thrives on, and Professor Filostrato may be one of the inner circle.

3.3  Meanwhile, at St. Anne’s, Jane meets Camilla Denniston (whose husband was mentioned in 1.2 as Mark’s rival for his fellowship), and Grace Ironwood, to whom she forms an immediate dislike.  Why?  What is it in Jane’s character that reacts negatively to Miss Ironwood’s?

3.4  Mark’s introduction to “Fairy” Hardcastle, one of Lewis’s more vivid characters.  She’s chief of the Institute’s police, and why should a government institution need its own law enforcement?  That should raise questions right away, as it does for Dr. Hingest, but Mark falls in with the line that the work is too vital, though controversial, to lack protection.  (By the way, did you know the the U. S. Department of Education has its own swat team?  Would it be amiss to wonder why . . . ?)

3.5  The real trouble begins.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE LIQUIDATION OF ANACHRONISM

The title is a mouthful, referring to modernism’s goal of purging the past, along with its obscure symbolism and burdensome rules.  This is a major theme of The Abolition of Man (see my first post on that a week from today).

4.1 and 4.2  The N.I.C.E. is demonstrating the swagger of Nazi hordes, an all-too-recent memory.  Mrs. Dingle’s description of their mowing down the woods compares to the murder of the trees from Narnia’s Last Battle.  I’m intrigued by her question, “do human beings really like being happy?”  A lot of us certainly enjoy being angry, or feeling put upon (speaking for myself).

4.3  Mark shares a morning stroll with the Reverend John Straik, whose presence at the Institute is a mystery.  Isn’t modern science supposed to root out fire-and-brimstone religious fanatics such as this?  I can’t think of a contemporary parallel to Straik (can you?), but he’s not the only one to mold the image of Christ to his own inclination.  Softer forms of Christianity have played in to hands of power often enough, as the National Church did in Hitler’s time.  Notice Mark’s acute embarrassment “at the name of Jesus”—love it!  The name of Jesus was, is, and will always be offensive: a “stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”

4.4  Foul play; your suspicions should be raised.  I love the last paragraph!

4.5  All Jane wants is “to be left alone.”  This was Lewis’s own desire, as described in Surprised by Joy.  Is this reasonable?  Is it possible?

4.6  The proposed “liquidation” of Cure Hardy reflects what is going to happen to Bracton Wood.  It goes on a little too long; you can get the sense by skimming.  Some redeeming aspects of Mark’s character emerge here, and a good thing too; major characters need to be somewhat sympathetic.  What are these redeeming features?  Notice how his field (sociology) concentrates on group identity rather than individual, exactly as political correctness does today.

4.7  This scene is just devastating: the colleges progressives have sown the wind and now reap the whirlwind of mindless destruction: the “liquidation of anachronism,” indeed.  Notice how Mark is being maneuvered from afar—the inner circle he craves membership in is advancing him like a chess piece.

Christ College dining hall–might that be the famous East Window, in which Henrietta Maria had cut her name with a diamond?
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“Hinder Them Not”

You know the story, pictured in so many children’s Bibles and Sunday school literature: Jesus and the Children.  When the officious grownups—his own followers—tried to brush off women who were bringing their babies for him to bless, his rebuke stopped them cold and still warms every mother’s heart: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belong the Kingdom of God.”

This implies a lot—that little children would run to Jesus if they had the opportunity, that they are often hindered from coming, and that they possess some quality that preeminently suits them for membership in the kingdom of God.  You’ve heard sermons on the “for such belongs” part, so I won’t dwell on it here.  I’m interested in “Let them come” and “do not hinder.”  Two questions: Would little children freely come?  And if so, how are they “hindered”?

The answer to the first question is probably yes and no.  In himself, Jesus is inherently appealing, as every excellent and beautiful thing we cherish in this world owes its very existence and character to him.  But our minds are clouded by less-than-excellent and beautiful motives, distractions, and impulses.  If we could see him clearly, we would all run to him, not just the little children.  But we can’t, so most of us don’t, and that includes little children.

However . . . let’s say our motives are honorable and we have welcomed Jesus as our Lord and Savior and earnestly desire our children to do the same.  Can we still hinder them?

Yes—with the best motives in the world.  Here’s how:

  • A too-literal interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:7: “You shall teach [God’s law] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise . . .”  It’s one thing to apply God’s law in ordinary conversation, and another to drop leaden exhortations.  Character education was a thing back in the 80s and 90s—remember that?  (And did you notice any general improvements in character as a result?)  Often this came in the form of reminders to “Be diligent” or “Be kind” coupled with mini-biographies of people who modeled these virtues.  Too often it sounded like school, as though everyday relateable Mom or Dad switched off for a moment to let Preacher Mom or Dad make an announcement.  As soon as Preacher Mom comes on, the kid tunes out.
  • “Jesus” training.  You know the Sunday-school joke about the right answer to every question being “Jesus”?  (It happened to me just a couple of Sundays ago, when I asked what the first five books of the Bible were.  The answer, of course, is “Jesus.”)  The statement “Jesus is the answer” is literally true but not always truly literate.  That is, it takes a few steps to get from the problem to the answer, so when the kids come to you with a problem (or clearly have one they don’t want to talk to you about), don’t be so quick to solve it with the Jesus answer.  Take some time to explore the issue, and as you do, you’ll find that Jesus almost certainly said something that applies.  And if he didn’t say it, he did it.
  • Shutting down honest doubts.  If you ever get a fluttery feeling in your stomach when your kindergartner wonders how all those animals could have fit inside the ark, or your pre-teen asks who made God, or you high-school senior demands where God was during the Holocaust . . . relax.  It’s often a good sign; it means they’re thinking.  Talk through their doubts, share (where appropriate) your own questions and uncertainties, explore possible answers, and offer to look into it further.  You can be sure every question has been answered and no doubt necessitates unbelief all by itself.
  • Non-engagement with the culture.  You will not protect children by isolating them from the world.  Their main problem is within, not without.  The question about how much to “engage” is a vexing one that parents need to think through carefully, since what may be appropriate for one family could be damaging for another.  A mom’s background in literature or psychology, for example, could help guide her teen daughter through a suicide novel like 13 Reasons Why, where another mother with a super-sensitive son might be well-advised to skip the novel altogether (and the TV series even more).  Don’t ever forget: They’re going to grow up.  They’re going to leave you.  They’re going to have to make these decisions about engagement on their own.  Your job is to prepare them, not protect them.
  • Creating your own “culture.” As a homeschool mother from 1985 to 1996, I encountered parents who told me that homeschoolers were God’s new shock troops who were going to change the culture.  They related everything to religion, scattered Bible quotes throughout the house, referenced Jesus everywhere, spoke in a certain vocabulary and dressed a certain way.  Especially around their children.  Many of these kids turned out just fine, but many others broke loose at the earliest possible moment.  And by the way, they didn’t change the culture.
  • Relying too much on ourselves and our own resources.  See “Creating your own culture,” above.  With some parents, the impulse is almost frantic: If I don’t do x, my kids will fall into y.  Chances are, they’re going to fall into some kind of sin; you may steer them away from drinking but they’ll stumble at sex.  Or if they avoid all the fleshly pitfalls, they’ll fall prey to spiritual pride, which is even worse.  Your Savior is also their Savior, and he is supremely able to do what you can’t.
  • Failing to be genuine.  Is your speech more “religious” when speaking to your kids than when you talk to your peers?  You can be sure they pick up on that, too.

If none of these apply to you, you are the perfect Christian mom or dad.  Bad news: You’re not.  Good news: Though you have a vital job to do, its success doesn’t depend on you.  Even better news: God is fully aware of your weakness and has already accounted for it.  That’s what the cross is about.  So everybody take a deep breath and then we can get practical.

Once we become a little better about not hindering, we can start encouraging.  The children in the story didn’t come to Jesus on their own accord; their mothers had to bring them.  Even today, in a society vastly removed from first-century Palestine, it’s usually the mothers who bond early and teach their little ones to walk and talk and eat what’s good for them . . . and take their first steps toward God.

One very basic step along that road is learning to pray.  Chances are, the very first person a child hears praying is a parent.  It should be so easy, yet it’s hard to teach.  In fact, the inspiration for this blog post is a mother asking me for advice in teaching kids to pray.  She had little confidence that her children, ages 10 and 12, had never learned to pray on their own, in spite of all her modeling and teaching.

I told her I could at least think about it.  So I did, and I came up with some thoughts.  But you’ll have to come back next week to see what they are.

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Nine Things the Church Needs to Understand about Art (and Artists)

Makoto Fujimura, “Still Point – Evening”
  • Art is not a separate category of human endeavor, like “business,” “psychology,” “pest control,” “education,” or “politics.”  Some men and women make a living by creative pursuits, and we call them “artists” (or dancers, authors, screenwriters, photographers).  But in the broadest sense, art is something we are all called to, as imitators of our creative Father.  Art is one way we experience life, and to pay little or no attention to it is to miss an entire dimension of human experience.
  • Artists are not special people—they’re just like you and me, with families, backgrounds, financial concerns, virtues, and sins.  Some artists like to think they’re special, it’s true.  They’re the ones who give “art” (scare-quote art) a bad name.  If God isn’t front and center as their Maker and Redeemer they’re likely to set themselves up as makers and redeemers of the culture, and with a whole lotta luck and the right connections, they might even get paid for it.  But church-member Michael who owns a share in the downtown gallery and teaches drawing at the local community college—and comes late to Sunday school and doesn’t say much—isn’t one of those.  He’s a guy with a particular vision and gift.  You should talk to him about it sometime.  Don’t be intimidated.
  • Art is not a matter of knowing what you like.  It’s a matter of seeing what you haven’t seen before, or hearing what you haven’t heard.  This isn’t teaching, exactly; art can’t teach.  It’s not a substitute for sound doctrinal exposition, but can act as a mediator between sound doctrine and life as it’s lived. Also,
  • Art is not a tool; it’s an encounter.  Bible-story pictures, chalk talks, extended metaphors serving as sermon illustrations—those are tools, direct and unambiguous, and they can be useful for getting a point across.  Art is by nature ambiguous and will affect each member of its audience in different ways, or not at all.  A story, a painting, a song or symphony doesn’t make points or teach lessons.  It sidles up to the individual and walks alongside for a while, leaving its companion a little more insightful or sympathetic, even a little more human, for that brief acquaintance.  More about that below.
  • Art is not an esoteric subject that only specialists understand.  Here again, some artists have muddied the water by creating a club of the like-minded for the benefit of each other—when they’re not stabbing each other in the back, that is.  Also for looking down on the rubes.  But most of us rubes can be taught to see if we are trained to look.  That’s one vital service artists can perform for their church body: sharing what they know and opening windows of understanding for the rest of us.  (Wednesday-night art appreciation class after the prayer meeting?  Why not?)
  • Art should be encouraged.  That appreciation class?  It’s not just for the ladies’ book club and the amateur painter, but also for the pastor and elders and their wives and women’s ministry leaders.  They should go.  And they should ask questions.*
  • Art, like everything else, stands in need of redemption.  That’s where artists need the church, as much as the church needs them.
  • Art can’t do everything (like teach or preach).  But what it can do, it does like nothing else: 1) awaken the imagination—the “bright wings” that gild ordinary experience; 2) illuminate what we already know, and breathe life into propositional truth; 3) unify the mind and heart.
  • Art is for all Christians, who are equipped to know, better than the secular-minded, what it’s for.  They just need to better understand what it is.

___________________________________________

*Come to think of it, the whole church would benefit if some time were set aside, once/quarter or once/month, for members to share about their profession: what it entails, how it benefits the community, how they do it for the glory of God, and how they might do it better.   Retired people and stay-at-home moms, too!  Think how much better we could know and encourage one another if we knew what occupied 1/3 of a brother’s or sister’s time!

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Back in the Lifeboat

Try this thought experiment:

You’re the captain on an ocean liner.  While en route to Europe your ship strikes an iceberg and starts sinking fast—so fast that the majority of passengers are drowned, and of the remainder almost all have panicked and piled into lifeboats that capsized or failed to launch or met some other tragic end.  A handful of passengers are left—twelve, to be exact—and one inflatable raft that will hold only seven (including you.)  Who would you choose to be in the boat with you?  There’s the brilliant but arrogant doctor, the young musician who speaks no English, the combat vet who hears voices, the muscular cage fighter, the alcoholic carpenter, the disabled tech genius . . .

Forget it.  As soon as that raft inflates there will be a mad dash for it, and you’ll be reduced to throwing out the weakest six.  Better bulk up, or you may be one of them.

Of course, the “Lifeboat Game, or Problem, or Exercise, was never meant to be a real-life scenario.  We heard about it back in the 1990s, when “values clarification” was an educational buzzword.  Nothing much was clarified, unless it was sneaking reinforcement for a utilitarian worldview, for the only objective criterion for a seat on the boat was the perceived usefulness of the passengers.  Take the drug-dealing doctor over the Baptist co-ed in a heartbeat, even if the girl was traveling to France for one last visit with her dying grandmother.  And what good is a twelve-year-old recovering from leukemia?  Unless you can eat him once he croaks.  Even as a theoretical exercise the Lifeboat Game was repugnant at best and destructive to human values at worst—if it’s still used in classrooms we don’t hear about it.

Women and children first! Oh wait–can they fix a leak? Fight off a shark? Perform an emergency appendectomy?

But a version of it recently surfaced in North Carolina, when a history teacher asked students to decide which four of the following they would allow in their bomb shelter during a nuclear attack:

  • A 35-year-old White male construction worker who is a racist
  • A 40-year-old Black female doctor who is a lesbian
  • A 50-year-old White male who is a Catholic priest
  • A 25-year-old Hispanic male who is a lawyer
  • A 30-year-old Korean American female who is a former college athlete
  • A 20-year-old white female who is pregnant, has a two-year-old son, and is on welfare

It’s the old “values clarification” shell game, this time with a racial/political edge.  Instead of, “Who’s the most useful?” kids also get to determine, “Who’s the least worthy?”  Because, obviously, if you pick the racist White guy (who might be helpful when it’s time to rebuild), what does that say about you?

The teacher only meant to provoke lively dialogue in the classroom, but real-life parents—both black and white—complained, quickly and loudly, and the exercise disappeared with apologies.  Parents rightly pointed out that there were better uses of classroom time, such as learning civics or algebra, but there’s also something creepy about activities that force us to assign value to people rather than ideas.

Because when we’re looking at functions, sexes, and colors, we’re not seeing people.

Because when survival is understood as the ultimate value, love, courage, and sacrifice take a back seat—or they stay aboard the sinking ship, to go down singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

But what’s the harm if it’s all theoretical?  Some theoretical alleyways should be avoided because bad things happen there.  When people are seen as units to be evaluated, not to help but to eliminate, pogroms and ghettos and extermination camps may not be far behind.  Not always, but never without the lens of functionality or race or creed.  We tend toward that kind of evaluation anyway; why encourage it?

Here’s an alternate exercise:

You love to cook, but your latest dinner party fell through when all the guests cancelled at the last minute.  Outside your downtown apartment are an Asian dance instructor, a Black single mom pushing a stroller, a homeless white guy, a gay couple waiting for the bus, a Hispanic nurse getting off her shift, and a white Christian homeschool mom with her ten-year-old son.  How will you persuade them all to come in and share your dinner, and what will you all talk about?