Posted on by Kurt Bodling

sexual temptations

Note:
C.S. Lewis writes about three reasons it is really hard to be fully chaste. If he were writing now, I wonder whether he would especially emphasize the first reason: the overwhelming presence of salacious images and text washing onto our screens. Anyway, the fact that he lists “the contemporary propaganda for lust” first is, in a way, a bit of a comfort in that it might tell us that we are not any more tempted than people nearly 100 years ago were.

Quote:
“[T]here are three reasons why it is now specially difficult for us to desire — let alone achieve — complete chastity. In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so ‘natural,’ so ‘healthy,’ and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. … In the second place, many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. … Thirdly, people often misunderstand what psychology teaches about ‘repressions.’ It teaches us that ‘repressed’ sex is dangerous. But ‘repressed’ is here a technical term: it does not mean ‘suppressed’ in the sense of ‘denied’ or ‘resisted.’ … [T]hose who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality than anyone else.” (p. 92-94)

Source: Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Christianity and our bodies

Note: Saint Paul says “the flesh is weak” and C. S. Lewis reminds us that Christianity “approves of the body.” It’s important for us to maintain this distinction between our “sinful flesh” and the creation that God called “very good.” They are really talking about two different things.

(Also, we really should encourage more writers to use words like “muddle-headed.”)

Quote:
“I know that some muddle-headed Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure were bad in themselves. But they are wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body — which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy….

“If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once.” (p. 91)

Source: Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

looking at the standard of morality

Note: The source of tension over keeping to the standards spelled out in Christian morality (here, for example, sexual morality) is not in Christianity, but in the human being. Humans fall short of the standard. We sin. When we don’t measure up to the standard, it isn’t the standard’s fault.

Quote:
“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it: the old Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.” (p. 89)

Source: Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer first of all

Note:
It’s funny how everyone wants to claim our mornings. Studies now show that the “best” time for exercise is in the morning. Productivity mavens say that our most creative work hours are in the morning. Writing teachers (often) hold up examples of this or that famous writer who wrote prolifically by regularly taking advantage of the morning hours. And here Bonhoeffer (as well as elsewhere other writers on the spiritual life) writes about the benefit and even necessity of using the morning hours for prayer. So unless we decide that we will take a morning run in the spirit of continuous prayer while dictating our creative ideas for our novel’s next chapter into our cell phone, I guess we have to pick and choose. Or try to justify alternating a prayer morning with an exercise morning. Or find a way to stretch the morning. One can only get up so early before one is destroying one’s sleep; and one can only delay lunch for so long (especially if is actually also breakfast) before one is destroying one’s nutrition and metabolism cycles.

Quote:
“The prayer of the morning will determine the day. Wasted time, which we are ashamed of, temptations that beset us, weakness and listlessness in our work, disorder and indiscipline in our thinking and our relations with other people very frequently have their cause in neglect of the morning prayer. The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 71. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer and work related

Note:
Bonhoeffer writes about “praying and working” and I can see in it Bill Haley’s refrain about “contemplation for kingdom action.” Two apparently opposite goods in tension, a creative tension, a necessary one. It’s like the way negative space in art defines where and what the positive space is. Or in the words of the secular song “you can’t have one without the other.”” Still, I might quibble with his pronouncement that “the bulk of the day belongs to work.” That seems to say that prayer is walled off over there or is in a box. Praying at all times, however, and contemplative living puts prayer at the core and wraps work and everything else around it. How big is the core in your life? How thick is the wrapping layer?

Quote:
“Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it is God’s will that man should work six days and rest and make holy day in His presence on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian by both prayer and work. Prayer is entitled to its time. But the bulk of the day belongs to work. And only where each receives its own specific due will it become clear that both belong inseparably together. Without the burden and labor of the day, prayer is not prayer, and without prayer work is not work. This only the Christian knows.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, pages 69-70. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

solitude is to silence as community is to speech

Note:
Not only does Bonhoeffer tie silence and solitude together, but he also connects silence to speech. About solitude and community, remember, he said you can’t safely have one without the other; so here he would say ‘Let him who cannot be silent beware of speech. Let him who is not speaking beware of being silent.’

Quote:
“The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 78. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

beware of solitude or community

Note: The tension between solitude and community is real and deep. What isn’t necessarily clear to me, though it apparently was to Bonhoeffer, is whether one needs to be in both at the same time. He would say yes, writing here in present tense. In my life I’ve maybe spent much more time in community while yearning for solitude. So I tend to say that I’ve put in my time in community and now can finally be in solitude; and that my life overall has both. Alternatively, I will say that I am in community with the Church writ large over space and time, and that I don’t need to have them physically in my face to experience their community. Anyway here is a famous line from Bonhoeffer on the topic.

Quote:
“Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 78. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

what the Gospel requires

Note:
The Gospel, that free gift of God, does require something of us: that we have faith to accept it and apply it to ourselves. This does not negate sola fide or sola gratia, nor does it open the door to works righteousness, because without God first and freely doing the Gospel for us we would have nothing to believe in, nothing to respond to, nothing to apply to ourselves, no incentive or ability to believe, respond, or apply.

Quote:
“Then indeed the Gospel displays to us the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, the Mediator, which He has provided for us, and on account of this merit of Christ it offers to us grace and remission of sins. It does require this of us, that we accept this benefit of Christ by faith and apply it to ourselves, and declares that those who believe in Christ receive forgiveness through His name. It exhorts those who have been reconciled, who have received forgiveness of sins, that they should thereafter bear fruits worthy of repentance. Thus according to Scripture, in order that we may obtain reconciliation there is required in the penitent person contrition, and faith, which lays hold of the merit of Christ; the fruits follow after reconciliation. This manner of repenting is clear and sure, for it is taught in Scripture and has the promise of the remission of sins.”

Source: Chemnitz, Martin. Examination of the Council of Trent. Part II. Fred Kramer, tr. St. Louis: Concordia, 1978, page 576.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

confession and Gospel connected

Note: The function of confession and absolution is to apply the Gospel to individuals. The function of the Gospel is to ‘proclaim, offer, and set before’ people the forgiveness of sins merited for us by Christ. And note in passing that private confession and absolution is a Lutheran practice, too.

Quote:
“Thus the Gospel proclaims, offers, and sets before contrite and terrified conscience the grace of God, reconciliation and remission of sins freely on account of the merit of Christ; and it is His will that everyone should lay hold of and apply this benefit of the Mediator to himself. The ministry of private absolution applies this general promise of the Gospel to the penitent individually, in order that faith may be able to state all the more firmly that the benefits of the passion of Christ are certainly given and applied to it.”

Source: Chemnitz, Martin. Examination of the Council of Trent. Part II. Fred Kramer, tr. St. Louis: Concordia, 1978, pages 556-557.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the root of prayer is desire

Note:
Prayer is an expression of desire brought alive in a look of love between two persons, between believers and God. Without the personal relationship there is only desire, and desire by itself can be perverse.

Quote:
“Prayer is the expression of desire; its value comes from our inward aspirations, from their tenor and their strength. Take away desire, the prayer ceases; alter it, the prayer changes; increase or diminish its intensity, the prayer soars upward or has no wings. Inversely, take away the expression while leaving the desire, and the prayer in many ways remains intact. Has a child who says nothing but looks longingly at a toy in a shop window, and then at his smiling mother not formulated the most moving prayer? And even if he had not seen the toy, is not the desire for play, innate in the child as is the thirst for movement, in the eyes of his parents a standing prayer which they grant?”

Source: Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, pages 69-70.