Spiritual Coffee: Power of Christian Narrative in Fantasy - Against the Myth of Progress and Historical Pessimism - Glorifying God as a Generalist

I really enjoyed today's collection of links. I hope that you will as well. Taken together, these three pieces restore some of the excitement and wonder in exploring God's Creation and the endless possibilities of discovery in the Christian mind and imagination. There is even now a great portion of beauty and glory awaiting us.
(Click on Spiritual Coffee for earlier collections of links.)

James Stoddard's Interior Castle, David Randall (First Things)

The quoted section below is enough to excite interest, especially for those who enjoy C.S. Lewis's fiction or The Lord of the Rings. I usually get the most enduring and satisfying enjoyment out of stories that have a great layer of truth underneath them. When you piece together the fantastic and unusual elements of a story and find they reveal a mystery about reality, you gain something personal and permanent. It is always a delight to discover beauty, but to discover something that is both beautiful and true is priceless.

"James Stoddard ought to be famous for his Evenmere trilogy—The High House (1998), The False House (2000, revised 2015), and Evenmere (2015). He isn’t, unfortunately. The High House received the Compton Crook Award for best fantasy by a new novelist, but The False House and Evenmere haven’t gotten much notice. But the three books are wonderfully written fantasy, and Stoddard is nearly as good as C. S. Lewis at recapitulating aspects of the Christian myth. He isn’t just trying to be another Lewis, either. Stoddard’s trilogy does something new and nifty: It is an argument in fiction that narrative is at the center of Christian theology—that the universe is narrative, that Christ is its sacred narrator, and that narrative is the means by which mankind can understand God. Stoddard’s sustained invention and stylish prose are enough by themselves to earn him a place in the mainstream fantasy canon. But his shift of emphasis from Christian myth to Christian narrative makes his trilogy a major work of Christian fantasy."

[I also find this description of the worldview of the villains to be brilliant. The deception that mankind can achieve a perfect world lies behind virtually all modern false ideologies (and the next link from Al Mohler happens to show what it's like for those ideologies to crash down).]

"The books’ villains are the Society of Anarchists, who are ruthlessly dedicated to establishing a perfect world."

Christ’s Exaltation: The Ground of Our Hope, Albert Mohler (Ligonier)
A succinct picture of Christ's reign and how it provides us confidence both now and for the future, contrasted with the hopelessness of faith in "progress" or perfection of humanity and its disillusioned counterpart, historical pessimism.

"'The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made us all into deep historical pessimists.' So observed Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. What happened? The nineteenth century’s humanistic faith in inevitable moral progress was destroyed on the battlefields of two cataclysmic world wars and in the unprecedented murderous cruelty of Hitler’s gas chambers, Stalin’s gulags, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields. History seemed to point, not to a golden age of moral progress and enlightenment, but toward an age of unspeakable cruelty backed by technological developments that would stagger the moral imagination.

"Fukuyama demonstrated the failure of historical 'faiths' such as Marxism, with its confidence in the ultimate victory of the proletariat through class struggle and revolution. His analysis of modern historical pessimism was correct, at least in this respect, for secular myths did not fare well in the twentieth century, and most contemporary Americans look to the future with a mixed sense of unease and uncertainty.

"The Christian worldview stands in stark contrast both to the humanistic idea of progress and to modern secular pessimism."

How to Glorify God by Being a Generalist, Joe Carter (TGC)

Probably fascinating for anyone who is curious how people like Justin Taylor, Russell Moore, Tim Challies, and departed heroes like Chuck Colson manage to have such diverse knowledge and insight into so many subjects. Carter is careful to say he can only describe his own experience, and that it may not be a calling that applies to many people. Particularly interesting are his conclusions that generalism is artistic, generalism is a personal act of worship to God, and generalism is not primarily pursued for the sake of imparting knowledge to others (although that is a valuable byproduct) but for the sake of beholding the majesty of God in greater and wider detail. The highest reward is a private moment of awe and wonder between the generalist and the Lord.

This line is also helpful and practical for those of us who get stalled out trying to find the perfect way to do things: "sometimes you have to use whatever method works for your personality, even if it’s less than ideal."

"What if we generalists are beckoned to seek knowledge not as a means for some other end but simply as an act of performance before our Creator? This is not to say that the knowledge gained cannot be used for practical purposes or in service of our neighbor. But viewing knowledge-seeking as a performative act done for God and before God frees us to treat it as a form of ongoing artistic worship. Just as David performed for God with leaping and dancing (2 Sam. 6:16) we are free to seek truth, knowledge, and understanding in a variety of areas as a way of glorifying him." [On Sincerity:] "'By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world-view,' Schaeffer says, 'or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted.' If it’s to glorify God as a work of art, generalism cannot be pursued as a means of impressing others with our erudition. For the Christian generalist, the pursuit of knowledge is a performance for God, not an act of pedantry to impress our peers. The validity comes in performing not for the applause of others but for the approval of our divine patron."

"What turns generalism into an art (or at least one major “style” of art) is “sublime pattern-matching,” seeing the interconnectedness of God’s creation in a way that impresses our minds with a sense of awe and veneration of his grandeur and power. 

"God takes delight not in the discovery of the patterns of his revelation (which, of course, he already knows) but with the way that the process leads us to childlike worship. It is the process that leads us to continuously repeat the prayer of the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler: “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!” It’s the pursuit of knowledge and discovery as a way to glorify our Redeemer by becoming increasingly enchanted by his majesty." “What is elementary, worldly wisdom?” Charles Munger asked. “Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.”

Why We Need to Think

I've been working my way through messages from this year's Desiring God Conference, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. One of the sanctified uses of an Mp3 player is filling your mind with edifying and wise thoughts while in the car, or when you're exercising, or when you're walking from point A to point B - time when you would otherwise just be daydreaming or obsessing about all the things you need to do. I've learned that my attitude in life is far more healthy if I redeem some time in this way each week. The craziness of the average day is not likely to produce much encouragement in my heart, so I need to deliberately feed myself with something encouraging that lifts my spirit or helps teach me more about how to fight the daily battle effectively.

To that end, part of what I love about this year's DG Conference is that it is not aimed directly at intellectuals or students. It is intended, like John Piper's book of the same name, to encourage all Christians to think and to use our minds to the glory of God. We aren't all called to be scholars, but every one of us does need to make use of our minds in living the life of faith.

As I was listening to Al Mohler's message, he made this point: "We as Christians must recognize that there is a crucial distinction between the regenerate mind and the unregenerate mind. ... [T]here once was a way we thought that we can no longer think." (See Romans 1:21)

In other words, we as Christians have learned something earthshaking that changes everything about life. We can't afford to act as if things haven't changed. We are aware now of a whole new dimension to life - the spiritual dimension - that changes why we live, how we treat people, and where we find strength and hope. If we don't consciously change the way we think so that we plan and decide and act based on this new understanding, then for all our spiritual rebirth we will be ineffective and frustrated. We will fail to embrace the tools God has given us to flourish in our Christian life, and we will continue to pursue a mindset that invites temptation and leaves us vulnerable to the life-destroying effects of sin. Christians must consciously think like Christians in order to thrive. I highly recommend Mohler's message and Piper's book as good ways to encourage that in ourselves.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2

Sunday Salt: Martin Luther Takes Aim at Anxiety

Just about everyone knows something about Martin Luther, but there are so many common ideas about him that they sometimes distort or obscure his real work and his real character. A good introduction to his life can be found here, and a short overview (albeit with typos) is available here. Many of his works can be read for free online, thanks to resources like Project Wittenberg.

One of Luther's great gifts - and great stumbling blocks - was his passion and boldness. The following quote from a letter he wrote to Philip Melanchthon in 1530 shows how he pulled no punches and cut straight through all the anxieties and cares that were preoccupying Melanchthon. Luther reminds him that the best way to defeat anxiety (instead of being defeated by it) is to take our eyes off our cares and fix them on God Himself (see Matthew 6:33).

"What good do you expect to accomplish by these vain worries of yours? What can the devil do more than slay us? What? I beg you, who are so pugnacious in everything else, fight against yourself, your own worst enemy, for you furnish Satan with too many weapons against yourself. Christ died once for our sins. He will not die again for truth and justice, but will live and reign. If this be true, and if He reigns, why should you be afraid for the truth? Perhaps you are afraid that it will be destroyed by God's wrath. Even if we should ourselves be destroyed, let it not be by our own hands. He who is Our Father will also be the Father of our children. I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God who is able to raise the dead is also able to uphold His cause when it is falling or to raise it up again when it has fallen or to move it forward when it is standing. If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish His purpose, He will find others. If we are not strengthened by His promises, where in all the world are the people to whom these promises apply?"

I came across this quote in a message from Dr. Al Mohler on courage in Christian ministry, and I recommend the three-part series as a good way to check whether we have true courage based on faith in the God who can do all things, or whether we are lowering our expectations and being too timid because we aren't trusting deeply enough in God's ability to overcome ever obstacle. Dr. Mohler recommended Luther's Letters of Spiritual Counsel as a great place to find encouragement from Luther's words. Many of the pages are available online at Google books.