Stephen Meyer has written several very nice science books, starting with ‘Signature in the Cell’ which considers the organised complexity of the coded information carried on the DNA molecule. The book demonstrates using mathematics and real world examples that life could not possible have originated or progressed without a designing mind.
Naturally, Meyer has been slandered, pilloried, misrepresented and ignored. But the facts remain. There is literally not one example in all of nature of a piece of meaningful coded information (even something as simple as a ‘No Parking’ sign) arising other than from an intelligent mind. And the coded information carried on DNA is, as Bill Gates says (cited by Meyer in this video), ‘DNA is like computer code, but much more sophisticated than any we have ever written.’
Materialists ask for evidence, but don’t like it when you supply it.
The Oxford mathematician, philosopher and theologian Professor John Lennox is an admirer of C S Lewis and has debated several famous atheists. I find him always worth listening to.
Here he is now on the subject of societies which, having enjoyed the benefits of Christianity, decide to get rid of Christ and embrace secularism. They hope to achieve enlightenment, reason, truth and justice, but as it turns out they don’t necessarily get what they were hoping for.
Hello and kind regards. Today is the last day of Christmas, Twelfth Night, since the fabled 12 days of Christmas run from 25th December (the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord) to 6th January (The Epiphany, or the Feast of the Magi). And it’s my first post of the year.
I’ve been reflecting on what I ought to do with what’s left (probably not much now) of my life, and may make some significant changes to this blog during 2025. However, the main thrust will be, as ever, to try to do something, however inadequate, to proclaim, explain and defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with inputs particularly from my dear old friend Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis. We have only met through his writings, but I hope by the grace of God to meet him, man to glorified and forgiven man, in Heaven.
Anyway, after a house move, my study/library is coming on, and so far over 500 select books are stacked in rows which are gradually taking shape and acquiring order. On my right is a row of books by various opponents of Christ, and to their right are many books by and about Lewis, Tolkien and other friends of the Gospel. This will help me to study, write and post in a more orderly manner.
C S Lewis is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia (which still sell well and delight both adults and children some 80 years after their publication) and his Christian apologetics, of which ‘Mere Christianity’, though the language and style is somewhat dated, is still a classic. The powerful insights into the spiritual life found in Christian speculative fantasy books like The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce continue to inspire, challenge and delight. But Lewis’ letters (alas, so many were lost or accidentally burned!!!) and essays (many of which were transcripts of talks given at the Oxford Socratic Club and elsewhere) also contain many gems of wit and wisdom and are somewhat neglected compared to Jack’s better known works.
I have been re-reading a couple of the essay collections recently, including ‘Compelling Reason’ (1996) and ‘The Weight of Glory’ (1980). Obviously since Lewis died in 1963 these essays and talks all come from long before: we have Lewis’s friend and private secretary Walter Hooper to thank for the preservation, editing and publication of these collections and much else.
Walter Hooper, whom I met a couple of times in Oxford. He told a few funny stories about Jack (as Lewis’s friends all called him.) In one, he said they were both coming out of The Lamb and Flag (a pub in St Giles, Oxford (across the road from The Eagle and Child) and Lewis gave some change to a beggar. ‘What’d you do that for?’ remonstrated Hooper, ‘He’ll only spend it on drink!’ Well, replies Jack, if I hadn’t given it to him, I’d probably have only spent it on drink.
Anyway, to the essay ‘Religion Without Dogma‘, which I have just re-read in the collection ‘Compelling Reason’. This was a paper delivered to the Oxford Socratic Club on 20th May 1946, in response to a paper by Professor H H Price the previous October on ‘The Grounds of Modern Agnosticism.’ It’s a densely reasoned set of arguments which covers a lot of ground (it was given to a very intellectual audience at one of the world’s top universities’ debating societies) so I can hardly summarise it here, but essentially Price had given a presentation on the popular modern idea that although ‘science has defeated religion by logic and reason‘ (1), that perhaps we could salvage something worthwhile out of the teaching and example of Jesus, if we could just explain away the miracles. Something like that. (2). By the way, although Lewis may have won the argument that day (but where is the unbiased umpire who could confidently say yes or no to that?) he certainly did not stop the tide, as exemplified by the Resurrection denial by agnostic/spiritually vague bishops like Spong and Jenkins about whom I have blogged previously.
Anyway, Lewis gave a talk called ‘Religion without Dogma’ to the Oxford Socratic Club on 20th May 1946 in response to a lecture given the previous October by Professor H H Price on ‘The Grounds of Modern Agnosticism. Professor Price in his presentation had basically made the same assertion which we hear every minute and every hour repeated ad nauseam by social media atheists-that because we can’t reproduce miracles in laboratory conditions, they don’t exist, therefore there is no God (1). It should not take someone as brainy and well read as C S Lewis to unpack and explain the logical errors and unstated philosophical assumptions wrapped up in this assertion. As Lewis stated as he began his response to Price’s assertions, ‘I am afraid I have never understood why the miracles (in Christianity-SH) could never be accepted by one who accepts science.‘
He goes on to explain that science, by it’s very nature, could never even in principle prove or disprove miracles. Science is good at measuring repeatable natural events. Science can make and test hypotheses, devise experiments, measure and calculate results, and often prove something is not possible (falsification). But supernatural events (if any) are outside its remit.
A miracle is a miracle.
Scientific laws exist, such as gravity, Boyle’s Law (which concerns the behaviour of gas under pressure) various laws concerning electromagnetism and heat etc. A miracle, by definition, is an event which does not follow the usual laws of nature and is thought to have been caused by a supernatural power. If such an event is, even in theory, possible, then it cannot by definition be reproduced at the will of a human. That would be magic (in theory). Magic and miracles (I am talking about definitions here, not at this point arguing for or against either actually happening) are quite different things Anyone who has read or watched Harry Potter will appreciate that magic, as popularly understood, is done by wizards and witches using magic wands, potions and incantations etc. A miracle, such as Jesus turning water into wine, is an act of supernatural wisdom and power which is a normal and natural function of the divine nature. Such a miracle is nothing to do with hocus-pocus, spells or incantations. (3)
I will return to this subject later, there is a lot to say. But on the subject of Jesus turning water into wine (John’s Gospel chapter 2) this was described as ‘the first ‘sign’ that He performed, by which He demonstrated His glory ‘…and His disciples believed in Him.’ The miracles of Jesus were not random, they were there to demonstrate that something completely unprecedented was happening which deserved special attention.
Science can explain many things which were previously unexplained and sometimes incorrectly attributed to supernatural causes (for example Zeus hurling thunderbolts or the corn god making plants grow etc). That’s all to the good and Christians (apart from maybe a few nutcases like the snake handlers) have no problem with it. But science is not competent to say whether or not God exists or can overrule the laws of nature which He created to govern the ordinary course of our physical existence. The whole ‘science versus religion’ conflict model is a category error manufactured to deceive the uneducated.
PS They don’t like to be reminded of this, but atheists must by default believe in many things which are as inconsistent with the laws of physics as Jesus turning water into wine. These beliefs would include the naturalistic/unguided origin of the fine-tuned laws of nature, the origin of the universe, the origin of life (abiogenesis) and the progressive creation of all life forms from an original single cell by random mutations. Science says no to all of these, but atheists believe them anyway as they reject the alternative so vehemently.
(1) This is a philosophical assertion which is very far from being proven in any way, and it’s not even new. But is is very popular.
(2) I remember my disappointment when around 55 years ago at a Roman Catholic boys school being taught in Religious Education (by a very devout Catholic teacher) that rather than miraculously produce food, Jesus had preached so persuasively about loving one another that people had felt their hearts melted and had produced the food they had been selfishly hiding and shared it ‘… and that was perhaps a greater miracle.’ No it wasn’t you silly old revisionist heretic! No wonder most of my class were atheists by the time you had finished with us! Sadly, this was a good real-life example of the fact that if you try watering down Christianity in a sad attempt to make it easier to swallow, before long you have no USP (unique selling point) and so why bother?
(3) Magic spells and incantations can in theory be tested. They don’t work, as far as I know. I’m not saying that men and women have never anywhere done deals with devils to produce evil magic (as many legends say). I can’t rule it out, but have nothing to say and no desire to discuss such possibilities.
Last post of the year. I’m planning to post more frequently but shorter posts during 2026, with more summaries of C S Lewis essays and key learning points.
Lewis and his friend and mentor Tolkien were both great fans of Norse legend. I have been reading the Norse myths more recently, and I now realise what a ‘Bowdlerised’ version of them I had read in childhood! The original tales, as handed down to us, are extremely rude, absolutely devoid of morality, and fantastic storytelling. All pure nonsense, of course, as becomes obvious when you read them, but good fun if you take them as you find them. Tolkien in particular borrowed hugely from the Norse Eddas for The Lord of The Rings, including names like Gandalf, Durin, Thorin etc..
I’ve been reading this, for pleasure and for research, from the local library
All good fun. I have read many of these stories before, but some are new to me. The story of Odin and the Mead of Poetry is particularly interesting. Remember, Odin is supposed to be the ‘All Father’, top god! He has already, in the search for wisdom (?) hanged himself from the tree Yggdrasil and plucked out an eye in exchange for a drink from the well of knowledge.
Let me summarise the story: After a right royal punch-up between different tribes of gods and godlets, a truce is sealed by them all spitting into a jar. The contents of the jar turn into a very wise man, called Kvasir. The gods, especially Odin, rely on Kvasir’s wisdom. Two crafty Dwarves trick and kill him and put his blood into 3 barrels of mead, drinking some of which confers wisdom and the ability to write good poetry. The barrels are then stolen by a giant, Suttung, and hidden under a mountain.
Odin goes after it, using various tricks involving seducing and sleeping with a giantess (Suttung’s wife). He turned himself into a snake so he could creep through a hole drilled into the mountain, and then drank up all three barrels of the bloody mead, turned himself into an eagle, and flew off with it in his belly.
Odin, as an eagle, flies back from Giantland to Asgard with Suttung (who has also turned himself into an eagle) chasing him in hot pursuit. He pukes up most of the mead, which is caught in cauldrons, but loses control of his bowels and shits out some of the mead of poetry over Midgard (Middle Earth, the realm of men.) This accounts for the writing of bad poetry.
This is just the sort of tale that drunken Vikings and other pagans would make up and tell each other around the fires on long winter’s nights.
The mead of bad poetry probably also accounts for the schoolboy atheists who compare this kind of storytelling with the historical narrative of the Lord Jesus. The ones who, when you try to talk seriously about God, say ‘Which god? Zeus or Odin?’ or some other slogan they got from a stand-up comedian, thinking themselves very witty, brave and original.
The Vikings had more sense-the Icelandic pagans converted to Christianity in around 1,000 AD. Most of the Norse legends were not written down until around 1,200 AD, many centuries later then the earliest Christian documents.
I am a big J R R Tolkien fan and have enjoyed a good share of fantasy literature and film over the last sixty odd years. I just like to keep clear lines between fantasy and revelation, storytelling and history, darkness and light, and between ‘The gods that are not Gods’and the One who revealed Himself to Abraham, Moses, David, the Prophets and who was born at Bethlehem- not for his own benefit, but for ours. Accept no cheap imitations or counterfeits. The evidence for God’s Christ (times, places, genealogies, witness accounts-all of which are lacking for the various gods of pagan storytelling) is all there if you can sober up from the mead of terrible poetry.
Hello. Big birthday today-I’m 70, three score and ten, which as per Psalm 90 is abut as much as I can reasonably ask for, although it also says ‘Or if by reason of strength, four score.’
Weary and aching as I am, amongst the things I plan to do in the remaining time that is given to me is proclaim, explain and defend the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This Gospel is the only means which God has appointed by which we sinners may be reconciled to God our Maker, and receive a free pardon for all our sins and offences and be adopted into His family for eternal joy.
I found this nice summary of apologetics on a Facebook page, so post it here.
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“Defending the Gospel”—often called Apologetics (from the Greek word apologia, meaning a formal defense)—is central to Christian life. It isn’t about being defensive or argumentative; rather, it is about reasoning, clarifying truth, and removing obstacles that keep people from seeing Jesus clearly.
Here is a breakdown of why we defend the Gospel of Jesus, organized by scriptural mandate, love for others, and the preservation of truth.
1. The Scriptural Mandate
The primary reason is simple: we are commanded to do so by the Apostles. The defense of the faith is not just for scholars; it is a directive for all believers.
* 1 Peter 3:15: This is the foundational verse for apologetics.
“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”
* Jude 1:3: Jude urges believers to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” This implies a struggle or an active effort to uphold the truth against distortion.
2. Love for the Lost (Evangelism)
Defending the Gospel is ultimately an act of love. Many people reject Christianity not because they have rejected Jesus, but because they have rejected a false idea of who Jesus is or have intellectual questions that haven’t been answered.
* Removing Obstacles: Apologetics clears the rubble from the path so that people can reach the Cross. If someone believes the Bible is historically unreliable or that science disproves God, they cannot embrace the Gospel. Defending the Gospel removes these intellectual barriers.
* Clarifying the Character of God: In a world full of misconceptions, defending the Gospel helps correct false narratives about God being a tyrant, distant, or irrelevant, revealing His true nature of love and justice.
3. Guarding the Truth (Preservation)
Throughout history, the Gospel has been threatened by heresies and distortions (e.g., Gnosticism in the early church or various modern distortions today).
* Protecting the Message: As Paul wrote to Timothy, we must guard the “good deposit” entrusted to us (2 Timothy 1:14). If we do not defend the core doctrines (the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the Resurrection, Salvation by Grace), the Gospel eventually becomes diluted or lost for future generations.
* Countering False Teaching: Defending the Gospel involves exposing error. Paul often debated in the synagogues and market squares (Acts 17) to distinguish the true Gospel from cultural philosophies.
4. Strengthening the Church
Defense isn’t just for skeptics; it is also for believers.
* Solidifying Faith: Christians often struggle with doubt. Knowing why we believe what we believe—understanding the historical reliability of the Resurrection or the fulfillment of prophecy—moves faith from “blind trust” to “trust based on evidence.”
* Boldness: When believers are confident that the Gospel can stand up to scrutiny, they become bolder in sharing their faith.
5. Intellectual Integrity
We defend the Gospel to demonstrate that faith is not the opposite of reason.
* The God of Truth: Since all truth belongs to God, we need not fear questions. Defending the Gospel shows the world that Christianity is robust, coherent, and capable of addressing the deepest questions of human existence (origin, meaning, morality, and destiny).
Summary
We do not defend the Gospel because God is weak and needs our protection; we defend it because truth matters, people matter, and God deserves to be known as He truly is.
I might add to this, it is necessary to explain and defend the Gospel because haters of God constantly attack, misrepresent, insult, deny and smear it. It is our duty to push back against them. If that sounds divisive and unpleasant, sorry but it is. I was reading in C S Lewis yesterday, his 1939 Oxford lecture on ‘Learning in War Time’ how he saw it as necessary that those of us believers who have had the benefit of a good education need to do learning and public apologetics, if only because ‘…our uneducated (*) brethren have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason but that bad philosophy must be answered.’
(*) In context, Lewis was delivering this lecture to academics and ‘uneducated’ would mean those who had not had a university education.
Many of us, whatever we believe, have our favourite seasonal traditions at Christmas time. Or holidays, winterval, solstice or Yule if you prefer. Seasonal food and drink, shopping for presents for loved ones and new stuff for ourselves, street markets, carol concerts (whether in the church, the town square or the pub), seasonal decorations, works parties, the Radio Times Christmas and New Year special double edition, live artistic performances of Handel’s Messiah, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, pantomimes or performances or films of Dicken’s ever popular short story ‘A Christmas Carol.’ And whatever else (I share C S Lewis’s take on seasonal merrymaking).
Incidentally, A Christmas Carol (Julia and I recently saw a live performance of with supper at a local brewhouse pub, The Flower Pots at Cheriton) is the only time in the year most people hear of the possibility of eternal punishment for the finally impenitent mentioned. They certainly won’t hear it from most pulpits.
Jacob Marley’s ghost, condemned to everlasting misery for living a Christless, greedy and selfish life as a merciless moneylender predating on the poor.
Another popular Christmas tradition is talking opinionated and poorly informed nonsense about the festival itself and about Christianity in general. It would take more time than I have today to discuss this in detail, but there is one particular theme that has become popular in my country recently, at least among the ruling liberal/left elite, and that is the idea that ‘Because ‘Jesus was a refugee (1), we should have open door immigration.’ The lefty protest singer Billy Bragg has just put out a new song along these lines.
Bragg does not profess to be a Christian, but nevertheless feels entitled to lecture professing Christians on what they ought to believe and tells them what Jesus would do if He was here today. I’m not linking to Bragg’s dreary and irritating song, it’s easy enough to find.
Luke 12:49-53 tells us (my bold) “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! 51 Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.52 For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. 53 Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Poignantly, Bragg, while attacking professing Christian Nationalists, claims that (unlike them) Jesus was not divisive. This would be news to Jesus, because He insisted that He was! (that’s what I mean by opinionated and poorly informed).
So anyone claiming Jesus in the name of ‘unity’ is seriously misinformed. Yes, we must strive for unity in the Church, but this is done, The New Testament tells us, by defining, teaching and adhering to orthodox traditional teaching ‘received once for all’, (Jude 3), calling out and rebuking heresy and in the last resort, asking heretics to leave.
As for claiming that Jesus is on your side if you want to limit (or increase and welcome) migration, you cannot slice away selected little nuggets of Jesus and adapt them to support your own preferences. The Christ of God is an entire person with a holistic and all-embracing message that demands obedience. He claimed to be ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life’, and as long as there is even one person who denies the truth or refuses to pay the price of accepting it, or blind enough to be unable to see the truth, there will always be division.
When people like Billy Bragg say ‘Don’t divide us.‘ what they mean is ‘We are right, there is no legitimate alternative. Don’t question us. You are not permitted to have different opinions. Fall into line and do as we tell you.’ Truth always divides, as long as there is even one liar, knave or fool who refuses the truth, or one honest man who refuses a lie. As a quip goes’I could agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.’ Jesus of Nazareth was arguably the most divisive person who ever lived. You can’t even imagine anything more divisive that the parable of the sheep and the goats.
Bragg’s ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’ song is a riposte to professed ‘Christian Nationalists’ as exemplified by Tommy Robinson, who recently organised a ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’ event in London. I’m not putting a link to it, it is easily found.
Tommy Robinson the very divisive anti-Islam campaigner claims to have become a Christian while in prison recently for contempt of court. Opinions as to the sincerity and significance of his claim vary.
His name is detested by most liberals and many conservatives in England, especially Church of England bishops. I am prepared to give him a chance to show us whether he is a genuine convert by his actions. However, there is no need to ‘Bring Christ back into Christmas’ because He never left. I have been to three well attended church Christmas events and expect to go to a few more. Many, if not most, Britons may have left Christ, but that’s another matter.
Nobody, neither the right not the left, should try to weaponise Christ for any political cause. On reflection, it was all right about the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade, but that was a genuine Biblical imperative.
C S Lewis shall have the last word on the subject of people (right, left or centre) trying to use the Holy Son of God and/or the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord for their own ends. The following passage is lifted from ‘The Screwtape Letters’, which is written in the form of instructions from a senior devil to a junior devil who is trying to make a Christian man go wrong. (My bold. ‘The Enemy’ here means God, ‘the patient’ is the Christian these devils are trying to ruin with their lies.)
>>>Through this girl and her disgusting family the patient is now getting to know more Christians every day, and very intelligent Christians, too. For a long time it will be quite impossible to remove spirituality from his life. Very well then; we must corrupt it. No doubt you have often practiced transforming yourself into an angel of light as a parade-ground exercise. Now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy. The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power remains. And success of this third kind is the most glorious of all. A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.
Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the border-line between theology and politics. Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made out of it…
About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything — even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations’. You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game…<<<
The devil Screwtape here is advising that since his planned victim is a professing Christian, if he cannot be persuaded to abandon his faith, then let it be corrupted-and in particular, by using Christian faith as a means to pursue political ends.
Lewis wrote this 83 years ago. It is as true as if it were written yesterday about the very examples of right and left wing political campaigners such as Tommy Robinson, Sarah Pochin or Billy Bragg who want to use Jesus to further their own partisan causes. The Holy Son of God, who came down to Earth from Heaven for us men and for our salvation WILL NOT consent to be used in this manner.
(1) We read in Matthew’s Gospel chapter 2 that Joseph, Mary’s husband and the stepfather of Jesus, was warned by an angel in a dream to migrate temporarily to Egypt as King Herod intended to murder the infant Jesus. The three of them went, managed on their own resources (the gold given by the Magi from the East) minded their own business, and then returned as soon as it was safe to do so.
The revolutionary left, who for various reasons including their hatred of Britain and their alliance with Islam are in favour of unlimited mass immigration into Britain despite its catastrophic effects, use the above passage to assert that ‘Jesus was a migrant, therefore it is wicked and hypocritical and immoral for professing Christians to object to millions of people coming here to get free housing and benefits and bring all their relatives over for free health care.’ Some might think it is a bit rich of atheists to use Jesus’s teaching (or rather their version of it) to tell Christians what to think and how to act. Even richer to compare God’s eternal plan for the whole human race (which totally depended on baby Jesus growing up) to the desire of tens of millions of people from Africa and Asia to come to Britain as economic migrants (and in some cases as sleeper jihadist soldiers) but that takes us into another entire set of facts and arguments…….
(2) I avoid using the term ‘woke’ as it is intentionally insulting and (more to the point) imprecise in meaning. As commonly (and derogatorily) used by people on the right like Sara Pochin, it tends to mean culturally Marxist, ‘politically correct’, subscribing to a set of liberal/ left opinions including full acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda, liberal abortion policy, open borders migration, big government, heavy taxes, high regulation, a disarmed populace, thought and speech control, laws against ‘hate speech’ etc, etc. And furthermore, others could add (or subtract from) that list. I have no use for such vague and imprecise terms. Criticism should be as accurate and focused as possible, out of fairness to one’s opponent as well as to one’s own case.
I saw a meme on Facebook yesterday (I didn’t screen shot it and now can’t find it) which had words, superimposed on an impression of the entrance to heaven. The words, to the best of my memory, said
‘Heaven is a place where rapists and murderers live alongside their victims for ever.’
PS just found it, added without editing what I posted earlier. Atheists love to boast their credentials as ‘thinkers’ (by contrast, according to them, with ‘brainwashed’ Christians who obviously never think but just believe whatever garbage the preacher feeds them, by blind faith) but as we shall see, this one mostly thinks they are wonderfully clever despite not having examined the facts of the case they are mouthing off about.
I remembered the meme this morning in church as I reflected on my own sins, something Christians are supposed to do during the season of Advent. I was much assisted in this task by a reading about John the Baptist and one of my favourite hymns, Stuart Townend’s beautiful ‘From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable.’I remembered that I am a sorry wretch who needs a Saviour. And then my unquiet brain made a connection with a story in C S Lewis’s brilliant speculative novella ‘The Great Divorce‘ which examined the very issue raised in the meme.
The meme, presumably posted by someone who hates and seeks to ridicule Christianity, raises two main issues
How is it that God lets people who have done very evil things into Heaven to share His joy for eternity, when they really ought to be punished for their sins and kept away from all the good people who have gone to Heaven because they deserved to?
What about the feelings of the people to whom the wicked rapists and murderers (and by implication other kinds of evildoers-warmongers, thieves, cheats, purveyors of bad philosophies, people who deny and conceal the truth, the mean and selfish etc….) did the bad things to about their being in heaven together? Surely Heaven ought to be more select and only let good people in?
Other issues come up when you think bit deeper, just as when you strike two guitar strings to produce two primary musical notes at the same time the sound waves interact to set up resonances and harmonics. For example, where does the poster get their ideas about good and evil? Do we have an eternal soul? Do we experience permanent and total extinction at our bodily death (as atheists hope) or does our consciousness continue in some way? How do people get to heaven? IS there a heaven? And is there an alternative place? But I’ll try to stick to the two main issues.
Who goes to Heaven? The redeemed. The forgiven. Those men and women who have repented of and turned from their sins and embraced the free offer of forgiveness that God through Christ holds out to them. Sinless people can go to Heaven on their own merits, but there has only ever been One. All others need to get their sins forgiven, because there is no-one on Earth who does not sin. As we read in Romans 6:23 ‘The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.’
What categories of sin are included in the free offer of forgiveness? According to the Bible, all sins! This is amazing, the best offer that has ever been made!!! There are plenty of places in the Bible that set this out, the First Letter of John is as good a place as any to start, chapter 1 verse 9 says ‘If we confess our sins then He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ The previous verse states that if we deny that we are sinners then we are liars and the truth is not in us. I could make the issue of total forgiveness and a clean sheet being on offer-freely-to penitent believers into a long Bible study but that’s not the point of this post.
We read elsewhere, notably 1 Corinthians chapter one, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whereby sinners can be forgiven and given a total new start however bad they have been, not through their merits but by faith in Christ and His death and Resurrection, is thought stupid by some (e.g. atheists) and offensive by others (e.g. Jews and Muslims who hope to get to Heaven by their own merits). The Gospel offends people who believe that they are good enough to go to Heaven and who despise others they think beneath them. Lewis wrote a brilliant parable about this issue in ‘The Great Divorce’, it’s on pages 30 to 34 in my 1983 copy.
The Great Divorce is a speculative Christian fantasy novel, (Lewis describes it as ‘A Dream’) which imagines human souls and some angels in an ‘in between’ spiritual dimension, featuring conversations between souls of men and women who knew each other on Earth, some forgiven and glorified, others in a sad, grey, ghostly condition. In the story to which I refer, a man who has gone to heaven despite being a murderer (we assume he was executed) is in conversation with the shade of a former work colleague who has been damned, but maybe can get to heaven (1).
The ghost of a man, like the writer of the meme above, is incensed that his former colleague (named as Len) has been forgiven and glorified after murdering their old boss Jack, just because he asked God for forgiveness before being hanged for murder. We are told that Jack is in Heaven too, sends his love, and that everything is all right between him and Len, despite Len having murdered him.
The ghost demands to be given his ‘rights’. ‘The glorified Len laughs and says ‘Oh no. It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I shouldn’t be here….’ His point being that entrance to Heaven is not granted to the deserving, but to sinners (small and great) who have repented and believed and consequently been forgiven and adopted. But his unnamed former colleague isn’t having any of it.
He believes that his and Len’s positions should be reversed, because he reckons he was a good man ‘I never done nothing wrong!’ and always paid his way and did his best. He is informed that he wasn’t a good man and didn’t do his best, but even now is offered a chance to be saved and go to Heaven if he will repent. But he will not acknowledge that he has anything to repent of (2). He says he only wants his rights…‘I’m not asked for anyone’s bleeding charity!‘ to which Len replies ‘Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.’
In case anyone missed it, the term ‘bleeding’ is an English swear word, considered slightly less unacceptable that ‘bloody’, used as a strong emphasis and a curse. The ghost is using it here to emphatically despise and reject the ‘charity’ that is offered him, in this context because he believes that he deserves to go to Heaven (he doesn’t, but can’t bring himself to accept this.) In his response, Len capitalises the words ‘Bleeding Charity’ in a clear reference to Christ’s atoning death on the cross, which is the only chance any of us sinners has to escape justice (getting what we deserve) and be received into Heaven as God’s previously estranged but now redeemed children (see the parable of the father who had two sons, often referred to as the parable of the prodigal son.) That’s it, that’s the Gospel-Christ died for our sins, the just for the unjust. Jesus voluntarily took the punishment we deserved and by way of exchange, we receive the reward He deserves. As Paul sublimely puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:21 ‘God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might receive the righteousness of God.’
The impenitent ghost goes away whining and cursing, having excluded himself from the gift he has been freely offered. So intoxicated is he by his own sense of self-worth, like some of the hate-filled atheists who vomit their poison on this blog from time to time.
Anyway, the issues posted in the meme at the top of this page are not new, Lewis addressed them in this particular piece of writing (The Great Divorce) published in 1946. In summary, the answer is that nobody deserves to have a free pardon, adoption into God’s family and a glorious new eternal life in Heaven, because we have all sinned by disobeying God in various ways, including culpable unbelief. However, there is free forgiveness available even to the worst of us. In the event of a murder victim meeting their murderer in Heaven, they will both be so glad to be there, both will be radically transformed, both will know themselves to be unworthy sinners who became appreciative recipients of God’s underserved mercy and grace.
The murderer will apologise and their apology will be accepted by their victim, who will know themself to be in Heaven only by the grace and mercy of God in Christ, not their own goodness. If you have understood the terms on which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offered, and it’s not cryptic, the question answers itself. The atheist meme maker is basically just throwing a bag of stinking excrement rather than asking an honest question in hope of a reasoned answer.
Well, it has taken me about two and a half hours to write this response to a nasty little quip that an embittered atheist probably spent less than two minutes putting together! And thereby hangs a tale or two. Apes are better known for throwing excrement than for critical thinking or listening carefully to those who correct their mistakes.
(1) Lewis’s views on our state after death are somewhat nuanced. He believed in Purgatory, which Roman Catholics and some others believe in but is not Biblical. That’s another conversation altogether. That said, he called this story ‘A Dream’ and made it clear he was using the ‘after life’ idea as a vehicle to discuss theological issues, just as elsewhere he uses space travel and an imaginary letters written by a devil to make his points. OK by me.
(2) We read that all sins may be forgiven, except the sin against the Holy Spirit. This is an issue which Christians have a range of views on. I suspect that the absolute, final refusal to accept Christ after being shown sufficient evidence but proudly and persistently rejecting it may be the sin in question, since that is the only sin I know for certain will get you to Hell, shaking your fist against God as you leave this world and spitting on the hand that is held out to you in love. There is a thoughtful discussion of the issue here..
The ‘Assisted Dying’ Bill is being discussed in Parliamentary Committee. As I mentioned earlier, it has been framed dishonestly from the start, with the term ‘Assisted Suicide‘ being vehemently rejected for purely presentational reasons. It would be more honest to call it The Voluntary Euthanasia Bill, that would be both truthful and fair, but the Bill’s proponents are very keen to control the terms of the debate, not least because of this guy.
Harold Shipman, a Manchester GP (family doctor/community physician) was convicted in January 2000 for killing 15 of his patients with lethal injections of morphine which he pretended were flu vaccinations. He is believed to have killed as many as 250 over the previous 30 years. Nobody can say for sure why he did it, but I heard one (very drunk) GP saying that in future Shipman’s achievement would be recognised ‘…he has saved this country MILLIONS!‘
One of the Bill’s clauses under discussion has been the question about what the attending doctor does if the euthanasee (the ‘person’) takes a long time dying after they have swallowed the ‘substance’ (i.e. the poison) they have been given to swallow (an approved NHS doctor must hand them the poison, watch them take it, and remain ‘until they have died or the procedure has failed.’ (?!?) I can imagine some people becoming semi conscious and vomiting up enough of the medicine to take them below a lethal dose. What then? What is the doctor, and others present (maybe including relatives who are at best equivocal about assisted suicide), supposed to do? Try to get another dose down their gurgling throat? Smother them with a pillow? Wait for them to come round and start the whole process again? Resuscitate them? What if a distressed relative starts screaming?
All the above scenario could be avoided by Shipmanising the patient with an intravenous injection of morphine, maybe add barbiturate to make certain. But, as I have said, a huge amount of the conversation is about the optics. The proponents of the bill are very concerned about how people see and feel. Like their predecessors who caused abortion to be legalised in Britain in 1967, if they told the unvarnished truth, the public might be a bit more queasy. They know a lot of folks will associate Harold Shipman with doctors causing death to their patients. Otherwise they would come straight out and say ‘lethal injection is cheap, quick and well tested.’ Which it is, as Shipman proved.
As with abortion, once the law is on the statute books, and a historical red line crossed, any promised safeguards will soon be found to be as flexible as the relevant powers and authorities want them to be. Here in support of my contention that the terms of ‘Assisted Dying’ (i.e. euthanasia) will be widened very quickly is a sample of comments from a Facebook page I recently viewed.
Anyway, that’s a selection of public opinion. Of course I don’t know how representative it is, but there seems to be a lot of people who believe that ‘Assisted Suicide’ (as I said, that’s the honest name for it, although putting a pillow over someone’s head is murder rather than suicide) should be available for dementia patients, elderly and infirm requiring residential care, and for economic reasons as it’s cheaper than providing care. Also note that several commentators say they would feel pressure to end their lives in order to prevent their children facing an economic burden. Read the comments, that’s what they are saying.
I predict that, just as abortion was supposed to be for hard cases (12 year old girls pregnant after rape or incest, 42 year old mother of seven with heart disease and no access to contraception, pregnant again and will die leaving her children orphans unless she has an abortion, etc-I am old enough to have been there and remember these arguments being made) but from day one became a routine method of birth control (1). Once we cross the line and normalise mercy killing for cancer patients (2) with less than 6 months to live, and using swallowed poison, within a short time there will be demands to widen to provisions of the Act to permit people with progressive neurological conditions (primarily dementia) and to have an injection (much quicker, cleaner and cheaper).
As I mentioned before, regarding dementia (3) there is a catch 22-if you are in the early stages of dementia, you will have much more than 6 months to live, but if you have dementia and are believed to have less than 6 months to live (4), then you will not be mentally competent to request termination under the Act’s current terms.
This is all very dodgy stuff. I don’t know anyone who believes that very sick, frail, world-weary men and women should have their lives prolonged at any cost let alone against their will. And I don’t mind people who are terminally ill with cancer being allowed as much morphine, alcohol etc as they feel they need even if it shortens their life. But involving judges, doctors, social workers etc in a State-sanctioned act of deliberate killing by poison seems to me to cross a line that should not, and need not, be crossed.
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(1) ‘And rightly so’, you may think, but the point I am making is that abortion on request for any or no reason is not what the public were told in 1967 and that is not what Parliament voted for. The Bill’s proponents lied. And my country has been radically changed for ever.
(2) The Bill does not specify cancer, but it is implied.
(3) Dementia is now the single biggest cause of death in Britain. The main reason for this is that we are living longer due to progress in preventing and treating other causes of death like accidents, heart disease and cancer. We must all still go to meet our Maker, see Psalm 90. We would do better to reflect on this fact rather than desperately seek to exercise autonomy over the time and manner of our deaths.
Psalm 90
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” 4 A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. 5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death— they are like the new grass of the morning: 6 In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. 8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. 9 All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. 10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. 11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
(4) Estimating how long a sick person has to live is in most cases pure guesswork. Of course, if we follow the precedent of abortion, which was supposed to be permitted on the sign-off of two doctors ‘that the continuation of the pregnancy would pose a greater risk to the mental or physical health of the woman than abortion’ a doctor who philosophically approves of what is being requested will tick a box and sign the form anyway. I never heard of even one of the 11 million British abortion forms being challenged once it was signed, and if one doctor wouldn’t sign, another would.
It should be a surprise to the reasonably well informed person that some people are still denying the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, but it is still happening. Alas, many of us are not very well informed, some of us are too lazy (or too full of ourselves?) to do due diligence fact checking before posting, and some of us sadly set out deliberately to deceive.
I recently came across the following example on a semi-random Facebook page I interact with.
Looking at the structure of the post, it is in the form of a bold assertion. No source is offered. It ignores widely and freely available evidence that contradicts it. It’s complete nonsense.
I hesitate to say much about the intentions or motives of the person who posted this. First of all, it may not have been a person as such. There are artificial intelligence robots that can be programmed to post junk like this, I often click on their posters’ names and find no evidence of a human personality. Secondly, it might be a ‘false flag’ post, someone who is actually sympathetic to the Christian message who tactically posts grossly stupid assertions claiming to be from an anti-Christian, in order to make such people look stupid or wicked.
False flag attacks are well documented to happen, primarily as a strategy in war but also in arguments and propaganda. For one proven example consider the Jussie Smollett hate crime scandal in which a homosexual actor of colour falsely claimed to have been attacked and racially abused by Trump supporters. He was subsequently found guilty in court of deliberately fabricating the whole event. It goes without saying that such tactics are immoral and I strongly discourage any Christian activist from posing as an atheist. Argue vigorously by all means, but don’t impersonate or misrepresent. Unhappily, the presence of AI, bots and false flags has made it much more complicated and difficult to have an honest debate, especially on line where people can be nameless, faceless or indeed non-existent!
But, alas, I suspect that people who post ‘Jesus myth’ stuff probably are posting as themselves representing their actual beliefs. They should be ashamed of themselves (*), because they cannot possibly hold such a view with any integrity if they had have done any research into the matter, let alone approached the subject in an honest spirit of sceptical enquiry. Anyone denying the existence of the historical Jesus is either lazy and stupid, or else they are deliberately telling lies in order to deceive because of their opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to post here today but as I posted a C S Lewis response to this post, so here it is.
>>>>On the ‘mythology’ side of the anti-Christ propaganda, it’s really worth reading C S Lewis. Although he died in 1963, his wisdom is timeless and still inspires.
Lewis was raised as a Christian, rejected it growing up, was tutored by a hard line atheist (learned his debating skills there-it’s all in ‘Surprised by Joy’) went to war (almost killed) returned to Oxford and proved he had a first class intellect by taking THREE FIRSTS which included in depth study of the Greek and Roman mythologies. He was also in love with the Norse mythologies, which he read in the original Icelandic. He lived and breathed mythology before his conversion, and still enjoyed it for what it was afterwards, but saw the difference between Gospel and myth. His friend J R R Tolkien helped him with this.
Lewis then, after a long and mostly logical and philosophical process, became a Christian. He wrote an allegorical book ‘The Pilgrim’s Regress’ which explained all the ‘cheats’ as he called them, various bad arguments, irrelevancies, distractions and outright lies which had kept him from accepting Christ earlier. He then spent the rest of his life explaining in books, essays and lectures why Christianity was reasonable and the arguments against it were so inadequate.
The thing relating to this ‘Jesus is mythological’ OP above is that Lewis was an absolute expert on myths. He explained that the Bible, although containing miracles, read NOTHING LIKE any of the myths he had loved and studied, usually in the original languages (Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ in the original Greek, Snorri Sturluson’s ‘Poetic Eddas’ in the original Icelandic etc). Apart from anything else, there were the names, dates, places and genealogies-which are absent from the stories about Zeus, Loki, Vishnu etc. The life of Jesus is strongly grounded in history, quite unlike the little boozy, adulterous, fighting man-made gods of storytelling. Also the Bible contains fulfilled prophecies (no other religious tradition or mythology does) and, as Lewis put it, the stories are ‘badly written’ on a literary level, they are nowhere near as entertaining as the Greek, Roman or Norse myths. Then there is the matter of the world’s most successful civilisations being founded on Christianity (and going down the tubes fast having abandoned it).
I blog about these and related issues at The Old Hampshire C S Lewis Society on wordpress.com if anyone’s interested. C S Lewis is always worth reading, because be believed all the swindling deceits and distractions atheists tell when he was one, then he saw through them and used his brilliant mind, outstanding knowledge and colossal learning to try to put others right. If people want to reject Christ, that’s their choice, but it’s a pity to see them do it on the basis of such crass uncorrected ignorance as we see posted above.<<<
I also posted to say it was a dreary task for us Christian activists to have to keep correcting this sort of crude misrepresentation, but it was necessary to do it since the opponents of Christ kept posting junk like this and those of us who know better have a responsibility to try to protect young people who don’t know any better. But as for those haters of God and deniers of His Christ who use their time and energy to try to turn people away from Christ with your lies, REPENT! Deliberately trying to turn boys and girls away from Christ is a heinous sin and you will not escape your due penalty.
(*) Alas, one of the things about being a proud, Christ-rejecting sinner is the absence of shame.
You might think that the above headline statement is extreme. I agree that it is insane, but I have heard men use it. One was a doctor I was arguing with, an academic and a sworn atheist. He asked me if, after my death, I appeared before God and He (he said She, in order to be gratuitously offensive, a regrettable trait of many atheists I argue with) and God told me that I had been wrong about Creation and evolution, how would I respond? In the spirit of open debate, I said that, while I rejected the scenario, that since Christ’s Gospel offers a free pardon for all sins, and as I was counting on God’s gracious promises of forgiveness for many worse things I have done, the prospect of this wouldn’t worry me. Especially as I can’t see The Creator marking me down for taking His words as written, and as the Apostles and Church Fathers had taken them, and that somehow (allowing for the hypothetical scenario I was offered) I had failed to work out that God had buried His real meaning inside a deceitful riddle.
I then asked what he would do in the same situation-standing before a just God Who had revealed Himself but the doctor in question had culpably refused to accept the revelation. He said he’d rather go to Hell than recognise God, even when face to face with God.
I stopped arguing with him after that, although we met briefly on another on line platform a few years later-he was repeating his usual ‘show me evidence’ atheist stereotype, although as per the above conversation, he had previously told me he would refuse evidence for God even if he met God face to face. OK, he was talking through his backside out of contempt for me, but he still said it.
It’s no use offering these people evidence, they reject all evidence that doesn’t fit their beliefs, then accuse our side of what they are doing, piss on our evidence and claim victory. It has always been this way: Jesus said to move on where we are rejected.
‘I am holier than you, God!’
I have come across a similar attitude in several other conversations, with people saying that they would ‘kick God in the nuts’. Others boasted that they would berate God for not running the world as they (with their superior ethics!) would have preferred, or for not giving men enough evidence to make them believe. Former atheist Bertrand Russell and his contemporary imitator Richard Dawkins have said as much-trying to shift the blame for their culpable disobedience on to God. And their disobedience is culpable, because God has given them enough evidence- see Romans 1: 18-22.
What does this ‘ F*** you, God!’ attitude-which really exists, I’m not making this up- tell us? I am currently re-reading C S Lewis’s ‘A Preface to Paradise Lost’ in which he offers his thoughts about John Milton’s epic poem about the fall of Satan, and subsequently the Fall of Man. As Lewis explains, this poem was written at a time when Christianity was broadly accepted as true and it is not presented as a fantasy or allegory, more of a dramatisation of events that really happened in history (or pre-history if you prefer). As Lewis explains, whatever you believe yourself, you need to know and understand what Milton believed or you couldn’t possibly appreciate the book-there is no ‘hidden meaning’ behind the religious imagery, Milton believed that the falls of Satan and then Adam and Eve were real events of profound significance, and that they have much to teach us.
And Satan boasted, in perhaps the best known line of the poem, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven’ What a wicked, and stupid, lie! But some proud sinners still echo it as they curse and defy their Maker and rightful Lord.
The English poet John Milton
I read Paradise Lost around 15 years ago and plan to re-read it again, when I can find my copy (I have over 1,000 books and many are still in boxes after a house move). As Lewis (who was Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge at the time) writes, Milton looks at the character and motives of Lucifer (Satan’s original title) and concludes that his main sin was pride. He wanted to replace and become God. Lucifer was also stupid for thinking he could overcome his omnipotent Maker. Milton’s Satan (1) is seen as wicked, but also ridiculous to the point of being comedic. After all, what could be more laughable than a created being boasting arrogantly and rebelling against his Creator? Oh dear, that’s just what the atheists I mentioned above were and are doing…….
Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden after their inexcusable rebellion against God, who had given them all things to enjoy and one simple probationary command which they broke.
And so, back to C S Lewis. A decade before his Preface to Paradise Lost, Lewis wrote his Ransom Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra-a Voyage to Venus and the last book, That Hideous Strength.) Students are still finding new layers of meaning in this trilogy, to which I often refer, especially the final book.
Bewareplot spoilers.
At the end of the book, the bad guys (and they are very bad) are judged (ethically by Lewis, and physically by angelic powers that have descended to Earth), die and (we are left in no doubt) go to Hell to be punished for their heinous sins and rebellion against God and their wicked misdeeds against their fellow creatures. At least two of them (Wither and Frost) see judgment coming for them but still refuse to admit that they were wrong.
I will quote briefly from the book’s 16th chapter ‘Banquet at Belbury’. Deputy Director JohnWither realises that ‘his dark masters’ had been wrong in their calculations, their plans had failed catastrophically and all was now lost. We read ‘It is incredible how little this knowledge moved him.’ The narrative continues, explaining how the nihilistic atheist philosophy Wither has been swallowing all his adult life had left him indifferent to reality and truth. As the last moments of his life tick away, he ‘..watches passively, not lifting a finger for his own rescue, even as the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul.’ Lewis finished this passage with (what I later discovered is lifted from the first canto of Dante’s ‘Inferno’) ‘So full of sleep are they at the time when they leave the right way.’
Wither’s colleague Augustus Frost, a psychologist and absolute hard line materialist, is also a full initiate of ‘The Macrobes‘ who are basically devils posing as highly evolved extra-corporeal intelligences. Lewis writes about Frost, as the whole project crumbles around him, ‘For many years he had theoretically believed that all which appears in the mind as motive or intention is merely a by-product of what the body is doing.‘ This might sound like a caricature of the materialist view of humanity, but it is pretty much exactly what I was actually taught at Medical School in the 1970s by an atheistic neurology teacher.
He taught us that there was no God, no such thing as free will, no such thing as the soul, the mind was simply a chemical epiphenomenon of brain circuitry and neurotransmitter chemistry, that we were merely accidentally evolved machines, that religion and ethics were illusory, etc. Although atheists seldom put it so directly, this is the view of Man that their philosophical world view genuinely implies, even if they haven’t thought it through and don’t necessarily say so (2).
So, although Lewis is clearly using his fiction here to drive home his points (which he admitted he was doing in the preface- using a ‘modern fairy tale’ to set out the ideas in his essay The Abolition of Man) he is not overdoing it. People who think like Augustus Frost really exist, lots of them, they are deeply embedded in the Establishment (especially the Universities, including mine, see above) politics, journalism, the theatre, the judiciary and Civil Service, and they have been driving our culture away from God and His Christ since at least the time when Lewis was writing this 70 years ago.
Anyway, Frost, acting on impulses he does not understand, locks himself in a room (the ‘Objectivity Room’ which was mentioned in an earlier post about THS as a room of distorted, ugly anti-Christian art which is used to break down people’s sense of decency), and pours out petrol before lighting it. We then read…
‘Not until then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul-nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes and turns them into unchangeable stone.’
I will acknowledge that Lewis is laying it on a bit thick here, as is the right of any artist, but it’s wholly legitimate in my book as he was right about really important things that weren’t being talked about as much as they should have been. He was passionately trying to wake people up to what was really happening to their culture and how much it mattered.
I have read THS maybe 15 times over the last 55 years and keep coming back to the passage I describe as ‘The damnation of Wither and Frost’ in chapter 16, not from any kind of sadism but because I think Lewis has really hit the nail on the head here- some people are so in love with themselves and their treasured self-affirming beliefs and proud ambitions that they would allow any catastrophe rather than admit they were wrong, even the ultimate catastrophe of being finally abandoned for ever by God, who is the source of all goodness, love and joy.
The other character whose final thoughts and actions before his death are detailed is Lord Feverstone, who is Dick Devine from Out of the Silent Planet. His besetting sins are selfishness and greed. He is not actively malicious, but is utterly devoid of any benevolent thoughts towards those around him, only using people as tools and stepping stones to achieve his own purely selfish desires.
Some might think Devine is less evil than Wither and Frost, but that’s a subjective opinion. I think Lewis is trying to spread the blame and tell a tale in which greed, pride, lust for power etc are all seen as heinous and it’s not helpful to try to create a hierarchy of sins as they feed on each other, just as proteins always work in teams. As he wrote in ‘The Screwtape Letters’, Satan likes to send errors into the world in matched opposite pairs, in order to tempt us to gravitate towards the sins we personally find less repulsive. ‘That guy’s sin is more egregious than mine, so I’ll give myself a free pass.’
As Devine progresses unknowingly to his doom, Lewis writes sarcastically about him ‘He knew about the Macrobes, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he was interested in……He also had a perfectly clear conscience and had played no tricks with his mind. He had never slandered another man except to get his job., never cheated except because he wanted money, never really disliked people unless they bored him.’
The narrative continues, as Devine weighs up the possibilities of the situation with no thought of loyalty or trying to save any of his surviving colleagues but only serving his own interests. A few minutes later, he dies and we are led to assume goes straight to face final and irrevocable accountability for all his cruel and selfish actions.
We are accountable.
So, in conclusion, these are some thoughts about human accountability and our refusal to face it, inspired by reading Milton, Dante and Lewis, and thinking about the world as it is. I think it’s pretty dark and getting worse, and that mostly due to selfish and stupid choices made by godless and wicked men. I’m glad to be 70 rather than 17.
As Lewis wrote about Augustus Frost, ‘Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him.’ But his pride and the lies he had believed prevented him from accepting the offer, and so he was damned. Whatever other points about literature, theology, culture, philosophy or the human heart Lewis was writing about at any given time (and he was often writing about several overlapping or related issues at once) his main concern was always to point men, women, boys and girls towards Christ and away from the terrible but just reward for their sins. And that, dear reader, is why I write. As Saint Paul write in 2 Corinthians 5: 20
‘I beg you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.’
(1) Obviously Milton’s poetry is not Holy Writ: he was writing as a poet and using artistic license in expressing his thoughts as he saw fit in order to set out meaning through his art. I am not qualified to comment on how accurately he judged Satan’s character and motives, let the reader and the critic decide for themselves.
(2) As there is often misunderstanding and misrepresentations around this set of issues, I would like to make it clear that atheists often behave much more ethically than their philosophy of life mandates them to. Similarly, many (all?) professing Christians fail to live up to Christ’s teachings. What I am saying here, after Lewis, is that if atheistic materialism is the true basis of our being, then there is no universal and unalterable basis for ethics. That is one of Lewis’ main arguments in The Abolition of Man and his related novel That Hideous Strength.
That is not to say that no atheist behaves ethically (let us assume a set of ethics largely based on The Sermon on the Mount, or if you prefer ‘The Tao’ as set out by Lewis in Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man). That would deny our lived experience and be most unfair. However, in the absence of God, humans are free to decide what set of ethics they should follow, and free to break or alter them as they wish.
This distinction isn’t that hard to understand, but people still manage to do it, whether through thoughtlessness or the intent to deliberately confuse matters in the interest of denying or obscuring inconvenient realities.
Old Hampshire C S Lewis Society 
