Waiting, Not Camping Out
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You can
exchange small talk with your customers all you want, ask about their families,
discuss the weather and the economy, talk about sports, but eventually you have
to get them to buy. And it's similar for customers. They have to decide whether
to take the plunge and buy the product.
Somewhere
along the road in our search for God, we have to decide for or against him/her, though
the choice might be incremental. Do I believe? Is there a place for God in my
life? Am I committed to God? And if I am committed, what does that mean?
In his
famous book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the analogy of a hallway off of
which are several doors leading to various rooms, representing belief,
disbelief, and religion as a way of expressing that faith.
Not a Place to Live In
“The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. …It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at.
“The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. …It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at.
“I do
not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting
unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. …But you must regard it as
waiting, not as camping.”
British novelist, poet and university professor, Lewis died
in 1963. He is most famous today for his fantasy novels, The Chronicles of
Narnia, now a film series. He developed Mere Christianity as a series of radio
broadcasts in Britain during World War II.
C.S. Lewis Google Image |
“Lewis vigorously resisted conversion,” according to
Wikipedia, “noting that he was brought into Christianity - in his words - like a prodigal, ‘kicking,
struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to
escape.’”
Lewis’ broadcasts apparently had a profound effect on many of his British countrymen. Many were bewildered and despairing of human nature after witnessing the horrors of World War II. They were open to hearing about God. Seminaries and monasteries filled after the war, it is said.
"The war,
the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless,” wrote a member of the British
military. “We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis
provided just that."
Living a half century later, we may not have gone through
what the wartime people endured, but the deepest realities haven’t changed.
“All of
our notions of modernity and progress and all our advances in technological
expertise have not brought an end to war,” writes Kathleen Norris, poet and
essayist, in her forward to Mere Christianity. “Our declaring the notion of sin
to be obsolete has not diminished human suffering. And the easy answers:
blaming technology, or for that matter, the world’s religions, have not solved
the problem.
Evil Our Only Alternative?
“The
problem, C.S. Lewis insists, is us. And the crooked and perverse generation of
which the psalmists and prophets spoke many thousands of years ago is our own,
whenever we submit to systemic and individual evils as if doing so were our
only alternative.
“Many of
us hold out a hope that at some point, God will reveal himself/herself, if only
in some small way,” she continues. “Or, we think we will suddenly gain some new
insight, some intellectual breakthrough that will compel us to believe.”
That
reminds me of what Tomas Halik, the Czech theologian I’ve often quoted in these
blogs, has to say about faith: “If the signs of God’s presence lay within easy
reach on the surface of the world, as some religious zealots like to think,
there would be no need for real faith.”
People
searching for God should not expect to camp out in the “hallway,” as Lewis
describes the endless procrastination about faith some of us exhibit. Eventually, we have
to decide, even if we have to accept that our faith is “as small as a mustard
seed.”
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