Worth a ponder...

The one principle of hell is - "I am my own."
- George MacDonald

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone..."
- Genesis 2:18

I am no longer my own, but Thine...
- John Wesley

Lewis honored at Westminster Abbey

Tomorrow, 22 November, the great Christian author, thinker, educator, sometime preacher, and poet C.S. Lewis will be honored with a place among the spires and gothic arches in the "poets' corner" of Westminster Abbey.  "A service will take place on 22 November 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.  Lewis will join such greats as John Keats, William Blake and TS Eliot in a tradition going back 600 years."  Read the full BBC article here.

Lewis is one of my great spiritual and theological mentors, and I'll have to make sure to stop by poets' corner next time I'm in London.

Survey Says: Women are for Life

This is a fascinating and well-researched article showing the contrast between the actual attitudes of women and the way that "women's interests" are sometimes (though not universally) presented by the press, the academy, and the political left.  Those who have opinions about abortion, "sexual liberation culture," and related issues (and who doesn't?) would do well to ponder carefully this article, because I believe it has a very important contribution to make on these issues.

I believe that the research clearly supports my thesis that the collapse of Christian sexual morality (which means reserving sexual intimacy to the protections of the marriage covenant) is bad for women and children in particular, so that the various "sexual liberations" that were supposed to empower women, have ironically exposed women to deeper loneliness, more manipulation by men, and a culture that sets women up for frustration.  The article begs the question of what a truly woman-respecting culture would look like; what changes in our entertainment industry, fashions, cultural assumptions and norms would be needed for that sort of pro-woman culture to emerge?  I believe it would, in large part, mean a renewed commitment to chastity, marriage & family, and respect for women as whole persons (not just bodies), and all this from men and women alike.

Highlights are presented below:
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In contrast to the rhetoric of a “war on women,” recent polls reveal that the majority of American women support abortion restrictions and regulations. This is unsurprising, since unfettered abortion access hurts women and gives men a sexual advantage...

A Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of women supported the twenty-week ban, while an additional 8 percent stated that abortion should never be legal. That represents a full 68 percent of women who would be supportive of the twenty-week ban. Among men, only 50 percent supported the twenty-week ban, and only 6 percent stated that abortion should never be legal. That represents a 12-point gender gap on this issue, with women being much more likely to support abortion restrictions. The poll is hardly an outlier, since a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 71 percent of women favored at least a 20-week ban on abortion, while only 63 percent of men did....

Ironically, it turns out that women are much more supportive of the fictitious “war on women” than men. This seems counterintuitive, at least to those immersed in radical feminist politics. However, when one considers how abortion on demand alters the fundamental sexual dynamics between men and women, it starts to make sense...

While feminists champion this leveling of the sexual playing field, the altered sexual calculus has actually placed women at a significant disadvantage. If women are more willing to engage in sexual activity, men are more than willing to play along—but they are likely to provide very little in return.
No-strings-attached sexual encounters have become the norm for young adults on college campuses, while dating and long-term commitment continue to fall by the wayside. Whom does this benefit?
As more sexually active women enter the marketplace, it is the young men that seem to be reaping the benefits, not women. For example, Regnerus and Uecker found that on college campuses in which women outnumber men (meaning there are more sexually active women in the marketplace), the women had a more negative view of the men on campus, they went on fewer dates, and received less commitment in return for sexual relations. What was meant to be the triumphant sexual liberation of women has turned college campuses into something that resembles a frat boy’s fantasy world. It is a world that leaves women isolated and lonely.

In work done by sociologist Paula England, more than half of college women surveyed reported feeling less respected by men after casual sex. Meanwhile, college men are less interested than women in a relationship both before and after sex. In addition, more women reported highly unsatisfying sexual encounters, often feeling that they were treated as sexual objects by the men involved.

Yet they continued to have casual sex anyway, because when the cost of sex is low, women feel enormous pressure to give in. Many men even expect this—so much so that survey data indicate 3-5 percent of college women are victims of rape or attempted rape every year.

Yet the victimization doesn’t end there. When contraception fails, whether after consensual casual sex or an alcohol-fueled dorm-rape, men turn to abortion as a way to mitigate their responsibility. In fact, more than 60 percent of women who have an abortion report being under pressure to do so. In the majority of cases, it is the male partner who is applying that pressure. Workers at crisis pregnancy centers see this physical intimidation or emotional manipulation routinely.

In one widely read article, the author touts how he manipulated two of his girlfriends into getting abortions...

Insults from Luther

I first read some of Martin Luther's writings in college, and more in seminary, and I (like all Protestants, and indeed all Christians) am indebted to his theological insight and genius - especially his reassertion of the teaching that we are justified and made right with God by faith in Christ, not any laundry list of good works.  Yet if you have read much Luther, you probably have quickly discovered that he is a rather...colorful...debater.  He often heaps scorn upon his debate opponents, and has no problem resorting to simple name-calling and insulting.  In fact, Martin Luther is not a nice guy; he is kind of a jerk.

So, to mark this 530th anniversary of his birth (on November the 10th, 1483) in a light-hearted way I am happy to share with you the "Luther insulter."  Just press the button and receive a genuine insult from the writings of Martin Luther!  Then do it again!  And again...  It's funny...in a "make you want to cry when you really think about it" kind of way.        

Insult me, Martin Luther!

C.S. Lewis honored at Methodist college

In these days leading up to the 50th anniversary of his death, C.S. Lewis' work and teaching is being celebrated at the United Methodist-related Centenary College of Louisiana.  The schedule of events is here.  I will be participating as the Methodist clergy representative on a panel discussion of Mere Christianity on Tuesday the 12th of November at 7pm. 

Wisdom with Lewis: Religion and Literature

All the books were beginning to turn against me.  Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader.  George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity.  He was good in spite of it.  Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity.  Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough he had the same kink.  Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too.  Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found.  The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed.  On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete - Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire - all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called "tinny."  It wasn't that I didn't like them.  They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more.  There seemed to be no depth in them.  They were too simple.  The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.

Now that I was reading more English, the paradox began to be aggravated.  I was deeply moved by the Dream of the Road; more deeply still by Langland: intoxicated for a time by Donne; deeply and lastingly satisfied by Thomas Browne.  But the most alarming of all was George Herbert.  Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment, but the wretched fellow, instead of doing it all directly, insisted on mediating it through what I would still have called "the Christian mythology."  On the other hand most of the authors who might be claimed as precursors of modern enlightenment seemed to me very small beer and bored me cruelly.  I thought Bacon (to speak frankly) a solemn, pretentious ass, yawned my way through Restoration Comedy, and, having manfully struggled to the last line of Don Juan, wrote on the end leaf "Never again."  The only non-Christians who seemed really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity.  The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chason -

Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.

The natural step would have been to inquire a little more closely whether the Christians were, after all, wrong.  But I did not take it...

C.S. Lewis, from Surprised by Joy, chp. XIV