At
the beginning of September, Matthew celebrated his fifteenth birthday.It was just a few days before he started
school, his sophomore year at Monsignor Farrell High School.So his birthday caps off the end of summer
and anticipates the new school year.We
didn’t do anything special for his birthday except celebrate it at home with
cake.Some pictures, the cake and
Matthew blowing out the candles
Man,
do I hate that hair.What kind of a
hairstyle is this that is so prevalent?I
don’t even know what it’s called.And
yes that is meant to be that way; it is not from accident.It’s like a shaggy rodent on top of his head
that has gone feral.If he continues
this into adulthood, he’s going eventually become Cousin Itt.Do you remember Cousin Itt from the TV series, The Addams Family?
Here’s
what Matthew is going to look like in ten years.
😛
But
the day before starting school, he finally got a haircut!He wouldn’t let me take a picture, so I chased
him down and just as he was closing the bathroom door in my face, I snapped
it!
Now
it looks like he was posing for the picture, but he was swinging that door
closed…lol.The hair is still shaggy but
at least it’s shorter.
As they continue their journey with Jesus,
the disciples continue to show how obtuse they are.Someone not of their group is driving out
demons, and they want to stop him.This leads
Jesus into a little sermon, first on doing the good, then on causing sin, and
then on what to do if one sins repeatedly.
At that time, John said to Jesus,
"Teacher, we saw someone
driving out demons in your name,
and we tried to prevent him because
he does not follow us."
Jesus replied, "Do not prevent
him.
There is no one who performs a
mighty deed in my name
who can at the same time speak ill
of me.
For whoever is not against us is for
us.
Anyone who gives you a cup of water
to drink
because you belong to Christ,
amen, I say to you, will surely not
lose his reward.
"Whoever causes one of these little
ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone
were put around his neck
and he were thrown into the sea.
If your hand causes you to sin, cut
it off.
It is better for you to enter into
life maimed
than with two hands to go into
Gehenna,
into the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot causes you to sin,
cut if off.
It is better for you to enter into
life crippled
than with two feet to be thrown into
Gehenna.
And if your eye causes you to sin,
pluck it out.
Better for you to enter into the
kingdom of God with one eye
than with two eyes to be thrown into
Gehenna,
where 'their worm does not die, and
the fire is not quenched.'"
~Mk 9:38-43, 45,
47-48
Jeff Cavins
identifies just how important cutting sin is from your life.
As I look at Jesus’s
sermon, there doesn’t seem to be a logical transition from not stopping
outsiders from healing to radically cutting sin from one’s life.For some reason the lectionary stops on verse
48, but perhaps verses 49 and 50 actually pulls all three elements of his
sermon together: “Everyone will be salted with fire.Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid,
with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will
have peace with one another.” (Mk 9:49-50)By cutting out sin, one is purified as being salted, and those that are
salted are those that can go and drive out demons.The final outcome of cutting out sin is
peace!
Sunday Meditation: “If your hand
causes you to sin, cut it off.”
Our hymn today will be “Go in Peace,” by John
Michael Talbot
Morality, consists of
three elements: relations between man and man: things inside each man: and
relations between man and the power that made him.All three are critical to a man’s immortal
fate.
Chapter
2: The ‘Cardinal Virtues’
Being moral rests on
exercising seven interior virtues, and the four which trace back to Classical
culture are Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.Virtue is a building up of interior strength
to perform them as a natural consequence of action.
Chapter
3: Social Morality
Christian social
morality, that is the morality between man and man, is not any different than
the social morality of any other culture.It is the application of the Golden Rule.
Chapter
4: Morality and Psychoanalysis
Moral choices involve the
psychological disposition of the person, and that can vary from person to
person and that can vary from person to person based on experience and
psychological makeup.
Chapter
5: Sexual Morality
The Christian rule of
sexual morality is, “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your
partner, or else total abstinence.” This is contrary to our instincts, but it
is our instincts that have gone wrong, not the rule.
Chapter
6: Christian Marriage
The Christian idea of
marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a
single organism—for that is what the words “one flesh” would be in modern
English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not
expressing a sentiment but stating a fact.
###
My
Comment:
I'm amazed at how
succinctly and simply Lewis is able to explain morality and its relationship to
religion in the opening chapter of Book 3. Here from the closing paragraph of
chapter 1:
It seems, then, that if
we are to think about morality, we must think of all three departments:
relations between man and man: things inside each man: and relations between
man and the power that made him. We can all co-operate in the first one.
Disagreements begin with the second and become serious with the third. It is in
dealing with the third that the main differences between Christian and
non-Christian morality come out. For the rest of this book I am going to assume
the Christian point of view, and look at the whole picture as it will be if
Christianity is true.
Morality breaks down into
three relationships: man's relationship with man, man's relationship with
himself, and man's relationship with God. That is so easy to remember.
My
Comment:
The chapter on the
Cardinal virtues made an interesting point that I think is forgotten. The goal
of the Christian life is to be transformed so that the virtues become instilled
and part of one's character. The guy who happens to make a good shot in tennis
as opposed to the real tennis player who makes all shots from a developed
skill. Here is how Lewis ends Chapter 2:
This distinction is
important for the following reason. If we thought only of the particular
actions we might encourage three wrong ideas.
(1) We might think that,
provided you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did
it—whether you did it willingly or unwillingly, sulkily or cheerfully, through
fear of public opinion or for its own sake. But the truth is that right actions
done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or
character called a “virtue,” and it is this quality or character that really
matters.
(2) We might think that
God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people
of a particular sort.
(3) We might think that
the “virtue” were necessary only for this present life—that in the other world
we could stop being just because there is nothing to quarrel about and stop
being brave because there is no danger. Now it is quite true that there will
probably be no occasion for just or courageous acts in the next world, but
there will be every occasion for being the sort of people that we can become
only as the result of doing such acts here.
The point is not that God
will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain
qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the
beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions
could make a “Heaven” for them—that is, could make them happy with the deep,
strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us.
Somehow we need to train
in the virtues as a want to be tennis player trains in tennis.
Frances
Comment:
I have always thought
highly of Iris Murdoch’s definition of love. It is deeply Christian, when you
meditate on it. She said, “Love is the supremely difficult realization that another
person is real.’’
Casey
Comment:
This section opens with
an idea I like very much. That morality is the code for running the human
machine.
I feel like so many
people think of morality as unenforceable laws imposed by prudes. Rather,
morality is simply an outline of how things work. (Laws ought to be for that
space between, where the human machines find themselves in conflict.) If you
are moral -ie if you go along with the way things work - you will receive the
blessings, and if you go with the way things don't work, you'll receive the
curses.
This is basically the
entire Old Testament with the exception of Tobit. Which is what makes Tobit so
interesting. He goes along completely with the way things work and receives the
curses. Which is right in line with how we often experience the pattern.
There's a great paradox there.
Using the tennis player,
one can train perfectly and lose every match or get injured. Never train and
you can avoid losing and injury but you will never gain the possibility of
becoming a good tennis player nor the character of Job for having endured the
struggle. Again, the anti-pattern paradoxically reinforces the pattern.
My
Comment:
I liked his explanation
of why we have sexual morality in chapter 5. It is an appetite that has gone
wrong. It is unlike the other appetites. It is something gone wrong in human
nature and here I think we can link it to the fall from Eden.
I also like how in
chapter 5 he sums up sexual morality as not being at the core of Christian
values. Here's his final paragraph in that chapter:
Finally, though I have
had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly
can that the centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians
regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh
are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are
purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing
and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of
hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which
I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The
Diabolical self is the worse of the two.
I think he got this from
Dante's Divine Comedy. I pointed this
out when we read that a few years ago. Dante puts the sexual sins towards the
beginning of hell, and the further down into hell the more serious the sins.
What Lewis calls the Diabolical sins are at the very bottom of hell.
My
Comment:
I also loved the chapter
on Christian marriage, with one exception which I’ll get toward the end. I love
his definition of Christian marriage.
The Christian idea of
marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a
single organism—for that is what the words “one flesh” would be in modern
English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not
expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one
says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are
one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that
its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in
pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.
One organism is spot on!
I love how Lewis discusses that the emotional feeling of love will not last and
that true love is a “unity” formed by grace. Love is distinct from “being in
love” and is ultimately a decision, not a feeling. Marriage involves love, not
being in love. I love how Lewis brings out that love involves sacrifice and
service for the spouse. I love how he brings out that being faithful involves
justice as well as virtue and adherence to your oath before God. I sense that
Lewis disapproves of divorce, but is a bit reticent so as to not offend
Protestants that have rationalized it. Frankly I think this chapter should be a
must read as marriage preparation.
Now where I think Lewis
falls flat is in explaining why Biblically a man is head of the household. Of
course he is on target that the man is head per scripture and per nature. But
he justifies it by saying the “a woman is primarily fighting for her own
children and husband against the rest of the world.” What? He goes on:
Naturally, almost, in a
sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the
special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that
this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in
order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife.
If anyone doubts this, let me ask a simple question. If your dog has bitten the
child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you
sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress? Or, if you
are a married woman, let me ask you this question. Much as you admire your
husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick
up for his rights and yours against the neighbours as vigorously as you would
like? A bit of an Appeaser?
So because the woman is
overprotective of her children she cannot be rational to reach an objective
decision? And why wouldn’t the husband not have such an equally protective
reaction toward his children? This is convoluted, especially of the child and
the neighbor’s dog. This is the only place in the book so far that I have found
muddled thinking.
So here’s my take on the
head of the household and how to reach marital decisions. The husband is the
head because it is natural for him to be. It is how God through nature has set
it up. Now that does not mean that the man dictates over the wife, and it does
not mean the wife must on all accounts submit to the husband. By all means if
the husband is leading the family to ruin or sin, the wife should object. The
way marital decisions should be handled is that the husband and wife should
come to a consensus, an agreement that is satisfying to both, and through that
consensus the natural leadership of the man will come through. A consensus
requires both parties to be docile to the other’s needs. A consensus requires a
solution that can fit both party’s vision. It may not come instantaneously, but
with perseverance, compromise, and negotiation they will come to a solution. It
just takes time. And the longer one is married, the faster these decisions come
about because one just knows the other person better. It is not one lording it
over the other, no matter which of the two has the stronger personality. Both
must remember: docility to the other person’s needs. That’s my humble take on
marital decision making.
Casey
Replied to My Comment:
I disagree and I think
you're really overreading. Lewis and the analogy are spot on. What you are
discussing is the org structure or decision making structure or job
descriptions. Who has authority over what. That's not what he's talking about.
(And he's definitely not talking about the irrationality of women.)
Another analogy that may
help you see what Lewis is saying is that of an eagle family. The female eagle
stays with the nest, protecting the young while the male flies about hunting,
returning food for the family. The nest has two needs, one interior and one
exterior. The two eagles unite as one to serve those needs in opposite ways.
In human terms, women
represent the family to the outside world. Men represent the outside world back
to the family. One says this is what my child needs from the world, the other
says this is what the world needs from the child. BTW, this is historically why
only men voted. It wasn't that men were shutting women out or they thought
women would mess up a man's world, rather is was because the household (not the
individual) was seen as the fundamental political unit. (A unit Marx wanted to
destroy.) The feminine half of that unit crafted the agenda, the masculine half
went out to negotiate that agenda with all of the other Eagles. From that point
of view, who is the "in-charge" of the nest? And who is
"responsible" for the nest?
And also, we have these
two elements inside ourselves as individuals as well. A small child is more
feminine in the sense that he/she demands what it wants of the world. As the
child grows he/she discovers the outside world don't play that and he must
negotiate the balance. Initially swinging too far to the masculine in the
teenage years as everyone gets the same haircut, wears the same clothes, same
music, etc. But then the adult finds (hopefully) a balance properly reflecting
the inside-out and the outside-in.
Most men and most women
need marital union to complete that balance. And most children need two parent
homes to help them find that balance.
My
Reply to Casey:
Hmm, Casey. So what
you're talking about is that there are roles between man and woman. In a
convoluted way, yes, that is what Lewis is talking about too. But where is that
in St. Paul's dictum? Here is exactly what St. Paul says in Ephesians chapter
five:
21 Submit to one another
out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit
yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is
the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he
is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should
submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your
wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make
her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and
to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29
After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their
body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his
wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but
I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must
love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Where in there is
anything about gender roles? It says to submit to one another, and that the
husband is head as Christ is head of the Church. The question is then, how is
Christ head of the Church? There is nothing about roles here. It is about
dialogue and in my perhaps particular view reaching a consensus. When the
Church comes across something that is not fixed doctrine, it has to dialogue
with Christ to seek some sort of divine inspiration. The natural leadership of
Christ will shape the consensus decision. Just so, the natural leadership of
the man will shape the household decision. But it's a consensus. Both husband
and wife come to an agreement.
Anyway, that's how I see
St. Paul's passage, and perhaps I have a more egalitarian perspective than Paul
may intend. But I don't see anything about gender roles.
Casey
Replied to My Comment:
No I'm not talking about
gender roles. In fact quite the opposite. I'm talking about the nature of
masculinity and femininity. Coincidentally, I went back and read Tobit. I think
this (10:1-7) illustrates Lewis' point:
Meanwhile, day by day,
Tobit was keeping track of the time Tobiah would need to go and to return. When
the number of days was reached and his son did not appear,
2he Tobit] said, “Could
it be that he has been detained there? Or perhaps Gabael has died, and there is
no one to give him the money?”
3And he began to grieve.
4His wife Anna said, “My
son has perished and is no longer among the living!” And she began to weep aloud
and to wail over her son:
5“Alas, child, light of
my eyes, that I have let you make this journey!”
6But Tobit kept telling
her: “Be still, do not worry, my sister; he is safe! Probably they have to take
care of some unexpected business there. The man who is traveling with him is
trustworthy and one of our kindred. So do not grieve over him, my sister. He
will be here soon.”
7But she retorted, “You
be still, and do not try to deceive me! My son has perished!” She would rush
out and keep watch every day at the road her son had taken. She ate nothing.
After the sun had set, she would go back home to wail and cry the whole night
through, getting no sleep at all.(Tob
10:2-7)
Kerstin
Replied:
I see two things going on
here:
1) The God-given
hierarchy of the Father and Christ, which is mirrored in the Church and in the
family.
2) The complimentary
nature of marriage and how it fits within this hierarchy.
Both exist
simultaneously. Just like Manny, I thought Lewis was not expressing himself
very well here.
Lewis mentions the word
"contract" in the context or marriage, and I thought that a poor word
choice.
The idea of 'being in
love' leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all.
When we marry we exchange
vows. A vow is a solemn promise between bride and groom in front of God. So the
promise has a trinitarian aspect to it. A vow or promise is always between
persons.
A contract is a binding
exchange of goods and services. Here we are dealing with objects or services to
be performed. If we reduce marriage to goods and services we no longer uphold
the innate dignity of the human person.
Casey
Replied:
I'm going to have to go
back and reread that section to try to understand how you're reading it. but
for now just a couple of things that I think are important... first Lewis
reminds early in this section that this section that these were prepared as
radio addresses and as such there are limitations in how he can present
himself. second, he's speaking analogically ( as he does but also bc of those
limitations) and as with all analogies there will be similarities and a place
where the analogy falls apart. third, each section is a link in the chain,
connecting the previous to the following. I've read the book many times so
might be difficult for me bc I know where he's going. ok , off to mass. happy
Easter!
My
Reply to Casey:
Actually Casey if you're
talking about the interaction of masculine and feminine, I think that fits very
well with what I'm saying. I said a consensus should be reached between a
husband and wife and their natural inclinations will work into the
collaboration. Yes, that's masculine and feminine inclinations.
The one place I could see
some sort of gender role at play is in Lewis's point about dealing with the
neighbors. I guess I overlooked the beginning part of his argument:
"The relations of
the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must
depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and
usually is, much more just to the outsiders."
I don't know if it's
because a man is more "just" (actually I can see in most cases a man
is less just than a woman - but this begins to fall into the fallacy of
stereotyping) but a man may carry more weight in an argument because society
views a man to carry more force - taller, heavier, broader, more muscles,
deeper voice, more intimidating. In this respect I can see gender roles.
But I don't think this is
what St. Paul is talking about. I really don't think Lewis did a great job on
this small section of this otherwise very good chapter.
Casey
Replied to My Comment:
I went back and read the
chapter today. Hope I can better articulate now. (I will say this is hard to do
in Goodreads)
I want to back up in the
chapter a bit. Manny, you say "I said a consensus should be reached
between a husband and wife and their natural inclinations will work into the
collaboration." Lewis also says that but then says after exhausting that,
who gets the final say? He posits two questions:
Why is there a head at
all?
And Why the man?
Again, to the first,
somebody has to be the final say. To the second, something like this - we have
the needs of the nest and the needs of the community of nests. The nest wants
its own ideal but that is in competition with other nests who want their own
ideal. Let's imagine those nests in a circle with lines from each nest to the
center. The wife in each nest sends the man out to negotiate the best deal for
the nest. The husbands go to the center then back to the nest with a less than
ideal settlements. The wives will be disappointed with their own husbands for
being "a bit of an appeaser" but also feel that all other wives ought
to follow the settlement negotiated by their husbands.
OK, so back to comment 12
- "...roles between man and woman. ...that is what Lewis is talking about
too."
But no. He's not talking
about the roles 'between' man and woman. At least not in the Ephesians way or
even the postmodern way.
Remember earlier in this
same chapter he opened with the idea of "a man and wife are to be regarded
as a single organism." What he is getting at at the end of this chapter is
roles between one organism and another. The masculine half is the
"head" because it must insist on maintaining the negotiated order.
Symbolically speaking,
the feminine is always represented as chaos or possibility and the masculine as
order. So we see this in the Wedding Feast at Cana - Mary and Jesus acting as
one:
When the wine ran short,
the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
(And) Jesus said to her,
"Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come."
His mother said to the
servers, "Do whatever he tells you."
Mary poses the question,
Jesus insists on the established order, Mary opens the possibility, moving
Jesus to introduce a new order
It is this dynamic, of
how Jesus and Mary act as one in relation to the guests, that Lewis is
emphasizing.
I hope that is helpful.
Casey
Commented:
If I may, while I'm
thinking of it, offer another angle - The Book of Judith.
We're introduced to
Judith in Ch 8. Her husband Manasseh has died. So the organism is now feminine.
The rulers (masculine)
will hand over the city. Judith (f) approaches them (possibility) but they say
"The people...were so thirsty that they forced us to do for them as we
have promised, and to bind ourselves by an oath that we cannot break." (m)
So then she (f) takes
things into her own hands and goes out where the masculine failed to do so and
then beheads Holofernes (m).
What happens? Chaos.
Flight, attack, plundering.
And then other angles on
the same theme... Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel etc.
It's all the same pattern
from different viewpoints and different circumstances.
My
Reply to Casey:
Casey, I do see that now,
"only as a last resort," in that paragraph you quote. We're probably
making too much of the distinction. If the couple is going to go that far and
not reach an agreement, they are probably doomed anyway. One of the two is not
thinking clearly and obstinate. If this were a decision that did not have huge
consequences, I would imagine one of the two would just relent for the sake f
peace. If it were over a decision that did have huge consequences and there
were two opposite paths advocated by the spouses, I would hope they would get
an outside opinion.
Now here is an
interesting question. What if the wife refused to accept the husband decision.
Is she bound to under penalty of sin? Is it a sin for the wife to refuse to
accept the husband's decision? What compels her to accept it?
Casey
Replied:
Hm, obviously I'm not
doing a very good job either.
In answer to your
question, no a wife is not compelled to accept her husband's decision and it
certainly wouldn't be a sin. (perhaps temporarily compelled or contractually
depending on what we're talking about but...) In fact, she ought to, and
usually does, press him on to the advantage of the family.
I'll try two analogies...
first, politics. Democrats and Republicans ought to, and usually do fight with
each other. But it is the President who is the head and who goes out to the
world to meet the other heads. The Prez comes back and we hash it out
internally and then he goes back out. America is one organism, and the Prez is
the head. But the inner workings of the organism are fluid.
Second, a good golf shot.
If you want to hit a good golf shot you need a good club, the right stance, a
proper swing, etc. But before you even do any of that you need to understand
what a good golf shot is. Once you understand, only then can you practice
toward that end effectively. And that practice will be specific to you and look
different than the practice of others.
What I'm trying to
outline is that the practice, or domestic politics, or the inner workings of a
family is all downstream of a particular pattern. We need to understand the
pattern first before we can understand the particulars.
Lewis, in addressing why
a head and why the man, is just saying because there is this pattern underlying
all reality. Each organism can find its own way to match this pattern
internally, but to buck the pattern will result in pain for the organism. ie
too much tyranny or too much chaos.
He's not actually
addressing how a husband and wife ought to get along. How they get along or
make decisions is entirely up to them. But there is a standard or pattern
against which they can evaluate their progress or behavior. As so with
everything.
My
Reply to Casey:
I don't think we're that
far apart Casey.
###
C.
S. Lewis on the “right to happiness” by divorcing one’s spouse.This is so spot on.
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