IrishOboe

Some dear friends I respect recommended “The Sacred Romance” and I started it without looking at the authors (a bad habit of mine) and kept thinking “this sounds familiar.”  I must confess to not having read Wild at Heart or Captivated though I’ve heard many opinions about both.  Sure enough the book is by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge (the author/co-author of Captivated).  I was rather disturbed by the beginning of the book but kept going out of respect for my friends.  I am a logical person and one important aspect of logic is that for the conclusion to be true the propositions must be true.  Thus, propositions are terribly important and Eldredge picks some very shaky propositions to base his arguments on, namely, the human heart and its desires.  “The heart is deceitful above all things” and I surely know my emotions carry me places that I ought not to go.  Still, Eldredge concludes with some deep truths about the life and joy God made us for.  If we find truth in the end does it matter how we got there?  The ends do not justify the means, but I wonder if I should not have a bit more humility before our maker who teaches us of His character through all our false ramblings and searchings.  If Eldredge starts out his journey selfishly (and who doesn’t?) but ends in the heart of God, who am I to judge a man in God’s bosom, or even worse, condemn the path that God lead him through?  I can only worry that some readers will follow Eldredge’s propositions and logic and end up in the wrong place – a very wrong place.

He quotes quite a bit of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald (calling him a “theologian with a poet’s heart” which I find amusing given MacDonald’s refusal to structure a theology) but sometimes he misunderstands both, especially C.S. Lewis on joy.  The way I read Surprised by Joy it seemed very clear that C.S. Lewis longed for the experience of yearning he called ‘joy’ but after he became a Christian it no longer because the focus, but rather a road sign showing him he was going in the right direction.  The Sacred Romance states the opposite, that since joy is good and our hearts long for it it is a valid place to start when looking for God.  This may be for a non-Christian, but as Christian, we have a revelation of God that is better than what our hearts tell us.  Now, it is not good to turn off the heart, and I think Elderdge is speaking to those many Christians who have done so and read their Bibles that way, but it still makes me uneasy to say “My hearts tells me this – oh look!  I can find support in the Bible for it!”  Rather, I would seek God through the word of God and have my heart cry “Oh!  That is even more wonderful and beautiful than what my heart was longing for that I did not know!  I see this is right and it confirms what I did not understand my heart was telling me.”  I’m not sure if that made any sense.  I find George MacDonald searches the character of God in this way.  It’s always looking for/to/at/through Jesus and out of that it confirms or denies the desires of the heart.  “Seek and you will find” I know that if I am seeking Jesus I need not fear missing Him.  If I seek the depths of my heart, I cannot be sure I won’t end up following the devil instead.

Besides quoting some wonderful passages (including the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, though his point with it is shaky), he has some great things to say.  He points out that our imaginations as Christians are terribly dull and our picture of God and heaven and life are paltry compared to the Glory that awaits us.  He quotes Peter Kreeft’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Heaven. “Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith, just as indifference, not hate is the strongest enemy of love.”  He also mentions Jesus’s promise to “make all things new” and “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  He wonderfully points out that this does not mean “We have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather “you cannot out-dream God.”  AMEN!

Of course he quotes MacDonald liberally in trying to paint a more accurate, imagination-filled, glorious picture of the True God.  He quote’s one sermon I haven’t read (I still have much to discover!) and it’s worth quoting here.  It’s about the white stone with our new name that God will give us (Rev. 2:17).

“It is the man’s own symbol – his soul’s picture, in a word – the sign which belongs to him and to no one else.  Who can give a man this, his own name?  God alone.  For no one but God sees what the man is . . . It is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can he understand what his name signifies . . . Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name . . . that being whom He had in His thought when He began to make the child, and whom He kept in His thought through the long process of creation and went to realize the idea.  To tell the name is to seal the success – to say ‘In thee also I am well pleased.’”

What a glorious thought!  That I am made for the purpose of becoming a being with her own name, a shining child of God who pleases her Father, who delights in good, who brings pleasure and joy to all she encounters, who shines with the light of God’s glory, and who is known most intimately and deeply by Love Himself!  I am not her yet, but God is making me into her and sees her in His mind’s eye.  It is sure that it will come about, so what earthly pleasures could possibly compare to such joy?  We have poor imaginations indeed.

God bless you all!