The Weight of Glory is a series of essays and talks that Lewis wrote over a long period time (roughly between 1939-1956). In the next few posts, we offer up a few questions about this work. Feel free to respond. The citations are from the most recent edition of the text, published by HarperOne.
The first essay shares the title of the book. Have you thought of heaven as a bribe - that if you follow Christ it will pay off with everlasting bliss? Lewis says that as we follow Jesus, we understand that it's not a bribe but a desire for heaven itself. We are made for heaven, and once our affections are targeted toward that aim, then it's not a bribe but a "longing." The earth can offer some scent of the beyond, but it is only an echo, or, "news from a country we have never visited."
"If Christianity could tell me no more of the far-off land than my own temperament led me to surmise already," Lewis writes, "then Christianity would be no higher than myself. If it has more to give me, I expect it to be less immediately attractive than 'my own stuff'." In other words, heaven is not meant to be easily placed inside a box of our expectations, but rather the place where God is and where he desires us to ultimately journey.
There are five things we know of heaven: we will be with Christ, be
like him, have glory, enjoy a feast, and have some sort of role to play.
Lewis asks, "Why any one of them except the first? Can anything be
added to the conception of being with Christ?"
What do you
think? How would you answer Lewis’s question? Also, how has your attitude toward heaven changed through the years? Do you struggle with the lack of information that Scripture provides about heaven?
(quotes from p. 28-34)
8.18.2012
Weighted with Glory
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I guess I would say that, once one has fellowship with the Son of God and second Person of the Trinity, the very imprint and image of the Father, He though Whom all that was made has been made and without Whom nothing was made, the Light that enlighteneth every man, anything further is pretty much going to be anticlimactic. What would you say? “Man, this fellowship with the Living Son of God seated at the Right Hand of the Father would be just perfect if I could only have a Polish-sausage hot dog with cheese, kraut and brown mustard--and a beer! And some onion rings! And somebody put ‘Judy Blue Eyes: Suite‘ on the CD player!” If you had any awareness above that of a lady bug, you might feel that you were sort of missing something important here. Every legitimate joy and even merely physical pleasure is the refraction into finitude of the Infinite Joy in Whose Presence you are now, undeservedly, standing, at Whose right Hand are pleasures forevermore--infinite and unimaginable. Wanting anything else besides would be like someone going on a long trip to the Grand Canyon and who, once there, spent all his time looking at the postcards and road maps that brought him there and ignoring the Real Thing spread out all before him--the very reason the road maps and postcards exist!
Anyway, that’s how I’d answer.
Well said, Nonymous. Our desire for heaven should be a desire to fellowship with Christ Himself. Christ alone should be prized.
There are loads of people claiming to have been to heaven and back these days, either in visions or through death and resurrection. You can read their stories in books that make them money or see some of them on YouTube or on www.sidroth.org but none of them more than mention "meeting Jesus" in their experience, nor do they attempt to describe what it was like to be in His direct, unmediated presence. They tend to focus on all kinds of "postcards" like the golden paving, the dead rellies they encountered, etc. It makes me question the reality of their experiences.
thanks for posting.
Post a Comment