CS Lewis talks to a dog about lust

A good headline works like clickbait, except in this case there’s an article of substance behind it. And as always when it comes to CS Lewis, it’s well worth thinking about.

God knows what we want, even in our vilest acts. He is longing to give it to us. He is not looking on from the outside at some new ‘taste’ or ‘separate desire of our own.’ Only because he has laid up real goods for us to desire are we able to go wrong by snatching at them in greedy, misdirected ways….

Pagoda problems

Sex scandals, the state taking over functions previously exercised by the monks, the rise of materialism & consumerism. They’re familiar problems to Christians in the West, only this time it’s Buddhists in the east (Cambodia) struggling with a loss of influence.

A book for our time

Every now & then humanity somehow manages to make civilisation convulse. This could be one of those times and we need good guides. Read this and if you think these paragraphs sum it up, then go buy the book.

Human beings have always deceived and been deceived; conspirators have always hatched plots; spies have always made others’ business their own. Such things have always occurred around centers of power. This gives history its spice — otherwise, what would there be to entice historians to trawl the long-forgotten antics of past generations? So perhaps the only surprise today, as contemporary plots and betrayals are frequently unearthed, is that people are still surprised.

But it feels different now. The West in the early years of the twenty-first century seems afflicted by a deeper, more corrosive cultural mood than previously. It affects the street and the academy, the private and the public, politics, the arts, and the media. We no longer seem willing to trust those in power. We no longer instinctively respect the institutions we once revered. We seem inured to betrayals of trust and fear commitments of any kind, whether personal or political.

The Swedish Method

Depending on your stereotypes you might think this is about sex. It’s actually about reading the Bible. Alternatively you could try Carl’s Ruined Swedish Method.

Visualising marriage & the law in Romans 7

I really like the Visual Unit – I think they do a good job of illustrating complex theology.