Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Why (IMHO) Tolkien Was Wrong on a Certain Point

I make no claim to being a Tolkien/Lewis expert, though I’ve read everything Lewis published, along with a lot that he didn’t (his letters), and, naturally, I’ve read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion (multiple times—it grows in the re-reading) and other things by him—and, finally, I’ve read lots and lots about the two of them. I’d be surprised, therefore, to find that my grasp of the disagreement between them over Lewis’s “Narnia” books is way out in left field.

It seems generally accepted that their “fight” was so intense that, if it didn’t outright end the friendship, it cast a permanent pall over it. The gist of the fight, I understand, was over Lewis’s apparently carefree/careless, tossed-salad style mix of creatures and images from the myths and folklore of different cultures—from Norse legend to Greek myth to… Santa Claus!—in a single, what Tolkien must have considered preposterous, farcical vaudeville show dressed up as “myth” (which, as we know, meant so much to Tolkien; thus, what Lewis was doing had to have struck him as a kind of sacrilege). Apparently, Father Christmas/Santa Claus was, to Tolkien, the crowning insult, for which he could never forgive Lewis.

Lewis didn’t write the Narnia Chronicles, of course, in order to win “forgiveness” from Tolkien or anybody else. The Narnia Chronicles aren’t about J.R.R. Tolkien, and what they are about, Tolkien could not, by his own admission, see. When one doesn’t see something, it doesn’t prove there’s nothing there; it simply indicates that one doesn’t see….

It’s critically important, in order to see what Lewis was aiming at, to understand Lewis’s concept of “story”. Lewis placed the highest value on “internal consistency”—the story has to be true to itself. (The Narnia Chronicles are not, of course, “true” to Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”; “Lord of the Rings” is one story and “Narnia” is another, neither being the objective standard for the other any more than Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” is the criterion of assessment for Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”.) Lewis was adamant on the point that a story must be a “real story”; that is, the inner world of the story must work on its own terms; the things that happen in it must really be what we could expect to happen there if that world really existed as such. The author carries the burden of really writing a story (thus, a “real story”), not simply taking a story or event from elsewhere,  slightly re-dressing it and pretending he has created something (along the lines of “Veggie Tales”, about which I’m tempted to say much, but will refrain… except to say I’m sure Lewis would have been appalled).   

The inner world of the story is not indebted to match any world outside of it (Tolkien’s or anybody else’s), but if it is not true to itself, then the whole show comes tumbling down. Having said that the story’s inner world is not indebted to “match” any world outside it, I must add that Lewis, at the same time, was fiercely intent that his stories should be “true-to-life” on the level of truth’s very fabric: the supremacy of righteousness, love, faithfulness, justice, mercy, the good, over all that’s evil and “bent”.

Lewis was also adamant on the point that his Narnia stories were not “allegory” in the way people generally take that word. The best, classic example of pure “allegory” is of course Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, in which every character, place and event is a “symbol” of something in the “real world,” in our Christian walk. And so, the envy or fear or laziness, or the hope, faith and love that we experience in life become, in Bunyan’s allegory, sentient creatures in their own right. It’s a kind of guessing game and we’re supposed to guess! Allegory, in this sense, is categorically what Lewis and Tolkien had no interest in writing and fiercely denied writing. They did not compose guessing games. The extent to which events in their stories are analogous to events in our own lives or in world history, sacred or otherwise, is a reflection of the way all life is inevitably analogous to itself! Every time forgiveness is shown, for instance, it resonates and correlates, on some level, with every other time forgiveness has ever been shown, ultimately expressed in the Cross itself.

Lewis somewhere explained that the notion behind the Narnia stories was: if God actually did decide to create another world and inhabit it with all these fantastic creatures, what kind of things could we expect—going by the nature of life as we know it—to happen there? That’s what makes Lewis’s story different from allegory. Bunyan’s allegory is about what in fact is happening in our lives, except Bunyan dresses it all up in make-believe costumes. Lewis’s story, on the other hand, is about something that has never happened and never will happen, but… would plausibly work out “something like this” if God ever did make such a world, based on what we know about the true and living God.

Thus, Aslan giving his life to save Edmund is not a thinly disguised allegory of Christ dying on the cross for the sins of the world. This point is critical to understand if we are not to misread Lewis horribly. In the Narnia story, Aslan dying on the stone table for Edmund is an imagined scenario of what the same Christ who died for our sins in this  world would certainly do, if there were a Narnia, where He was incarnate as a lion, and there were a crisis in which the redemption of a son of Adam required Him to make that sacrifice. As “pure allegory”, in fact, Aslan’s death on the stone table doesn’t really work—the more you try to correlate the supposed “allegory” to the “real event”, the more hopelessly it falls apart--but as a different event in a “real story” it works beautifully… and, as story, it poignantly expresses Lewis’s appreciation, his “take”, of the true Christ Who is.

But… to come back to Tolkien! Where Tolkien saw a dilettante-ish, intellectually insulting grab-bag of world myths irresponsibly tossed into a work without any genuine controlling center, for Lewis—I take this from, among other things, what Lewis said about “story”—the controlling center was the creative premise itself: what if God did create such a world, what might happen there? In the story, it is not C.S. Lewis desperately raiding all the cultural treasure troves he can lay his hands on for tasty images, it is rather God choosing—as is His perfect right—to make a world in which all of our Earth’s ancient myths, dreams and legends are enfleshed and made responsible agents in the universal drama (the drama encompassing all worlds, whether Earth or Narnia) of life in the sight of God. And the hint is more than obvious that, in this fiction, God would have created this world, stocked with everything from fauns to centaurs to Santa Claus, finally and inevitably for the delight of the children of Earth, the children of Adam, who—certainly not counter to Aslan’s wishes—“invaded” it. It is the presence of HUMANS in Narnia that adds REASON to the presence of all Earth’s most ancient dreams there. This is a world, and a story, that is internally consistent—it works on its own terms.

Tolkien seems, to me, to have paradoxically blamed Lewis for doing two opposite things at once: for writing a “Tolkienesque” work on the cheap, a farce, something caricatural and mocking of Tolkien, and for not writing a Tolkienesque work!  It’s a bit like people who can never learn, say, French because they can never quite forgive French for not being English; they can’t get past the annoying reality that “it doesn’t work like my  language.” They never come to the place where they realize, “This language doesn’t exist to be compared to English; I have to take it on its own terms.”

Tolkien could not bring himself to budge from a certain, rigid, conceptual stronghold in order to perceive Lewis’s particular creative genius in the construction of the Narnia-world. It’s as if Lewis’s creation was a foreign language Tolkien wouldn’t attempt for fear of losing his own; thus he couldn’t hear or acknowledge Lewis’s language as anything but gibberish—in Tolkien’s own terms, “unreadable”. Considering how readable the Narnia stories have been to millions (a million children can't be wrong!), the verdict “unreadable” can only be a verdict on Tolkien’s blind spot in this case.

Lewis's work is not Tolkien's work. It's not even an attempt at being Tolkien's work. Tolkien's work, and tastes, do not define what Lewis was about, and, evidently, Tolkien was deaf to what Lewis was about when he created Narnia. Which is sad. Not every concert work of genius must sound like Beethoven's Fifth or "Thus Spake Zarathustra". Genius may be heard as well in "The Afternoon of a Faun" or "The Carnival of Animals." I must add to this point, that the distinct and exquisite level of genius hidden in the Narnia Chronicles was brought stunningly to the fore not long ago with the publication of Michael Ward's "Planet Narnia". The book argues that each book in the Narnia series contributes to an unfolding motif centered on medieval cosmology, the characteristics, qualities and mythical associations of the classic seven "planets" (including the sun and the moon) quite directly and vividly setting the stage in each book: the silvery moonlit atmosphere in "The Silver Chair"; the golden sun-drenched world in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the oppressive, saturnine heaviness of "The Last Battle".... When the concept was sketched to me, even before I had the chance to read the book, I knew instantly that it was right; it was something I had already felt but had no way to formulate. The evidence Ward presents in his book is utterly compelling, above and beyond the fact that it's something you recognize as true on a gut-level. Interestingly, the best attempt I've read, in an issue of the annual journal "Seven", published by Wheaton College, to refute Ward's theory, falls utterly flat.  

When Nixon went to “Red China”, everybody said that “Only Nixon could go to China.” That is, only the legendary anti-communist crusader Richard Nixon could make such a move without wrecking his anti-communist credentials. On a higher plane, C.S. Lewis said of Christ that only the Author of the commandment "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart... and thy neighbor as thyself" could pronounce with utter rightness, "Anyone who does not hate his father, his mother, his brother, his sister for My sake cannot be My disciple." Such "hate," enjoined by the Author of love, could only be right, and true and, ultimately, love. In a similarly paradoxical way, I will say that only C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest classicists of the 20th century, a man who cherished the riches of the "pagan" world (which is to say, the whole world that Christ came to redeem) and saw their best meanings caught up into and realized in the refining, transfiguring glory of Christ--only C.S. Lewis could, with such audacious abandon, ransack those riches and throw them together, willy-nilly, into his story, without doing them insult; rather, he did them honor and, in the process, expressed his rock-bottom conviction that, in the real world, all things belong finally to one Maker and living God, and that it would be sacrilege ever to deny it. 



Tuesday, April 1, 2014

"What would You have me do?" Calling in Paul's life, and ours!

This is a message I gave on Saturday, March 29th in Zaporozhye at a gathering of youth from across the province. The general theme of the conference was "calling", the "banner phrase" of the day being, "What would You have me do?" from Acts 22:10. 

I decided to speak in English, mostly because I had only just found out a few days beforehand I would be doing this, and I preferred to devote my time and energy to working on the content, not the language (i.e., Russian). Also, I thought it would be a bit "exotic" and thus interesting to a lot of the young people, especially those who could follow some English and would enjoy the challenge. Finally, I also considered it advantageous to present the message, as it were, in "stereo", the second voice being that of a much younger person, and of the "fairer sex", so as to increase the "identification quotient," as opposed to just being a lone old codger up there at the pulpit. And I really do think that helped! 


A few times I broke intentionally into Russian. Where I did that will be plain here. I include a transliteration, in Latin letters, of what I said in Russian, with the English next to or under it in parentheses. Before getting into the message at all I did say a few introductory words in Russian, so they were prepared for the fact that I could speak Russian! 




In 1 Corinthians 9:16, the apostle Paul says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ Paul was called to preach the Gospel. When we hear the word “calling”, we think of service. To answer God’s calling means to serve Him. Yes, that’s true. But allow me to add another side, another aspect, to that: Calling means not only service; calling means change. When we answer God’s call, we change. And in God’s plan, to change means to grow, and to grow means to become like Jesus Christ—in concrete ways through obeying His commands. Paul could just as easily have said, “Woe to me if I do not become like Jesus Christ!”

But, one of you may object, “Wait! Being an apostle, or a traveling evangelist, isn’t the only way to become like Jesus Christ!” Perfectly correct. What I mean is, the only way to become like Jesus Christ is to answer God’s special calling in your life, whatever that may be—we are all different.

“Woe is me,” said the apostle, “if I do not preach the gospel.” Yes indeed, woe to him, because if he stopped proclaiming the message of Jesus, then the whole meaning and richness of his existence would disappear. If Paul stopped evangelizing, he would stop knowing Christ, because for Paul, to know Christ was to be His apostle.

We are not all called to be evangelists or preachers. But—we are all called. Perhaps one day you will say, “Woe is me if I do not adopt an orphan; woe is me if I do not feed the poor; woe is me if I do not witness to my coworkers; woe is me if I do not use my writing skills for God; if I don’t sing for God; if I don’t comfort the suffering; woe is me if I don’t learn sign language and minister to the deaf; woe is me if I don’t go to serve Christ in Mongolia, or Nepal, or Peru… or a small village in Ukraine.” No matter what your calling may be, you can say, “Woe is me if I don’t do it, because then I won’t know the fullness and richness my life should have in Christ.”

And whatever may be your personal calling from God, you can be sure of this: your calling will require you to change and develop, and grow into the likeness of Christ—that you change in concrete ways that you cannot imagine ahead of time. Let me emphasize that: life cannot be fully experienced simply on the level of imagination. You cannot know life simply as... predvkusheniye (anticipation, foretaste). Christ didn’t save us by thinking about dying on the cross. Paul didn’t simply dream how wonderful it would be if Gentiles across Asia came to Christ. No. Life must be lived in action, and the fruit of action is your becoming—your concrete becoming what you could never have been if you had not answered the call of God.

Calling is not an idea. Calling is a crisis. You know what the word “crisis” means? It comes from a Greek verb that means “to judge”, “to discern”. A crisis is a turning point; it is a moment of decision. Calling is a crisis, and it changes our lives, and changes us, radically. Paradoxically, this crisis also reveals what we really are, in our deepest nature—the nature that God designed from the very beginning.

Paradoxically, the more we change under God’s true plan, the further we enter into our true character. But if we reject calling because we’re afraid of change, we will lose even what we were trying to keep.

Let’s look at Acts 9:1-2 (read).

This Pharisee Paul was eager, zealous, ambitious. He had aspirations, expectations of becoming something—a great Pharisee and teacher in Israel; of becoming one of the great champions of God’s Law.

Listen carefully: Paul believed he was doing right. I think he would have announced without apology that his heart was full of righteous anger and holy hatred at these followers of Jesus. And here is the stunning thing: Paul was catastrophically wrong and horribly deceived. Believing he was conducting a holy war for God’s Law, Paul was actually committing an unspeakable evil. Isn’t it amazing that people can think they’re so right when they’re so wrong? Such is the dreadful consequence of sin. But how great God’s love is, that He looks deeper than our sin to see our need.

And this divine love appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, in a burst of light: (read Acts 9:3-6).

“Who are you, Lord?” This Paul, who one day stood nearby and approved the killing of Stephen, and this Paul who went to Damascus to destroy anyone who professed the name of Jesus, this Paul now confesses his blindness and his ignorance: “Who are you, Lord?” The man who knew everything now knows that he knows nothing. This is change. This is the indispensible requirement of calling. It is painful when it is happening, but it is good and necessary.

And I want you to look at verse 20, because something most significant is hidden in the verse. It is hidden openly, transparently, because it’s right in front of our eyes but we don’t pay attention to it because we read the verse so quickly: “…and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”

What is significant here? This is the earliest description of the content of Paul’s preaching; this is the essence of his gospel, especially as he preached it to the Jews. And what does this “essence” consist of? That Jesus is the Son of God. For Paul, the revolutionary revelation is not so much that Jesus is the Christ, but that Christ is the Son of God. Paul always expected that some day some man would be the Christ, but he never expected that the Christ would be the Son of God! This has changed everything for Paul.   

Change. Upon the revelation of the Son of God, Paul’s whole world changed—and so Paul had to change; he was called to change, to grow to live in Christ. This is what calling means.

A part of this chapter where I glimpse a very subtle bit of humor is in verses 26-31 (read). Again, this is a part you can read quickly without noticing significant details. As soon as Barnabas convinced the church in Jerusalem that Paul was a genuine believer, Paul started preaching like fire all over town. The text doesn’t tell us that he converted anybody, but it does tell us that a plot arose to kill him! And what did the Church do? Did the Church say to Paul, “Get ready—now you will offer up your life as a martyr to God like Stephen did”? No. The Church decided it would be better for everyone if this young, fiery, confrontational new convert left town and went home to Tarsus for a while. “And then the church had peace throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria”—whew! peace!—“and it became stronger and grew”—what? How can that be?! Yes, dear young brother Paul, without you the church had peace, and became stronger, and grew. Imagine that!

Calling. Calling doesn’t mean we will always be the managers of our own affairs. It doesn’t mean: “From now on, it’s just me and the Holy Spirit, and I don’t need anybody’s advice!” No. If calling means that we are accessible and susceptible to the sound of God’s voice and direction of His will, then it also means we are open to the human channels through whom God will work in our lives. Even more, it means we must be sensitive, ready to perceive that God is telling us something through people. Calling means not just calling to serve, but calling to learn.

One of the things we learn when we submit to God’s calling is, we learn who we really are. It is important to know who you really are. Why? Because then you know what you are offering to God! The more you know who you really are, the better you can truly offer yourself to God.

I like to teach, and I think I’m not the worst teacher in the world. In fact, on occasion… if I’ve had a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast… I’ve been known to teach pretty well. Not every time that I teach is like a glorious mountaintop experience, but there are some special moments when my students and I together feel truth opening itself up to us with its almost shattering power. Those are truly peak moments, the kind that remind me again that teaching is my calling – even if I don’t always love it. I will tell you a secret about myself: I’m not an extrovert; I’m an introvert. It is always difficult for me, even painful, to get up in front of an audience. No, I don’t just mean that I get nervous. We all get nervous about things sometimes—but in fact I didn’t feel nervous at all about speaking to you this morning. No, I’m talking about something different. I mean quite literally that is painfully uncomfortable for me to stand in front of an audience. And yet, I am called to teach! Woe is me if I don’t teach!

Khotya, gore mne dazhe yesli ya prepodayu!
(Though, woe is me even if I do teach!)
V lyubom sluchaye, gore.
(Woe, regardless.)
Gore byvayet v zhyzni.
(In life, woe happens.)

Our Lord knew woe. But to experience woe in the fulfillment of God’s calling is to sow with tears and bring in a harvest with rejoicing.

When I came to Zaporozhye in February of 1995—that’s over 19 years ago!—I didn’t know that I was called to teach. I only knew I was called to Ukraine. I didn’t even come here with the intention of associating with the Bible college. The founders of the Bible college worked for one mission and I worked for a different one; we didn’t come here together. But when I got to Zaporozhye they asked me to help teach English, and I agreed. But to me that wasn’t really a “teaching ministry”—I was just helping. So when did the “great revelation” come to me that I must teach for Christ? It would be very interesting, of course, if I could tell you I saw a vision or heard a voice from heaven. But what really happened was this:

It was a Wednesday and the college was expecting an American guest to arrive on Friday to start teaching a course on Monday. On Wednesday this American brother wrote us to say he had broken his leg and couldn’t come. So Mark, the college director, handed me a textbook and said, “You have to teach this course starting Monday.” I was horrified! It’s what we call in English a baptism in fire.

But you know what? When I began doing this, I slowly discovered that I liked it, that the students reacted well, that they really learned something (!) and seemed to appreciate my work. In short, I discovered I was a teacher. I had to come to Ukraine, at the age of 37, to find myself—because when you answer God’s calling on your life, you certainly find yourself.

Such a discovery will bring the unexpected, even the unpleasant, and will often contradict what we assumed about ourselves.

Young Paul assumed that his calling simply meant that, if before he was fiery and zealous against Jesus, now he should simply be fiery and zealous for Jesus. Yes, a big change in his official position, but fundamentally the same character and approach to his task. Imagine his perplexity, his befuddlement, when the Church said to him, “Paul, you know what you need to do now? You need to get out of town, go home, and be quiet for a while.”

Calling doesn’t only change what we do, it changes who we are, and most of all it convinces us, to the deepest part of our souls, that we no longer sit on the throne of our lives, and that the most important question is not what we’re comfortable with, or what we like, or even what we understand. The most important question is: “Shto povelish’ mne delat’?” (“What will You have me do?”- Acts 22:10)

Before I came to Ukraine I was a pastor in America—that was my work—and I loved my church and I think they loved me! But a time came when I knew I had to go to Ukraine. It was clearly God’s direction. I wasn’t in control, God was. My heart was broken as I prepared to leave my country, my family, my friends, my church and everything that was familiar and comfortable to me—including my language! My family and friends were heartbroken, too. I felt very guilty for putting them through such pain. I remember one friend really was irritated with me, because he saw how sad I was, and he said, “You have such a happy life here, you love your work, you have close friends—why are you ruining it by going away?” And I could only say, “I must. That’s all. I must. God is doing this.”

There was a multitude of good reasons to stay home in America. There was only one little reason to come to Ukraine: calling.

Shto povelish’ mne delat’?
(What will You have me do?)

Calling changes everything, beginning with yourself. And when you answer God’s call, you will find yourself like never before.

The last thing I want to say now about calling is this: Calling brings chapters into your life—beginnings, endings and new beginnings. In Acts 14:8-20 (we won’t read the whole thing here now) we read about Paul and Barnabas in Lystra. What they experienced there brought them, it seems to me, to the close of a chapter in their lives. Barnabas was something like a mentor to Paul. He was the first believer in Jerusalem who trusted Paul after Paul’s conversion, and he introduced Paul to the apostles. After Paul had been back in Tarsus for some time, it was Barnabas who went to find him and bring him back to Antioch, so Paul could see the great things God was doing there among the Gentiles. “Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith.” He was like a father to Paul, and the two of them were sent together as a team to evangelize the world.

But when they came to Lystra, things began to change. Before this, Luke the writer of Acts constantly says, “Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Barnabas” when he talks about them. Suddenly, in Lystra, Luke says, “Paul”. It was Paul who took the initiative to tell a crippled man to stand up, and the man was healed.

Very interestingly, Paul and Barnabas receive two extreme reactions from one and the same city, Lystra. First, they are received as gods in the most enthusiastic reception they ever got anywhere—and it was a reception they didn’t want! (It’s also interesting to me that the people of Lystra thought Barnabas was the greater god, Zeus, and Paul was just his messenger Hermes!) And the same people accorded to Paul the opposite extreme not much later by trying to stone him to death!

And here is what indicates that something has changed, that a chapter is ending: they stoned only Paul, not “Paul and Barnabas”. Let’s read 14:19-20.

But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium and won over the crowds. Then they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples surrounded him, he got up and went into the city. The next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

Who do we see rising up from the road, as if from the dead, and walking adamantly back into Lystra? Paul and Barnabas? No. We see Paul—and his disciples with him. Barnabas isn’t even mentioned. It is Paul who not only has been stoned by the Lystrans, but Paul who now leads the disciples back into the city. Something has changed. Paul has entered a new dimension as a man and apostle. And the time for Barnabas’ special ministry in Paul’s life is clearly coming to an end, even if the two of them didn’t fully realize it. A chapter is quickly closing. Very soon after this, as we all know, Paul and Barnabas separated—on a superficial level the cause was a difference of opinion about letting Mark join them on a missionary voyage, but the real, the intrinsic reason was that it was time; change was necessary for both Paul and Barnabas because a chapter had ended. It was time for them both to go and fulfill their callings separately. Barnabas could no longer play the old role in Paul’s life. Perhaps if both Paul and Barnabas had understood this better, they wouldn’t have argued but would have separated in peace.

Calling means change, growth and chapters in our lives, as we discern what God wants, do what God directs, and discover who we really are in God’s great, glorious plan. Don’t be afraid of change, don’t be afraid of chapters ending and chapters beginning, and DON’T be afraid of… CALLING.

Shto povelish’ mne delat’?
What would You have me do?

Open your hearts to whatever God will answer.