I am currently listening to an audiobook of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I started reading this in the summer, and didn't finish it. It proved too dense for me to be able to pick up in the evening or in the early morning. I couldn't follow, while reading, Lewis's logic as he made his arguments. I needed to hear it.
That makes sense, since he initially delivered the contents of the book on BBC radio in 1942. Lewis read the chapters to his audience in a way similar to what I imagine FDR to have done with his fireside chats. Hearing it helps. The Indiana Digital Library has it on audiobook- perhaps your local library ebook section does too.
I find myself nodding fervently at points, and shaking my head in repulsion at other points (like this "The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause - is one of the great Christian ideas.") One part that I listened to today and which reminded me of the classroom was this section. It is long, and perhaps will be hard to read without hearing it. At any rate, it's the part I want to quote, and the whole thing pertains.
Lewis is talking in this chapter about Theology, a topic that many apparently attempted to dissuade him from including in his work. He did not listen to them.
There is no good complaining that these statements are difficult. Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult - at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason.
There are certainly claims here that I do not agree with, but I like the comparison between theology and a map. Let me explain why. I've been thinking this week, since I've become the lead teacher in the classroom, "What is the value that I add here?" Aside from providing the authority and the supervision that essentially forces the students to read what I give them, and answer what questions I have them answer, what do I add? Aside from synthesizing the comments that they make in discussion, what do I actually add to the discussion? Aside from guiding them through the experience of reading valuable literature, how am I helping them link that personal experience (like that of experiencing God on a mountaintop, or the ocean from the beach) to the larger picture of the reality of the world?
I would like to think that in addition to providing the excitement of the "I just felt God!" moments, which in the classroom I think must happen when we feel the impact of something powerfully written, or we write something powerful ourselves, or we talk about an important topic, or hear a new perspective on a universal theme,
in addition to creating those moments, I would like to think that the classroom also provides a map, that allows us to bring our personal experience into conversation with the larger truths that others have charted. We can see how our individual experiences are really reflected in the map of human experience as expressed in the literature. I guess I see this as happening on two levels.
1. We experience something in our lives. For example, we experience ambition and decide to do something shady to achieve a higher position than we have. Then, we come into the classroom and read Macbeth. We read about his ambition, and his having done the same thing. We acknowledge that, if this appears in a work of literature, it must reflect the experience not just of myself and the author, but of others too. We locate, in a way, our experience in alignment with others'.
2. We read Macbeth in the classroom and become aware of the power of ambition, the power of suggestion, and the power of persuasion. But these we are aware of in the fictional world. We have yet to identify these waypoints on the map of human history. For even if we ourselves feel them, we can't really see our own experience as having affected history. However, if we see how global leaders are affected by ambition and greed and persuasion, then we locate this literary experience on a grander map of world consequence.
Those, I think, are the two levels that I want to provide in the classroom. That would be my value added: we must go beyond the thrill of reading something beautiful. The pleasures of Shakespeare's language are worth experiencing, but they don't, by themselves, prepare us to live in a different way to the extent that seeing his truths reflected in the real world does.
I am still very much engaged in the first level of mapping - living my experience and seeing it reflected in literature, and having Hallelujah moments each time I resonate with a text. It is indeed "exciting," as Lewis describes experiencing God in the wilderness. I have precious little understanding, relatively, of the actual power of literature, of the role it's played in the formation of our race and of our society, and of the way privilege and power has been shaped by those who controlled it. I have a great deal more map studying to do before I understand the theories that help us map individual experiences of literature alongside the experiences of others who have looked at the subject longer, harder and more critically than I have.
I felt as though I experienced God many times while working in Glacier National Park. I was in the mountains, and felt the unmistakable majesty of God's creation every day. But I didn't come down from the mountain feeling or behaving any differently. Since then I have done a lot more reading, a lot more talking, and a lot more thinking about God, and that has indeed influenced the way I act.
One of my periods of tenth graders is struggling with Macbeth. In fact, they are struggling with their own mindset - they feel like throwing the towel in on a challenge, rather than rolling up their sleeves. I am going to try to find ways for them to map the story of Macbeth onto the world map that they are already aware of.
That makes sense, since he initially delivered the contents of the book on BBC radio in 1942. Lewis read the chapters to his audience in a way similar to what I imagine FDR to have done with his fireside chats. Hearing it helps. The Indiana Digital Library has it on audiobook- perhaps your local library ebook section does too.
I find myself nodding fervently at points, and shaking my head in repulsion at other points (like this "The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause - is one of the great Christian ideas.") One part that I listened to today and which reminded me of the classroom was this section. It is long, and perhaps will be hard to read without hearing it. At any rate, it's the part I want to quote, and the whole thing pertains.
Lewis is talking in this chapter about Theology, a topic that many apparently attempted to dissuade him from including in his work. He did not listen to them.
In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the RA.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, "I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"
Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real.
In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together.
In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.
Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God - experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.
You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it In fact, that is just why a vague religion - all about feeling God in nature, and so on - is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.
In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones - bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression - like believing the earth is fiat.
For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took his advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical importance at all.
It is quite true that if we took Christ's advice we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do. And so what? We never have followed the advice of the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others? Because he is the best moral teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow him.
If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one? If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.
But as soon as you look at any real Christian writings, you find that they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion. They say that Christ is the Son of God (whatever that means). They say that those who give Him their confidence can also become Sons of God (whatever that means). They say that His death saved us from our sins (whatever that means).
There is no good complaining that these statements are difficult. Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult - at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason.
There are certainly claims here that I do not agree with, but I like the comparison between theology and a map. Let me explain why. I've been thinking this week, since I've become the lead teacher in the classroom, "What is the value that I add here?" Aside from providing the authority and the supervision that essentially forces the students to read what I give them, and answer what questions I have them answer, what do I add? Aside from synthesizing the comments that they make in discussion, what do I actually add to the discussion? Aside from guiding them through the experience of reading valuable literature, how am I helping them link that personal experience (like that of experiencing God on a mountaintop, or the ocean from the beach) to the larger picture of the reality of the world?
I would like to think that in addition to providing the excitement of the "I just felt God!" moments, which in the classroom I think must happen when we feel the impact of something powerfully written, or we write something powerful ourselves, or we talk about an important topic, or hear a new perspective on a universal theme,
in addition to creating those moments, I would like to think that the classroom also provides a map, that allows us to bring our personal experience into conversation with the larger truths that others have charted. We can see how our individual experiences are really reflected in the map of human experience as expressed in the literature. I guess I see this as happening on two levels.
1. We experience something in our lives. For example, we experience ambition and decide to do something shady to achieve a higher position than we have. Then, we come into the classroom and read Macbeth. We read about his ambition, and his having done the same thing. We acknowledge that, if this appears in a work of literature, it must reflect the experience not just of myself and the author, but of others too. We locate, in a way, our experience in alignment with others'.
2. We read Macbeth in the classroom and become aware of the power of ambition, the power of suggestion, and the power of persuasion. But these we are aware of in the fictional world. We have yet to identify these waypoints on the map of human history. For even if we ourselves feel them, we can't really see our own experience as having affected history. However, if we see how global leaders are affected by ambition and greed and persuasion, then we locate this literary experience on a grander map of world consequence.
Those, I think, are the two levels that I want to provide in the classroom. That would be my value added: we must go beyond the thrill of reading something beautiful. The pleasures of Shakespeare's language are worth experiencing, but they don't, by themselves, prepare us to live in a different way to the extent that seeing his truths reflected in the real world does.
I am still very much engaged in the first level of mapping - living my experience and seeing it reflected in literature, and having Hallelujah moments each time I resonate with a text. It is indeed "exciting," as Lewis describes experiencing God in the wilderness. I have precious little understanding, relatively, of the actual power of literature, of the role it's played in the formation of our race and of our society, and of the way privilege and power has been shaped by those who controlled it. I have a great deal more map studying to do before I understand the theories that help us map individual experiences of literature alongside the experiences of others who have looked at the subject longer, harder and more critically than I have.
I felt as though I experienced God many times while working in Glacier National Park. I was in the mountains, and felt the unmistakable majesty of God's creation every day. But I didn't come down from the mountain feeling or behaving any differently. Since then I have done a lot more reading, a lot more talking, and a lot more thinking about God, and that has indeed influenced the way I act.
One of my periods of tenth graders is struggling with Macbeth. In fact, they are struggling with their own mindset - they feel like throwing the towel in on a challenge, rather than rolling up their sleeves. I am going to try to find ways for them to map the story of Macbeth onto the world map that they are already aware of.
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