Appreciating Creation While Anticipating New Creation

00:00:00.000 | One of the remarkable balances C.S. Lewis makes in his theology seems to be his

00:00:09.040 | focus on quiddity, the "this-ness" of created reality, but without losing the

00:00:14.180 | eager anticipation of heaven or the new creation, things unseen. Pastor John, how

00:00:19.360 | does C.S. Lewis strike this balance? He does do it well, and probably the best

00:00:25.680 | thing we could do is to just read him and watch him do it, instead of trying to

00:00:33.960 | formulate how he did it. But I do think that Lewis does it well in large measure

00:00:44.520 | because in God's providence, Lewis came to faith by discovering the inadequacy

00:00:55.040 | of the lilies of the field, the inadequacies of the experience of

00:00:59.680 | northerness when he read his Norse mythology, because what he discovered was

00:01:07.600 | that his pangs of joyful longing as he saw beauty evaporated as soon as he

00:01:19.760 | turned to look at them. And he was endlessly frustrated that he would never

00:01:25.000 | really be able to have what he thought he wanted, namely these stabs of joy. They

00:01:31.880 | came, they went, and then Lewis discovered God, and then he discovered Christ, and

00:01:38.720 | then he discovered the gospel, and then he discovered the creator of all things,

00:01:43.360 | and the goal of all things, and he realized that all of those things that

00:01:47.600 | had been trying to awaken him and he was trying to fasten on as the end in

00:01:52.840 | themselves were all pointers. The affection of joy was a pointer, and the

00:01:58.600 | things that were awakening it, those mythologies that he was reading, they

00:02:02.480 | were all pointing towards the true myth, as he called it, namely

00:02:06.680 | Christianity. So probably Lewis is a good guide for us in cherishing the eternal,

00:02:12.880 | cherishing the unseen, cherishing God as the source and goal of all things, as

00:02:17.760 | well as being able to see the thisness and the beauty of this world, because

00:02:23.200 | God had brought him to faith through an appreciation of the thisness of things,

00:02:29.880 | and then showed him that they were all thick with God. They were all pointing

00:02:36.600 | toward God, they were all created by God, and they were not ends in themselves.

00:02:42.000 | They were ways of knowing God, and unless you saw deep enough into them to get to

00:02:49.560 | the bottom of them and saw high enough over them to get to what they're

00:02:53.040 | pointing to, they will always disappoint you. Thank you, Pastor John. We will be

00:02:58.560 | studying the enduring influence of C.S. Lewis later this fall on September 27, 28,

00:03:02.680 | and 29 here in Minneapolis at the Desiring God National Conference. The

00:03:06.680 | conference is titled "The Romantic Rationalist--God, Life, and the Imagination

00:03:10.760 | in the Work of C.S. Lewis." More details and registration will be available very

00:03:14.200 | soon at DesiringGod.org, on the blog, and under the "Events" tab. I'm your host

00:03:19.400 | Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.