Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: C.S. Lewis part 2

Truth, Joy, and the Objective Reality Lewis Defended

What we see is that when Lewis saw the historical Christ and the eternal objective absolute real God as the object of his consolable longing he knew intuitively and then with reason he knew if truth goes if objective reality goes.

If the possibility of knowing goes joy goes. Because joy had taken him to the real. It takes taking him to objective absolute source. The original shout it's there all this was echo. If this if that goes this is infinitely trivialized.

Christ was real. God was real. Truth was real. Here's the way he put the connection. Quote. There was no doubt that joy was a desire. But a desire is turned Not to itself, but to its object. The form of the desired is in the desire.

It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet Coarse or choice high or low. It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I have been wrong in supposing that I desired joy itself.

Joy itself considered simply as an event in my own mind turned out to be of no value at all all the value lay in that of which joy was the desiring and That object quite clearly was no state of my own mind or body at all.

Now here you see the absolutely crucial link for him between truth and joy. Quote. Joy itself Considered simply as an event in my own mind turned out to be of no value at all all the value laid in that of which joy was the Desiring.

So you see what is at stake for Lewis in the question of truth? The entire Modern world as he saw it was moving away from what he was discovering namely that objective absolute external outside of me reality truth with a capital T exists and Everything hangs on it that's worth living for.

And now we live what 40 years later he died the same day as John Kennedy, and we live in a sea of Postmodern relativism that he could smell and hate it with all his might. He wrote What Alan Jacobs calls his most significant critique of culture a little book called the abolition of man?

Significant title he takes on a High school textbook it might be a junior high doesn't say a secondary school textbook In an imaginary way, but he said I have these books on myself. I'm not making this up in it.

He illustrates what he means By the abolition of man and by his defense of truth. With this interchange He's quoting now the authors of this Horrible textbook as he assesses it That our children are reading.

Quote. When the man said it's not Lewis talking. This is the author of the textbook when the man said that is sublime. He was talking about a waterfall That is sublime. He appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall actually He was not making a remark about the waterfall But a remark about his own feelings.

What he was saying was really I have feelings That I associate in my mind with the word sublime or shortly I have sublime feelings. This confusion is Continually present in language as we use it we appear to be saying something very important about something real and Actually, we are only saying something about our own feelings.

Endquote from the abolition of man. Lewis says. The schoolboy who reads this text will believe two propositions. Firstly that all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker and to All such statements are unimportant that Lewis says is the abolition of Man, and it's the abolition of man and it is he's right.

It's the abolition of man in more senses than one. Not only will everything true and beautiful and great be trivialized. Just a snip Synapses going off in your brain. It's all it is. When you say you're a beautiful wife or you're a faithful son.

Or this is a magnificent day or God is faithful or God is holy. They're just comments about what's going on in here and everything is absolutely trivialized and man for all that man is worth is destroyed by this epistemology and So many of you are infected with it.

Secondly There's no resistance to tyrants anymore might makes right. If he says he's the best for the country and he'll use force to prove it what have you got to say except to add your synapses to his synapses and So much for that debate.

Everything is trivialized and in the end Lewis says civilization is over. It will be over so the abolition of man was his powerful defense of Absolute truth in the end. It wasn't so much for Lewis, I think emotionally and immediately.

That civilization is being undone and that all is being trivialized, but that my discovery of joy is over. Joy is over this universal powerful Massive experience of an inconsolable longing pointing to something real out there.

Namely God is nothing if truth is not real if God is not real if there's no objective reality outside of me. So Lewis fight for truth. It was a fight for joy. We could take a long time here and ask the question that Sam has been asking About how that relates to the glory of God and since he gave all those quotes that he got first dibs on.

I Will pass over them except to underline one sentence that was on the screen this morning. Here it is. This is this is C s Lewis not Jonathan Edwards. The Scotch Catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever but We shall then know that these are the same thing quote fully to enjoy is To glorify in Commanding us to glorify God is inviting us to enjoy him.

Close quote. I don't think Lewis ever read Jonathan Edwards. If he had he would not have liked him. And the reason I say that is because he said that George McDonald was the teacher he considered most close to the Spirit of Jesus and Had not written a page where he fancied McDonald had not influenced him and I know that McDonald Abominates Jonathan Edwards.

This is not easy for me to have to the two dead people that have influenced me most outside the Bible. Cs Lewis and Jonathan Edwards would not have liked each other In fact might have despised each other.

This is not easy. But so it is the means by which God brought Lewis to himself namely the Inconsolable longing that was delightful to have called joy turns out. In view of that quote Sam had on the screen turns out to be the goal of his Christian life.

Namely the glory of God because by delighting in God God is is glorified now. Why in summary am I still so helped By Lewis when he has made so many mistakes and My answer is that nobody that I know of put the experience of joy profoundly analyzed together with a defense of absolute Objective outside of me ultimate truth together like Lewis nobody combines The implications of this experience of joy throughout his life with the implications of this razor-sharp logical philosophical side of Lewis nobody That I've ever read comes close.

Lewis’s Defense of Absolute Truth Against Postmodern Relativism

So what I want to do in the remainder of our time is To give you six or seven Practical implications of this combination That have walloped me Shaped me made me. I met Lewis as a freshman in college in mere Christianity and Then began to read.

I've read almost everything. He's written outside the the book. He called the Oh hell book Because that's the initials Oxford history of English language. Oh, H E L I've never read that one. Although I've got a quote from it here because it's so good.

But I've read more of Lewis than any Biography I've given in the last 22 years with the possible exception of Edwards. So he's been with me a long time and I do not cease to be helped. Why? So I've given you the core why experience of joy profoundly analyzed and the experience of defending truth absolute objective outside of me.

Meeting together in a way I don't know any other author does now that coming together creates these six or seven things. Number one Lewis pursuit of joy by means of rational Defenses of the truth had a liberating effect on me from false dichotomies.

He demonstrated for me and convinced me that Rigorous precise penetrating logic is Not inimical to deep soul stirring feeling vivid lively imagination. He was a romantic Rationalist that's one of the little books.

I read 40 years ago. I couldn't find it in print anywhere. It's just a little paperback called Lewis romantic Rationalist. He combined what almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclusive Rationalism and poetry cool logic warm feelings disciplined prose free imagination and in shattering these old Stereotypes for me.

He freed me to think hard and write poetry. Argue for the resurrection and compose a hymn to Christ. Smash an argument and hug a friend demand a definition and use a metaphor. It's a wonderful thing when a great man shows a struggler how to be himself.

Number two liberation from chronological snobbery. Lewis unwavering commitment to what is true and real and Valuable as opposed to what is trendy and fashionable and current. Has been another kind of liberation for me for which I will thank God to the end of my days.

He loved the wisdom of the ages he lived outside his century. He didn't care about the whimsy of passing present. He called himself in his first inaugural lecture at Cambridge after 30 years at Oxford went to Cambridge and his first lecture.

He called himself a Neanderthal er and a dinosaur and he said if you can't be persuaded by me as an arguer. Consider me a specimen from the Middle Ages. And he was he was a he was. I wish his tribe had not died out.

I Wish the dinosaurs had not become extinct. I hope I hope they live again. He didn't read newspapers. He never wore a watch. He never learned to type. Never owned a car or drove one except once. Cared nothing about good appearances.

He wore the same old clothes till they were threadbare. He was incredibly free From the addicting powers of the present moment. And the effect on me was just huge. It made me wary of what he called Chronological snobbery.

Something is good because it's new. There is no correlation between newness and goodness. Duh. There's just no correlation Between oldness and goodness or newness and goodness. It's irrelevant to when something is good and beautiful and true and valuable.

Time has nothing to do with it. Truth and beauty and Goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old. Nothing is valuable for being new. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and Opened for me the wisdom of the centuries and I thank God for CS Lewis number three.

Lewis keen penetrating sense of his own hearts ache for joy. Combined with his utter amazement at the sheer objective realness of things other than himself Has over and over awakened me from the slumbers of self-absorption.

To see and to savor the world and the maker of the world. And this has slopped over Onto doctrine and the gospel when I read Lewis experience of the world and how awake he is to reality that I just Ignore and I'm awakened again to see the world the way he sees it.

I see Christ more clearly. I read my Bible with new eyes. This is what I thank him for. Lewis gave me and continues to give me an intense sense of the Astonishing realness of things. He had the ability to see and to feel what most of us see and don't see.

He had what Alan Jacobs called Omnivorous attentiveness, I love that phrase. Omnivorous attentiveness, oh just take that away and and and. Pay double for your conference registration. I Just gave that to you.

No added expense at all. Change your life. Omnivorous attentiveness. Now I hope you feel what I'm talking about. I love that phrase. What this has done for me is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress the warmth of the sun's rays the sound of the clock ticking or my wife's breathing machine.

The coldness of the wooden floor. The wetness of the water in the sink. The sheer being of things what Lewis called quiddity Latin for wetness. Whatness in ESS the wetness of reality. It's just there I mean There didn't have to be water.

Imagine a world in which there's no water. And one day somebody says I guess I might want to show you. Look, you would just you would fall down. You would. That's amazing. But you never say that Lewis does.

Yeah, he he gets me going in such a way that when I walked to the 630 prayer meeting Across the bridge. I have the little child feeling as the Sun's coming up. He did it again. They got that from Chesterton.

You should say that every morning. He did it again. The Sun came up. Look at that. That's 93 million miles away. Holding us in place making us perfectly warm even here. This is okay. We're not dead. He helped me to become alive to life.

To look at the sunrise. He helped me to see. What is there in the world things that if we didn't have them? We would pay a million dollars to get them and having them Ignore your eyes your fingers. He convicts me of my callous inability to enjoy God's daily gifts.

He helps me to awaken my dazed soul. So that the realities of life and of God and of heaven and of hell are Seen and felt. I could go on and on about how this affects preaching brothers how this affects communication.

How seeing suns and water and fingers and cold wooden floors. Affects the way you preach and the living power of words. Because you've seen and felt and you bring that over onto the Bible pop suddenly reality streaming out of these pages because by grace Lewis or whoever has waked you up from the slumbers of self-absorption number four the perils of introspection.

Lewis experience of the pursuit of joy and the mistakes he made Has had a huge effect on the way I think about the assurance of salvation. How do you counsel people who come to you as they do to me almost every week with questions about the assurance?

How can I know I'm real? You preach in such a way that I almost feel like I'm not a Christian every week. So help me and And I spend huge amounts of time. I wrote a whole book about that When I don't desire God.

Trying to help people with that issue. Well Lewis has helped me Amazingly with this. This is very profound. I hope you get it in the next four or five minutes. What he discovered is that the effort to know the experience of joy By looking at the experience of joy is self-defeating.

He wrote this. I saw that all my waiting's and Watchings for joy all my vain hopes to find some mental Content on which I could so to speak hang my finger and say lay my finger and say this is it. Had been futile attempt to contemplate the enjoyed.

It can't be done. For the moment we step outside Ourselves to Contemplate our enjoying. We are no longer Enjoying and there's nothing to see not quite nothing he says a Sediment it remains and the sediment is a physical sensation.

You see it and then doubt the reality of your joy and the assurance of salvation fails as You try to get outside yourself. Look inside to see if the thing you were doing before you stepped outside is real.

It's not there anymore. It will never work. People are doing this all the time and feeling horribly discouraged wondering Can't ever find anything real inside of me. You've been there. I've been there.

Let me read it again. This is Lewis. This is our dilemma as thinkers we are cut off from what we think about as Tasting and touching and willing and loving and hating we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think The more we are cut off The more deeply we enter into the reality the less we can think.

You cannot study pleasure in the moment of nuptial embrace Nor repentance while repenting nor analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter. But when else Can we know these things? You cannot hope and Also think about hoping at the same time for in hope we look to hopes object and We interrupt this By so to speak turning around and looking at hope.

That is huge.