Slowly coming to an Agreement? Part II

It is later in the day now, I finished part I this morning. I have the sniffles, and found out that it can be a side effect of albuterol. It is no big deal at all, nothing a kleenex can't take care of.

I ended Part I by mentioning the tug I felt in my heart last week. One of my favorite authors is CS Lewis, most of you probably know that he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, but some of you may not know that he was also a devout Christian, and published several books on Christianity. Lewis (his friends called him Jack, with the number of his books I have read over the past year, I think that it will be ok if I call him Jack as well). Anyway, Jack was not always a Christian. He was raised as a Protestant in Northern Ireland, became an atheist while a teenager, only to become a Christian again when he was around 30. JRR Tolkien can be credited with part of the reason for Jack's conversion. Tolkien also happens to be one of my favorite authors.

I felt the now famous tug in my heart last week, but my brain is still fighting and trying to figure out what it was. It reminds me of the way way Jack described how he became a Christian again, he fought greatly up to the moment of his conversion and compared himself to a, "'...prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.." . \

I am still very much kicking and struggling to find a way out, if my brain decides to make sense of all of this, what will that mean for me? will I be able to find a purpose in this life?

I have never denied that Jesus existed, there is simply too much historical proof of that. I thought that he was probably just a really good guy trying to help people out. However, Jack brought up a really good point in A Case for Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus Christ]: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell."

What Jack is saying here, is that you have to make a choice, there is no in between, either you accept that Jesus is the son of God, or you believe that he was a mad man! I still haven't figured out which I think he was. I never thought of him as a mad man as Jack wants me to but I am not quite sure I am ready to accept him as the Son of a God I am not 100% sure I believe in. It appears that I may be facing a little bit of a battle between my heart and my brain, my heart seems to slowly be coming to an agreement with the guy upstairs while my brain still says "hold the horses, this is a big step".

No matter what the outcome of my search ends up being, I have already benefited greatly from it. I have always loved reading, I read for enjoyment, I picture everything I read in my brain, because I have been so busy just reading for enjoyment and pretending to be a warrior or an elf or whatever else I read about, I have often missed important points or messages in the literature I was reading. I, for example, never pictured Aslan as a Jesus figure in the Chronicles of Narnia, I just liked Lucy and thought she was a pretty neat little girl. I have learned to read for more than just enjoyment, I now also read for information and understanding. I like it.

Sleep tight!

P

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