So It Is

A friend quoted this today:

To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. ~ c.s. lewis

My reactive thoughts begin with the scriptural statement that Christ is the part of the Godhead through which all was created.  We also read that The Father is The Creator.  I wonder if The Father, in some sense, self-created or "self-actualized" when His nature was, or is, expressed in Christ.  Certainly we would not presume that God is a mere organism such that we are, or that the term used to describe a human process would fully encompass this notion.  But there is, both expressly in scripture and implicit in Lewis' statement, an idea that "God The Son" (eternal), who is "The Son of God" (as He was on Earth) is a source of great pleasure and happiness for The Father, and that this delight has something to do with us -- at least, the "us" that can be said to be "in Christ."  Modern Christian theology seems usually to include a belief that fallen man can only be ultimately pleasing to and accepted by God inasmuch as he is "redeemed" by this being "in Christ."

Further, a scripture argument can be made for the notion that the Earthly Christ went through a rather natural growth process during His early life:

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Luke 2:51-52 (NIV)

and this could easily be thought of as a process of self-actualization.

Now, I don't know about you, but this drive for self-actualization has been prominent in my life, at least from a negative point of view.  What I mean is that, personally, I have keenly felt a lack of reaching much of my potential.  Psychology has offered me little to help with this, but belief in Christ (not as the man-made religion, but as a personal relationship with a currently-existing spiritual person) has offered much.  Self-actualization as a human endeavor seems to me to be, at best, a striving for and some degree of attainment of a "better" self.  I suppose that, today, I can honestly claim some of that.

But then, in comes this statement of Lewis', as do so many of his, to completely blow out of the water any such humanistic ideas.  To personally be a delight to the only sovereign and unique Creator of all things?  As a work of art of His, or a son of His?  No wonder Lewis' contemplation of this thought resulted in words that, even for him, were extreme: seemingly impossible, even a "weight or burden of glory."

But I must agree with all the above.  Christ was and is eternal; was actualized as an Earthly human; fully so as The Son of God; and He invites mankind to be "in Him."

For those less familiar with Christian thought, these statements are part of what was called "the gospel" by the early Greek Christians.  That word simply means "good news."

So it is.

~