Yancey, on writing, pleasure, and C.S. Lewis

"Lewis saw the world as a place worth saving. Unlike the monastics of the Middle Ages and the legalists of modern times, he saw no need to withdraw and deny all pleasures. He loved a stiff drink, a puff on the pipe, a gathering of friends, a Wagnerian opera, a hike in the fields of Oxford. The pleasures in life are indeed good, just not good enough; they are "only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

I found in Lewis that rare and precarious balance of embracing the world while not idolizing it. For all its defects, this planet bears marks of the original design, traces of Beauty and Joy that both recall and anticipate the Creator's intent.

Alone of modern authors, Lewis taught me to anticipate heaven: "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."

We writers are not nouns, he used to say. We are mere adjectives, pointing to the great Noun of truth. Lewis did that, faithfully and masterfully, and because he did so, many thousands have come to know and love that Noun.

Including me."

- Philip Yancey (from July's article of ChristianToday)

When I'm in Powell, studying with my sister, I treat myself to hours of magazine reading. You know, the usual- Redbrook...EBONY....
Don't waste your cash buying magazines like I've done for the past three years. Powell has a hefty collection, including ChristianToday, (where I read the above excerpt)- it's an evangelist publication. I note that because I opened a different Christian magazine and there was a happy spread about a lesbian priest from the eastcoast. Negative.

But I love the above excerpt because its an excellent reminder of what we Christians do best: compromise. And Yancey's article suggests that compromising (whatever it is that we unconsciously compromise) for the sake of pleasure, leaves no room for the glorying of Heaven, the ultimate good.