Christian Living

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Inspiration from "The weight of Glory"

I want to discusss some amazing things that author C.S Lewis has revealed to me in his work "The weight of glory" which is a collection of short papers, or sermons or teachings I would call them. More specifically, I would recommend to everyone to at least read his brilliant writing called "Transposition". In this writing, he carries on with some of the amazingly illustrative ideas that he discusses somewhat in another great book " Mere Christianity". In both of these works he shows us lessons we can learn in going from a three dimensional world to a two dimensional world.

In "transposition" he goes on to explain how lower realities are always used to represent higher realities. For example, how written, two dimensional words represent spoken auditory words, or musical notation represents musical sounds, or how an orchestral symphony can be transposed down to a piano piece, that unless we are aware of the orchestral score, we have no idea of the glorious orchestration that the piece originates from, and what we are missing out on experiencing.

The easiest example that he shows is how two dimensional pictures are used to represent our three dimensional world. The aspect about all of this that intrigues me the most, is related to how science has proven to us the existance of at least ten dimensions that we as humans, dont sense.
Now HERE is where Lewis' teachings blow my mind. I think as he points out, the great lessons we can learn going from a three dimensional awareness of reality down to a two dimensional awareness of reality can illustrate much. These ideas are really by themselves, nothing earth shattering, but as a WHOLE, quite instructional and compelling.
The following ideas are ideas of my own, Iinspired by and expanding somewhat on his ideas in this realm of how our perception of reality is shaped and how it is limited.

Imagine yourself in our three dimensional world trying to communicate with a two dimensional "stick figure" on a piece of paper. This stick figure of course, is only able to sense his two dimensional world. Lets say that you, the extra dimensional creature, communicates with this stick figure by writing on the paper with your pencil. To this stick man's perceptions, your words and drawings seem to just apoear magically to him out of nowhwhere as you write them. You can then even write to him about this great four dimensional object called a pencil that is causing these words to "appear" before Mr. stickman into his awareness. But to him, this pencil idea is just plain crazy and fanciful thinking because he doesnt at all really sense this pencil. I suppose you could even try to rip through his world by poking the pencil through the paper , but all that he might see is a great big hole opening up in his reality of the paper, never able to percieve the giant writing stick that actually towers over him. ( though the shadow of it might scare him, and turn him into a believer of the paranormal lol.)
I am sure that these kinds of ideas have been around in some form or other for centuries, but that doesnt in any way diminish their great power. I think maybe Lewis'application of them towards Christian theology may be somewhat original. The thing that REALLY gives amazing creedence to these ideas for our modern world is, as I stated,the relatively new scientific discoveries of the existence of MORE than three or four dimensions.

Now continuing with Lewis' assertion that higher realities are expressed by lower ones. Lewis then points out Saint Paul's various verses saying that it takes a spiritual man to discern spiritual things:


Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
1 Corinthians 2:12‭-‬13 NASB


This last part of the verse, of "combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words" seems to speak directly to Lewis' point of
lower things (words, or THE Word) transcending (taught, or led by the Spirit) to higher things (thoughts, or Spiritual discernment).


This kind of "Spiritual discernment " seems quite analagous to the idea of how a listener of a piano's transposed rendition of a Beethoven Symphony will never really experience, hear, or feel the full music of the piece, if they have never heard or experienced the full orchestral symphony performed.


Perhaps this all speaks to the Biblical verse: In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and the WORD Was God. John 1:1.


Also perhaps why a Christian's great commission is , as Jesus put forth, to proclaim The Gospel, or The Word, which IS God. And in this light, the great circle seems to become complete by this verse:

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things !"
Romans 10:14‭-‬15 NASB


I know, many people might say " Yeah, well...if you take THIS kind of information and combine it with a quarter and a Dollar bill, you just MIGHT be able to get yourself a bad cup of coffee." But for me anyways, when I combined this lower information of C.S Lewis with the higher information of the Bible, it has awakened me, opened my eyes and changed my life MUCH more than that bad cup of coffee ever could.

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