C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer, Harcourt, 1963.
I will not believe in the Managerial God and his general laws. If there is Providence at all, everything is providential and every providence is a special providence. It is an old and pious saying that Christ died not only for Man but for each man, just as much as if each had been the only man there was. Can I not believe the same of this creative act-- which, as spread out in time, we call destiny or history? It is for the sake of each human soul. Each is an end. Perhaps for each beast. Perhaps even each particle of matter-- the night sky suggests that the inanimate also has for God some value we cannot imagine. His ways are not like ours. p. 55
If you ask why I believe all this, I can only reply that we are taught, both by precept and example, to pray, and that prayer would be meaningless in the sort of universe (managed universe) some picture. One of the purposes for which God instituted prayer may have been to bear witness that the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes its contribution and (in prayer) a conscious contribution, and in which every being is both and end and a means. P..55 & 56.
St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 8 : 38 & 39,(Today’s New International Version).
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Who is the “us”? An exclusive sect of believers singled out by the Will of God to be special? Yes and No, the immediate context is about the choice to be known as Christian even in the face of persecution but St. Paul’s thinking about the love of God is much broader and all encompassing. What is the ultimate end of all creation? C. S. Lewis and St. Paul leave us “hints” that God is creating a work of art, at present an unfinished Masterpiece, to be shaped by the Love of God, often delayed and sometimes accelerated by the free will of men, but finally culminating in a reunification of all things and all persons in the Love of God, home at last!
This is the Christian faith to be believed. There is no scripted God of human description, rather an indescribable eternal artist!
G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca.
