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age, being born again, Dorothy L. Sayers, ecstasy, encouragement, exhortation, experience, faith, feeding on Christ, God's love, maturity, mystics, psychology, spiritual maturity, the Kingdom of God, youth
I do hope that the excerpt by Dorothy L. Sayers below gives you some food for thought as to rethinking those concepts of youth and age our current culture proclaims, and which, in my view, have infiltrated the Church more than she is aware of. We read about “senior pastors” who are in their 40s (at most) and about training the next generation of church leaders, pastors, and elders, by simply teaching them tradition, theological theories, and doctrines. Indeed, the amount of books one has read does not make him spiritually mature. And the number of years we have believed in Jesus does not make us any more mature than a newborn child (speaking spiritually here). Actually, it is all about experiencing God in our own life and knowing that He can be trusted in every given situation. This kind of faith is nothing that can be taught and nothing we can soak in by reading about it only. Testimonies from others might point us in the right direction if they whet our appetite for experiencing God’s love and His kingdom first-hand. Yet they cannot provide the meat we only get when we leave the area of being fed by men and their different views of Christianity far behind. We need to feed on Christ who alone is our true food and drink.
And now, here are Dorothy L. Sayers’s thoughts about youth and aging, about time and eternity, and then some. 😉
STRONG MEAT
It is over twenty years since I first read the words, in some forgotten book. I remember neither the name of the author, nor that of the Saint from whose meditations he was quoting. [1] Only the statement itself has survived the accidents of transmission: “Cibus sum grandium; cresce, et manducabis Me”—“I am the food of the full-grown; become a man, and thou shalt feed on Me.”
Here is a robust assertion of the claim of Christianity to be a religion for adult minds. I am glad to think, now, that it impressed me so forcibly then, when I was still comparatively young. To protest, when one has left one’s youth behind, against the prevalent assumption that there is no salvation for the middle-aged is all very well; but it is apt to provoke a mocking reference to the fox who lost his tail. One is in a stronger position if one can show that one had already registered the protest before circumstances rendered it expedient.
There is a popular school of thought (or, more strictly, of feeling) which violently resents the operation of Time upon the human spirit. It looks upon age as something between a crime and an insult. Its prophets have banished from their savage vocabulary all such words as “adult,” “mature,” “experienced,” “venerable”; they know only snarling and sneering epithets, like “middle-aged,” “elderly,” “stuffy,” “senile” and “decrepit.” With these they flagellate that which they themselves are, or must shortly become, as though abuse were an incantation to exorcise the inexorable. Theirs is neither the thoughtless courage that “makes mouths at the invisible event,” nor the reasoned courage that foresees the event and endures it; still less is it the ecstatic courage that embraces and subdues the event. It is the vicious and desperate fury of a trapped beast; and it is not a pretty sight.
Such men, finding no value for the world as it is, proclaim very loudly their faith in the future, “which is in the hands of the young.” With this flattery, they bind their own burden on the shoulders of the next generation. For their own failures, Time alone is to blame—not Sin, which is expiable, but Time, which is irreparable. From the relentless reality of age they seek escape into a fantasy of youth—their own or other people’s. First love, boyhood ideals, childish dreams, the song at the mother’s breast, the blind security of the womb—from these they construct a monstrous fabric of pretence, to be their hiding-place from the tempest. Their faith is not really in the future, but in the past. Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward, we must believe in age. “Except,” said Christ, “ye become as little children”—and the words are sometimes quoted to justify the flight into infantilism. Now, children differ in many ways, but they have one thing in common. Peter Pan—if indeed he exists otherwise than in the nostalgic imagination of an adult—is a case for the pathologist. All normal children (however much we discourage them) look forward to growing up. “Except ye become as little children,” except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, “ye cannot see the Kingdom of God.” One must not only die daily, but every day one must be born again.
“How can a man be born when he is old?” asked Nicodemus. His question has been ridiculed; but it is very reasonable and even profound. “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Can he escape from Time, creep back into the comfortable pre-natal darkness, renounce the values of experience? The answer makes short work of all such fantasies. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The spirit alone is eternal youth; the mind and the body must learn to make terms with Time.
Time is a difficult subject for thought, because in a sense we know too much about it. It is perhaps the only phenomenon of which we have direct apprehension; if all our senses were destroyed, we should still remain aware of duration. Moreover, all conscious thought is a process in time; so that to think consciously about Time is like trying to use a foot-rule to measure its own length. The awareness of timelessness, which some people have, does not belong to the order of conscious thought and cannot be directly expressed in the language of conscious thought, which is temporal. For every conscious human purpose (including thought) we are compelled to reckon (in every sense of the word) with Time.
Now, the Christian Church has always taken a thoroughly realistic view of Time, and has been very particular to distinguish between Time and Eternity. In her view of the matter, Time is not an aspect or a fragment of Eternity, nor is Eternity an endless extension of Time; the two concepts belong to different categories. Both have a divine reality: God is the Ancient of Days and also the I AM: the Everlasting, and also the Eternal Present; the Logos and also the Father; the Creeds, with their usual practicality, issue a sharp warning that we shall get into a nasty mess if we confuse the two or deny the reality of either. Moreover, the mystics—those rare spirits who are simultaneously aware of Time and Eternity—support the doctrine by their knowledge and example. They are never vague, woolly-minded people to whom Time means nothing; on the contrary, they insist more than anybody upon the validity of Time and the actuality of human experience.
The reality of Time is not affected by considering it as a dimension in a space-time continuum or as a solid having dimensions of its own. “There’s a great devil in the universe,” says Kay in Time and the Conways (Note: by J. B. Priestley, 1937), “and we call it Time…. If things were merely mixed—good and bad—that would be all right, but they get worse…. Time’s beating us.” Her brother replies that Time is “only a kind of dream,” and that the “happy young Conways of the past” are still real and existing. “We’re seeing another bit of the view—a bad bit if you like—but the whole landscape’s still there…. At this moment, or any moment, we’re only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all our time will be us—the real you, the real me.”
[…]
In contending with the problem of evil it is useless to try to escape either from the bad past or into the good past. The only way to deal with the past is to accept the whole past, and by accepting it, to change its meaning. The hero of T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, haunted by the guilt of a hereditary evil, seeks at first “To creep back through the little door” into the shelter of the unaltered past, and finds no refuge there from the pursuing hounds of heaven. “Now I know That the last apparent refuge, the safe shelter, That is where one meets them; that is the way of spectres….” So long as he flees from Time and Evil he is thrall to them, not till he welcomes them does he find strength to transmute them. “And now I know That my business is not to run away, but to pursue, Not to avoid being found, but to seek…. It is at once the hardest thing, and the only thing possible. Now they will lead me; I shall be safe with them. I am not safe here…. I must follow the bright angels.” Then, and only then, is he enabled to apprehend the good in the evil and to see the terrible hunters of the soul in their true angelic shape. “I feel quite happy, as if happiness Did not consist in getting what one wanted, Or in getting rid of what can’t be got rid of, But in a different vision.” It is the release, not from, but into, Reality.
This is the great way of Christian acceptance—a very different thing from so-called “Christian” resignation, which merely submits without ecstasy. “Repentance,” says a Christian writer [2], “is no more than a passionate intention to know all things after the mode of Heaven, and it is impossible to know evil as good if you insist on knowing it as evil.” For man’s evil knowledge, “there could be but one perfect remedy—to know the evil of the past itself as good, and to be free from the necessity of evil in the future—to find right knowledge and perfect freedom together; to know all things as occasions of love.”
The story of Passion-Tide and Easter is the story of the winning of that freedom and of that victory over the evils of Time. The burden of the guilt is accepted (“He was made Sin”) the last agony of alienation from God is passed through (Eloi, lama sabachthani); the temporal Body is broken and remade; and Time and Eternity are reconciled in a Single Person. There is no retreat here to the Paradise of primal ignorance; the new Kingdom of God is built upon the foundations of spiritual experience. Time is not denied; it is fulfilled. “I am the food of the full-grown.”
[Footnote 1] But I would have laid any odds, from the style, that it was Augustine of Hippo; and so, indeed, it proves to be (Confessions: vii.10).
[Footnote 2] Charles Williams: He Came Down from Heaven.
If you like, read more here http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-strong/sayers-strong-00-h.html.
[Bold letter emphasis in continuous text mine]
Michael said:
Yes, Susanne, you have hit on something that is staring us right in the face here in America… the elevation of the youth as being THE supreme value and the degradation of the virtue of the wisdom that comes from a life filled with meaningful experiences with God’s leading that have led to true wisdom.
We are constantly told that the youth are our future, and I am afraid that this is all to true, but how bleak this world’s future appears! We have an education system that refuses to teach history and to instill any moral values on its students. We are seeing what was planted during the 60’s and 70’s come into full harvest… a purely hedonistic society driven by drugs, sex and an entitlement mentality that the world owes it a living whether they lift a finger to help out others or themselves or not! It is a “the buck never stops here” culture that is going the way of every society that has collapsed in upon itself in the past.
So, is it any wonder that the those who lead the way in this culture from behind the scenes are beating the drum in their call for more abortions and the need of all “useless eaters” (a.k.a. the aged and the handicapped) to be euthanized? The mantra of the Hemlock Society is gaining great ground as they go into old folks homes and try and convince the elderly that it is their duty to die an early death so that they don’t burden society… all for “the greater good” of course? Funny how the youth feel so invincible and see the elderly and infants as expendable, not knowing that their day is coming… It brings back memories of the 1976 movie, “Logan’s Run.”
And the most disturbing part of it all is as you say… the CHURCHES have bought into it! Those who are true elders and have gained many wonderful experiences in their lives that help to give depth to the meaning of the scriptures are pushed to the back and told to keep silent while the youth with a degree from a seminary or Bible school (and NO experience in overcoming the wicked one) are looked up to as the “be all and end all” of spiritual wisdom! So once again we see the old adage coming true even in what was once God’s “pillar of truth,” the church, “those who do not learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat its failures.”
Thank God for the internet where Pastor Wonderful cannot silence the voices of experience and wisdom in the ecclesia of God’s people who have been called out of all this madness into His marvelous light! And thank God for people like you, Susanne, who have seen that knowledge alone is not enough, but rather spiritual understanding AND experience in a loving relationship with our Father and the Son means more than anything we can have or do on this earth. As Paul assured Timothy,
“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing of whom you have learned them.” (2 Timothy 3:12-14 KJ2000)
You are a blessing, Susanne! ❤
Michael
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
Wow!!! ⭐
Michael, your comment really hit home! Thank you so much for confirming the post and giving life to it by sharing your observations above which, alas, could have been made in Europe just the same. 😦 Am just thinking of some very “free” countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland where always more “monstrosities” had been legalized than in Good Old Germany. But it seems we Germans are catching up with our “competitors” sooner or later.
Thank God for you, my dear brother. You are so precious to me. I always enjoy reading your thoughtful and wise contribution on here and elsewhere. 🙂
Love ❤
Susanne
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Michael said:
It is strange how the whole world can point its finger at the Third Reich in Germany, but at the same time be fulfilling its dream of making a society “perfect” by force. For instance in America the Tuskegee syphilis experiment that was done on blacks over here.
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
Without God, the evil spreads its poison in every country. Yet, God is in perfect control of everything that happens. Do we understand that? Probably not, but we may fully trust Him, though. Or in other words,
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man;
14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.
16 The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.
20 Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
21 For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
(Ps 33:12-21 ESV)
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Michael said:
Somehow this song seems to fit with your Psalm, dear Susanne. It reminds me of another song from that same era that you posted on my blog, “If I Had a Hammer.”
“The Sound Of Silence”
by Simon and Garfunkel
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know –
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence.
The warnings of the prophet still cry out as mankind rushes headlong into its final resting place. “Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you.” Thank God that some harken to the voice of the Lord and chose another path and resting place. I am so glad that we on this blog have found one another. ❤
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
You could not know it but that was one of my favorite songs, Michael. I don’t know how often I played it on the piano and sang it in the past, almost always accompanied by sad, and sometimes very depressive feelings.
I just thought that our blogs (aka as cyber churches 😉 ) are God’s blessing. There we can “meet” with like-minded believers. Such things were not possible in church history before. Therefore I am very grateful that our Heavenly Daddy provides spiritual connections via internet! ❤
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Michael said:
Yes, Susanne, we found another similarity between us. That song stuck with me from the first time I heard it as being prophetic as to what was wrong with America back then and is still wrong with it today. I am glad that we have such a connection as this where we can have true fellowship outside the restrictions of the controlled pulpits and other media.
“Then they that feared the LORD spoke often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.”(Malachi 3:16 KJ2000)
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
Such spiritual connections are rare and very precious. They are nothing that should be thrown away easily, don’t you think?
Thank you so much for sharing this Scripture, dear Michael. Very appropriate, as always! 🙂
Blessings,
Susanne
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Michael said:
Yes, Susanne, deep spiritual connections are rare indeed. So much so, that those who have never experienced them will not understand until they have their own close encounters with the Lord and others who have along with them. Your testimony of your times of fellowship with the Father and the Son have put a deep hunger in me to know them in a most personal way just has you have. So, how could I throw away a fellowship where two walk in the light as Jesus is in the light? How can we avoid the process of His blood that continues to cleanse away all sin as that light lays bare our innermost thoughts and weaknesses as we draw ever closer to Him in that light? In the last year I have walked in this light with you, the Bible has come alive and the Spirit has given ever greater depth to verses that I have known for over 45 years.
Thank you for being who our Father has made you and for truly being one who has sought His face with your whole heart. ❤
May He continue to bless you with greater revelations of Himself,
Michael
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
As you just insinuated, dear Michael, it has not always been an easy path for both of us, but it has been all worth it, hasn’t it? After every death of self, a new glory awaits us. That is what he have experienced, even together.
What a great gift from God our fellowship has been for me!! Thank you for being the one you are, my brother. 🙂
May He give you your most intimate desires of the heart and let you see His face soon!
Love,
Susanne
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Anna Waldherr said:
I, too, loved the “The Sound of Silence” as a girl. Your posts are always meaty (1 Cor. 3: 2), Susanne. Though they may resonate deeply, it can take me awhile to digest them. :0)
That we live in a youth-oriented culture goes without saying. Ours is not, however, a culture which strives to raise and educate young people, so much as imitate them. We dye our hair, have our skin tightened and our breasts enlarged — as if such measures would lengthen our lives by a single second, much less enrich our souls. We adopt youthful fashions — revealing not only our flesh, but our lack of substance.
Any woman ever involved with a man indulging in the Peter Pan Syndrome can attest that selfishness is not a quality likely to satisfy one’s partner. Time will eventually catch up, even with Peter Pan.
“What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time…” is a profound statement. It reduces self-condemnation for isolated mistakes and is, I think, the way God sees us. He knows “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46: 10).
Equally profound, if not more so, is the statement “…not till he welcomes them [Time and Evil] does he find strength to transmute them.” We can live our lives in fear of the passage of time or use the time God has given us to accomplish good in the world while we are here. Much the same approach applies to evil (though I can envision situations in which the evil done to us — particularly as children — permanently impacts our lives).
Given the title of this post, I cannot leave without letting you know what a joy it is to have met mature Christians here! I use the term “mature” not to signify age, but experience with and love for the Lord.
My heartfelt thanks, Susanne.
Love,
Anna ❤
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
You’re most welcome, dear Anna. ❤
Thank you so much for your edifying response! 🙂
I am truly sorry that my posts sometimes cause “digestive problems”. Indeed, you were not the first one who told me about that and you may know that God always uses what He inspired me to write in order to test my own faith. Even though I do not know what I will write in the next few seconds, nor do I remember what I already wrote before unless He reminds me again, God has used my writings always in a prophetic way for me. Thus I can trust it was from Him. When I wrote about suffering deeply, I was either in the midst of that process or it was announcement that it would happen soon. When I wrote about continous joy and peace, He let me share both for some time until He saw fit to test my (lack of) faith in another trial or affliction.
Growing spiritually is painful since it always leads me to the end of my rope, to the point of, “I cannot do anything without You, my God.” As soon as I have given up on trying to change my situation, God helps me and the trial is over. I truly wonder why I have been struggling so often for a long time instead of letting go of my own thoughts and plans. Indeed, the flesh dies hard… 😉
I was happy to read that you felt joy having met mature Christians here. Actually, spiritualy maturity is a rare thing, whether in churches or on the internet. I am so glad to have met you and to profit from your wise insights and input on here and elsewhere.
Love,
Susanne
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
Thank you so much for sharing your wise words on here, dear Lloyd. 🙂
Also, there is nothing to forgive as for posting a link to your blog (I simply had to add “http://…../” so that the link worked). I am sure that your book is well-worth reading and although I myself stopped reading books in 2008 when I came to know God closer than before (as a former bookworm I lost every interest in reading from one day to the next), I am convinced that many will appreciate the wisdom you communicate to them in your upcoming book. Lloyd, I am woman who hears God in her heart and I know that your book is very good without having read it. Believe it or not… 😉
May God bless you immensely in the days ahead!
Warms regards,
Susanne
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Kenneth Dawson said:
I’m glad you quoted Dorothy Sayers…I have always liked her writings and what you said at the start of your article is the main point…no matter if we are old or young or in between spiritual maturity is all about experiencing God in our own life and knowing that He can be trusted in every given situation–We need to feed on Christ who alone is our true food and drink…and I might add–every moment of our daily life.
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
I can always count on you as a great encourager for me. Thank you so much for your kind words, dear Kenneth! 🙂
Yes, we need to feed on Christ “every moment of our daily life” as you so rightly added above. Pheeew…It’s a looong way to get there, isn’t it, my brother?
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Kenneth Dawson said:
Yes it is Sue..sometimes I think that the one thief who got saved while dying with Jesus on Calv that day was fortunate in that he did not have to struggle with forty or fifty years of Christianity…on the other side I am not sure that his way of dying was so desirable but either way you got to die to self and it’s a tough cross to bear–but we will get there.
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
Yes, Kenneth, we will get there, no doubt. It is interesting that I had the same thoughts you just uttered in your reply; I was tempted to envy that thief who died believing in Jesus, however, pondering on his agonizing death, I was not that sure that I would have chosen his fate. Maybe, it is good that we cannot choose here but simply trust in the One who perfectly planned our personal path back to Himself.
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Anna Waldherr said:
Never digestive problems, Susanne (LOL). Always nourishment.
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Susanne Schuberth (Germany) said:
😀
Thank you, Anna. I was happy to hear that!
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