Perelandra and the Music of God

I have just read C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra again for probably the 4^th time, but the first in about 20 years. As before, it leaves me feeling a little breathless, a bit dazed, but this time for different reasons. I recall when I first read it, I found it interesting in the way one finds a puzzle interesting. In fact, large sections I did not care for at all. It is not a book of fast moving and exciting plot developments. It contains long sections of expository dialog. It even has rather extensive pieces of pretty florid oratory. Much of the action is not action at all but descriptive passages of Ransom’s (the main character) observations of Perelandra (or Venus). But within all that is woven some astounding theology. Strangely enough, this theology, and the way Lewis expresses it, is what makes it so compelling, forceful and ultimately heartening to me.

The novel is essentially a thin veneer of narrative, covering over and holding together a fairly wide ranging essay on metaphysics and theology. In it he performs a sort of theological thought experiment. What would happen if God created another world and placed another Adam and Eve in it? Would they be tempted? Would they fall? And what happens if they do not fall? And what could it all mean anyways?

In Lewis’ own spiritual autobiography (Surpised by Joy) he talks about his first experiences with Joy when he heard the old Norse Sagas and was transported by this feeling of “Northerness” that came out of those tales. Much of the power of Lewis’ work for me arises from his ability to transmit that feeling to me in his writing. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about his writing that sets up a powerful vibration deep inside. It’s like the best sermon, the one you go to church on Sunday morning hoping to hear every Sunday. It’s the sermon that opens up the Word in ways that not only help you to understand it in new ways, but to feel it.

I have known people that are hard core theology wonks. I like to read their blogs, in fact. They revel in tightly constructed argument (in the philosophical sense), the minutiae of sources, and mastery of the subtle shades terminology. I am not one of those. I just don’t have the patience for it.

I also have known people who don’t have the chops to be a true wonk, but they sure like to play with it, for the sheer joy of it. These I call the theology geeks. Like a kid with a video game they can banter about the “big questions” forever nonstop. I am closer to being a geek than a wonk, because there is at least a bit of joy and fun in it. But I’m not really a geek either. I like answers more than questions.

I am more like a musician. No…that’s not right either. I am more like the educated and appreciative audience. I am the one who sits in the mezzanine and cries for the beauty of the aria. I am the one who stands at the end of the concert, not because everyone stands, but because my heart is about to explode for the joy inside me. For I think that what I really want out of theology is not knowledge or mastery…it is beauty.

Lewis always claimed that he was no philosopher or theologian. Perhaps he was right. Although to my ear his work seems plenty rigorous (meaning his essays like The Abolition of Man, or Miracles), I am not an especially good judge of what is the most rigorous argument. Lewis was perhaps more of a theological musician. He found a way to express truth about the One True and Living God in words, but musically. The scales of his music came straight from the Word. He played his melodies on pen and paper.

The wonks and the geeks tend to be too much in love with the mechanics of the thing. A music wonk would want to know how to tune the instrument to the perfect 800 mhz pitch. The geek would want to see how fast he could play just to show he could do it. My love of music is much more childish and earthy. I simply love the music the way it makes me feel. I love music for what it does for my heart. It lifts me, it carries me. It touches my heart, and opens me up. It lights my world differently. I can see better by it.

When I read Lewis I know the mechanics and structure of good theology are there, but that’s not what appeals to me. When I read Lewis, he helps me to love God more. I hear God more clearly. I see him more vividly. And I want to give myself to Him more completely.

To put it another way, Lewis’ writings are like the sermon you always hope to hear on Sunday morning. That sermon (that ideal of sermons) leaves you not only seeing and understanding God more, but loving Him more. When we love more truly and more deeply, we surrender more truly and more deeply. It is not with our minds alone the we comprehend God. As it is written:

“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”

Tangled and Twisted

I was recently reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

As I become older I can see more and more what a dangerous and difficult thing love is. I wonder at how love can even be moral and righteous and some circumstances, and immoral and wrong in other situations. It’s not so much that I am seeing the world in more shades of gray. It’s that I’m coming more and more to see the world as incredibly tangled, impossibly snarled, knotted and jumbled. Few things are truly simple. Almost nothing cleaves a straight line.
This is as true for the adulterer as it is for the homosexual. The fornicator struggles with this as much as the sodomite. And guess what? That’s all of us. Jesus made it pretty clear that the real standard of rightness is higher than we can reach. So don’t think that you aren’t bound up in the knot.
As I was saying, it is easy to think that love, in and of itself, redeems any act, any person, any event. Deep affection, total devotion is perfectly acceptable, no matter who the people are, no matter what their situation. This may be the most pernicious lie to permeate our culture. If it’s love, then it must be OK. Love, however, is not that simple, and like everything else in the world, it is twisted and bent and needs itself to be redeemed and made right.
How can it be wrong if it FEELS SO RIGHT?
But I LOVE HER! Becomes not simply a declaration but the argument for justification.
The problem is defining what love actually is. Lewis’ book does a powerful job of exploring the complexities and layers involved in love.

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection — if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

We have made love an idol. We worship it and justify our worship by chanting “God is love…God is love.” In fact, we really have no idea what we are talking about. Our study of love only grazes the most thin surface layer. It has not served us well.
I have no idea how to do this, but if we can go deeper and peel back the layers of what love is, we will find that love is much harder, more violent, more demanding than we like to think – and more glorious and magnificent and splendid than we could have conceived. If we were to find a way to truly reveal to ourselves the absolute heart of love, we will turn the world inside out.