day no. 16,458: charisma is an artificial substitute for character

"Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison." — C.S. Lewis, Equality from Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Where hierarchy and character are criticized, achievement and charisma will be praised. Where submission is slandered, slickness will be saluted. Where morality is mocked, menace will be admired. Charisma is an artificial substitute for character. It does not really work and you can always taste the difference. You cannot successfully suppress the spiritual nature. If you deny the spiritual authority of Christendom, you delegate it to the authority of pop culture. If it is denied a feast of slow roasted meat, it will devour the fastest food it can find.

Proverbs 27:7

The full soul loatheth an honeycomb;

but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

A satisfied soul can say, "No" to real temptation, but a ravenous one will say, "Yes" even to poison. A healthy spirit can resist sweetness, but an unhealthy one cannot escape bitterness.

day no. 16,457: second helpings

"'If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.’ Those are hard words to take. Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whisky or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?" — C.S. Lewis, A Slip of the Tongue from The Weight of Glory and Other Essays

Any second thing sought as a first thing will end in the loss of everything. It does not matter what the secondary thing is per se, but only that it was sought primarily.

Matthew 6:33

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Nothing can be sought first and kept other than Christ and everything sought second to Him will be kept by those who kept it in line. Everything is added to the one who has nothing but Jesus.

day no. 16,456: a coming of age for the materialist magician and sinfrared vision

“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the enemy (God). The ‘life force,’ the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work — the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’ — then the end of the war will be in sight. but in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The powers and principalities have nearly pulled this one off. Science has become a religion of sorts and becomes increasingly so with each new headline. Whether it is overpopulation and abortion, wellness and vaccination, or the world and climate control, science says what are the sins while declaring themselves the Savior.

Science has never rejected the sovereignty of God. It rejects the God of sovereignty. The sovereignty it likes a good deal actually. It can get on board with unmitigated authority as long as it is the one who has it. In other words. the Spirit of the Age, i.e. Scientism, aspires to sovereignty and gladly borrows the idea from God while flat refusing to acknowledge the God from whom they've copped the credit.

But none of this should surprise. Lewis said it a century ago, but the Apostle Paul said it a few millennia ago.

2 Corinthians 2:11

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.

Satan should never have the element of surprise. His tactics are transparent. The only way he can get the jump on anyone is if they refuse to pay attention or deliberately forget what they clearly know. But no Christian need worry himself about being caught by a secret snare. The Bible provides sinfrared vision.

day no. 16,455: the cross comes before the crown, but the crown does come

“The cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning!” — C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The crown may not come until after the cross, but it does most certainly come. No crown worth having could come without it. The cross may precede the kingdom and the junk may go before the joy, but the kingdom does come and the joy is found. The will of God will be done on earth as it is in Heaven, and His joy, likewise, is assured because of what He first endured.

Hebrews 12:2

Look unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus endured the cross for the sake of the joy that lay beyond it. Let us also lay aside every weight and sin that so easily entangle and engage every difficulty set before us today with our eyes on the prize and the crown kept in view.

“At this hour the church expects to walk in sympathy with her Lord along a thorny road; through much tribulation she is forcing her way to the crown.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

day no. 16,454: tenacity without tyranny and mercy without milquetoastery

“Chivalry offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.” — C.S. Lewis, The Necessity of Chivalry from Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Chivalry is the sanctified blend of tenderness and toughness, meekness and mettle, kindness and a killer instinct. In the medieval knight this elixir is immaculate. He is the perfect nth of goodness and severity. He is not a balance of the two, but the full dose of both uncorrupted and in concert.

Romans 11:22

Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God.

Only in Christ is this mixture manifested in us without corruption. Outside of Him. the one will always devour the other. Either justice will abandon mercy or mercy will tax justice to death; but in Christ, righteousness and mercy kiss without compromise. In Him, tenacity is without tyranny and mercy is without milquetoastery.

Psalm 85:9-10

Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him;

That glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth rare met together;

Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Christ is the Lion and the Lamb. He is not a declawed Lion or a devilish lamb. He is not a Lion without teeth or a Lamb with fangs. He is not a domesticated house cat or a sophisticated bully. He is both Lion and Lamb to the nth degree.

"It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is--Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved." — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Meekness and mettle mixed without being mixed up is a miracle. In Christ, we conquer and we cultivate. We dominate and decorate. We not only push back the darkness, but we do so by candlelight. We can be tenacious without being tyrannical and merciful without being milksops.

day no. 16,453: a preponderance of dragons (a.k.a. imagine dragons)

2 Chronicles 32:21

And the Lord sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword.

For every bad dragon, there are two good ones. We are told that one out of every three angels followed Satan in his fall from grace (Rev. 12:4-9). That means that two out of every three remained in their God-assigned stations. From these posts they still intercede, when ordered by God, on behalf of His saints against the foul and fallen minority, those benighted supernovae, the bad dragons.

Hebrews 1:13-14

To which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

The preponderance of angels are on the side of the saints. And if those running on fumes are ferocious, how much more so those still connected and daily renewed by their source of strength? If bad dragons are a bad business, how much better are good dragons a boon.

Dragons are real, but they are outnumbered and outgunned. They are more than any man could handle, but there are no match for the majority of dragons who remain on our side by remaining what God made them.

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” — Neil Gaiman a la G.K. Chesterton who actually said...

"Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." — G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

day no. 16,452: Christians are always in the majority

2 Chronicles 32:7-8

Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

The arm of flesh will fail and its conceits will deflate. The gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom of Christ and it's faithful, leaven-like march. Tolkien rightly observed that "Men are better than gates," and the Bible confirms that God is better than men. Where gates may falter, God does not; and where men may fear to defend them, He never faints. A gate is only as good as the men who man it; so, it should not shock us when the gates of hell fail to prevail. The men who defend treason should not expect find loyalty and those who stand for falling short should not be surprised to find their stand short-lived.

"A man with God is always in the majority.” — John Knox

The one who goes with God, goes with strength in numbers. Athanasius appeared to have been outmatched, but he and God contra mundum (against the world) made short work of the multitudes who opposed them.