Tag: Egypt

CS Lewis | Mistakes

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, History, Humor, Theological Matters, Writing9 Comments

Deep Thoughts from the Quill of the Other C.S. Lewis

Welcome to another in an occasional series of fictitious quotations from a fabricated contemporary of the great Oxbridge professor, Clive Staples Lewis.

The C.S. Lewis who authored these questionable observations, Clyde Scissors Lewis, possessed a worldview enigmatically different from that of the esteemed Christian author. Despite the fact that their two lives overlapped in a variety of ways, the similarities were superficial.

A brief biography of the lesser Lewis is available at this link.

The Other C.S. Lewis: A Brief Biography

By all means, do not confuse the wisdom of the genuine article with his shadowy counterfeit. Despite any cursory similarities between the two men, this is most definitely not the C.S. Lewis readers have come to know and love.

Sharia Law Versus Democracy

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Christianity, Church History, Islam, The Ancient Church, The Future, The Modern Church, Theological Matters10 Comments

 

chaldean

“Liberal and democratic principles are worth nothing here [in Iraq]. Islam does not say that all men are equal.” Amal Nona

You cannot state the truth more concisely than that.

Nona is a Chaldean Catholic archbishop who “doesn’t have a diocese anymore. He doesn’t have a church. ISIS destroyed all that, and his people are scattered. But he’s not afraid to speak forthrightly, even when ISIS was at his doorstep.” (“Happy Warriors”)

The Chaldean Catholic Church is no stranger to persecution. They are descendants of the Assyrians who maintained the faith through the Muslim conquest up until today. They are a courageous people, but that is not the subject I wish to address here.

As the archbishop alludes, the reason that Western nations have been utterly unsuccessful in transplanting democracy to countries with Islamic majority populations is that democracy is alien to their worldview.

To the literalist Muslim (i.e. those who accept the words of the Quran at face value), it’s ludicrous to claim that Christians are equal to followers of Islam. Even without appealing to detailed Sharia law, the simple notion that infidels should possess the same rights as the followers of Allah is foolish, or worse. They are dhimmi—second class citizens, at best and actively persecuted and martyred, at worse.

This is the default setting for Islamic nations. Just look at Turkey and Egypt, two nations with actual democratic governments. The terrorist Muslim Brotherhood continues to exert destructive influences in both, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has used the excuse of the recent coup attempt to further destroy the vestiges of democracy (e.g. free speech) which he has long been undermining. Egypt is currently enjoying a respite after removing Mohamed Morsi, a man with a similar, anti-democratic agenda.

Retired military analyst Ralph Peters recently penned a frightening (and I believe accurate) appraisal of where Erdoğan will take his nation.

The ragtag ISIS caliphate is merely the forerunner of the more ambitious caliphate to come. It’s coming in Turkey.

The immense and destructive crackdown underway in Turkey now, with at least 10,000 Turks taken into custody and as many as 100,000 others dismissed from their positions—not only soldiers, but judges, civil servants, police and academics—isn’t an end-game. It’s a beginning. . . .

Erdoğan didn’t need a reason for this pre-planned purge. He had his reasons and his lists of names. He needed an excuse. The failed coup was a gift.

Now we’re witnesses to the destruction of Turkey’s secular society and the forced-march reversion to religious regimentation and obscurantism, to intolerance and oppressive fundamentalism. This is the triumph of mosque over modernity, not of the rule of law, but of its supersession.

Professors have been forbidden to leave the country. The government demanded the resignation of all the deans of higher-level schools and universities. Book-banning is on the way, and book-burning wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

To those of us in the West, including numerous Muslim immigrants who have recognized the universal benefits of freedom of conscience and equal rights, the historic interpretations of government based on the Quran seem disconcerting. Part of the reason they seem unfathomable, is because we do not take the time to study them. Nor do we listen to the voices of minority populations who have been long subjugated and deprived of what we deem basic human rights.

Archbishop Nona, and others like him, need to be heeded. His warning about the challenge of translating democratic principles, points to the proper beginning place: education. It is no accident that the Muslim countries with the highest educations and most moderate (i.e. non-fundamentalist) adherents replicate democratic freedoms most consistently.

I consider the best course for promoting peace to be educating all people, and encouraging freedom of conscience, especially when it comes to religion and speech. And I recognize that the statement with which we began remains a vital fact that must be recognized at the outset of that effort. The following observation appeared in an article last year.

The lust for power corrupts religion, just as the quest for piety is vulnerable to hubris. As Cengiz Erdoğan, a CHP [minority political party] member who runs a car repair workshop, put it to me: “He’s power-hungry and he’s dedicated to the Islamist way.” Or, as C.S. Lewis once warned: “Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.”

The principles guiding Democracies and Republics arose in the Western world. There they found fertile soil. Yet even here in the West, we see on a daily basis that democracy is fragile. Tolkien and Lewis scholar, Joseph Laconte, wrote an “optimistic” essay about the 2015 elections in Turkey. Erdoğan had been prevented from achieving an absolute majority.

The danger, at least for the moment, has been averted. . . . [Some Turks fear] Erdoğan’s early reformist talk was a mere façade for his hardcore Islamism.

That may be reason enough to cheer Turkey’s election results: they offer the hope that corrupted religion will find it harder to derail the nation’s experiment in democratic self-government. More than hope, of course, will be needed. For if secular authoritarianism has left the stage in Turkey, its religious counterpart is waiting hungrily in the wings.

Unfortunately, what political minorities in Turkey feared, is now coming to fruition, with a vengeance.

A Positive Postscript from the Chaldeans

Christianity rejects the notion that any person possesses greater worth than another. In the Christian world there are no castes . . . there are no dhimmi.

Each and every life is precious. In fact, the Good Shepherd is not content to keep the faithful ninety-nine under his protection, he leaves them to go out in search of the one—the individual one—that has strayed.

Chaldean Christians have some of the most ancient roots in Christian history. Despite the fact that most the Assyrian Christians have been driven from their ancestral homes, and are unlikely to ever be allowed to return, they have retained their hope. That is because they do not place their faith in humanity or their own strength. The following description of Archbishop Nona comes from another article.

I’d even go so far as to say that before me is a happy man. Indeed, he tells me: “We were always a minority. We always knew it was not important what we have but what we do. The Lord shows us how it is important to be happy in all situations.”

He emphasizes that the Christian has no other identity than as a Christian. The Gospel is what you want to conform your life to, he says. “For us, we want to practice our identity. We are not another identity. Our identity is to live like Jesus Christ.”

There is no other life, he says, for a Christian. Christ becomes everything, and so there is no life without Christ. “I think all our problems lie in this point: that in our life, sometimes we forget to live like Jesus. It’s not theology, it’s reality.”

It is not difficult to hear echoes of C.S. Lewis in his words. And these come not from a mutual acquaintance between the two . . . rather from a common acquaintance with the Messiah.

In the end, it’s not about theology, philosophies or human political institutions. It’s about a Redeemer.

_____

The icon above is of Saint Addai (Thaddeus of Edessa). He was a missionary to Mesopotamia, and contributed to the Divine Liturgy used by much of the Eastern Church. The image portrays Addai presenting the Mandylion to King Abgar of Edessa.

Beware of Zoolatry

On By robstroudIn Animals, C.S. Lewis, Faith, History, Interfaith Issues, Narnia, The Ancient Church17 Comments

royal catWhen my wife and I dated, I praised her beautiful cat when I visited her home. The cat maintained that imperial posture and attitude that is common in virtually all felines. And that came as no surprise, since she was an Egyptian Mau, one of the most ancient of breeds. She passed on long decades ago, but her haughty, regal bearing is etched in my memory.

I thought of her today when I read the following in the December issue of First Things, in the executive editor’s column.

Wandering around the American Kennel Club’s big “Meet the Breeds” event with my two youngest children recently, I saw a big banner in the cat section proclaiming that a particular breed had been considered a god by an ancient civilization. Of course, our understanding of the genuine religious impulses of ancient religions has increased, but still, one of the gifts the Jewish people have brought the world is that no one who knows about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the least bit tempted to worship cats.

I mean, would you want to worship a murderous narcissistic psychopath? This is not an image of God to make anyone happy. If you’re going to worship an animal, why not the Border Collie, frantically eager to please, or the loving, soulful-eyed Lab? Or the alert and protective German Shepherd? Or the indomitable Saint Bernard? Or the classic loyal and even-tempered mutt?

I don’t intend to offend any cat lovers by repeating this observation—my son has an affectionate tabby he rescued as a kitten while a senior in high school, that’s welcome in our home anytime. Still, as an unrepentant dog person, and “papa” to a rescued border collie, the words above brought a smile to me.

C.S. Lewis painted a graphic image of one animal-headed deity. It was Tash, the god of the Calormenes. In The Last Battle, we see that in Narnia, the reality behind the lifeless image can be most terribly revealed.

In the shadow of the trees on the far side of the clearing something was moving. It was gliding very slowly Northward. At a first glance you might have mistaken it for smoke, for it was grey and you could see things through it. But the deathly smell was not the smell of smoke. Also, this thing kept its shape instead of billowing and curling as smoke would have done. It was roughly the shape of a man but it had the head of a bird; some bird of prey with a cruel, curved beak. It had four arms which it held high above its head, stretching them out Northward as if it wanted to snatch all Narnia in its grip; and its fingers—all twenty of them—were curved like its beak and had long, pointed, bird-like claws instead of nails. It floated on the grass instead of walking, and the grass seemed to wither beneath it. . . .

The others watched it for perhaps a minute, until it streamed away into the thicker trees on their right and disappeared. Then the sun came out again, and the birds once more began to sing. Everyone started breathing properly again and moved. They had all been still as statues while it was in sight. “What was it?” said Eustace in a whisper. “I have seen it once before,” said Tirian. “But that time it was carved in stone and overlaid with gold and had solid diamonds for eyes. It was when I was no older than thou, and had gone as a guest to The Tisroc’s court in Tashbaan. He took me into the great temple of Tash. There I saw it, carved above the altar.”

“Then that—that thing—was Tash?” said Eustace.

In our world, idolatry has certainly evolved since it’s pantheistic and zoolatrous beginnings. Today we are tempted by material indulgences and corruptions aplenty. While few of us impute divinity to animals or objects of stone or wood, we don’t have to look far to find something we deem worthy of adoration.

Our favorite idol is neither beast nor mammon. It is ourselves. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain:

This act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall. For the difficulty about the first sin is that it must be very heinous, or its consequences would not be so terrible, and yet it must be something which a being free from the temptations of fallen man could conceivably have committed. The turning from God to self fulfils both conditions. It is a sin possible even to Paradisal man, because the mere existence of a self—the mere fact that we call it “me”—includes, from the first, the danger of self-idolatry. Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to myself. This is, if you like, the “weak spot” in the very nature of creation, the risk which God apparently thinks worth taking.

Now, this is a sin to which I frequently find myself succumbing. I far too often think first about my own desires and appetites . . . only later (if ever) becoming concerned with the needs of my neighbor.

No, it’s neither cat nor dog that needs to be evicted from the throne in my soul reserved for my Creator—it’s me.

C.S. Lewis’ Beloved Dogs

On By robstroudIn Animals, C.S. Lewis, Family, History15 Comments

When the internet throws unsolicited information at me, I do my best to ignore it. Yesterday I failed to duck at the right moment and Wikipedia suggested to me a “featured article” I found irresistible. It featured the earliest reference to a named dog—Abuwtiyuw—who died more than four thousand years ago and was buried in Giza in accordance with the wishes of the unknown pharaoh he guarded.

He was almost certainly a Tesem (“hunting dog”), an ancient breed resembling modern greyhounds. (Curiously, a 2004 DNA study found greyhounds are more closely related to herding breeds.)

We contemporary dog lovers understand how a pharaoh could love one of his canine companions enough to have him mummified and buried in an elaborate ceremony. In the image above, our border collie mix is juxtaposed to a hieroglyph tesem. If you’re interested in the subject, you might enjoy one of my February blogs entitled “Pets in Heaven.”

C.S. Lewis was also a dog lover. Pastor Bruce Johnson wrote a delightful article about eight of his dogs, entitled “All My Dogs Before Me.” You can read the brief but thorough article here.

Johnson walks us from Jacksie (who provided Lewis with his “adopted” name of Jack) to the friendly Ricky who was ever “anxious to be friendly.” In between, the author’s family included Tim, Pat, Mr. Papworth, Troddles, Bruce and Susie. Lewis spoke fondly of all of them, with the exception of Bruce, who possessed a predilection for barking through the night and was terribly spoiled by Mrs. Moore.

I also recommend a fine post about one of Lewis’ dogs which appeared on A Pilgrim in Narnia. It’s entitled “The Society of Tim.” The author of the blog is Brenton Dickieson, a Canadian professor and Lewisian scholar.