Tag: Prison

C.S. Lewis & Rigmarole

On By robstroudIn Advice to Readers, C.S. Lewis, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle Earth, Modern Life, Mythology, Poetry, Words, Writing9 Comments

I hope my confusion is not due to a decline in my mental faculties. But it seems to me politicians are becoming even more incoherent than they’ve always been.

Is it me? Or, are you also amazed at how some of them appear to be babbling half the time?

C.S. Lewis was a master of communication. And some of his observations about how poorly some people communicate can be insightful.

Listen to this verse from a poem entitled “The Prudent Jailer” which he wrote in 1947. (It deserves to be read out loud.)

Some walls cannot a prison make
Half so secure as rigmarole.*

Lewis wasn’t referring to political jargon when he wrote this poem, but it seems quite apropos in a number of contexts.

For example, consider a recent article from the American Institute for Economic Research. Jon Sanders applies Lewis’ poem to foreboding aspects the government’s response to the pandemic.

The poem originated not in political allegory, but as a critique of unimaginative literary criticism. Notwithstanding, the Jailer is a diabolical figure, and his prudence is this: he imprisons with words, not walls. . . .

The Jailer has them imprisoned by their own thoughts, while he keeps them focused ever on the presumption of a prison. He doesn’t want them thinking of anything else.

This post isn’t about politics. I detest the subject as a whole, and find it particularly corrosive to conversation as elections draw near.

The verse I cited above simply evoked for me the power of words to distort and, yes, imprison. Lewis’ use of rigmarole⁑ (a word sadly out of vogue) highlights the fact that the crippling words themselves are often nonsensical.

Other colorful synonyms that we might hear in the company of our seniors could include balderdash, poppycock, or perhaps even malarkey.

In a 1940 letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, Lewis applies “balderdash” to describe art and literature done “for their own sake.”

I do most thoroughly agree with what you say about Art and Literature. To my mind they are only healthy when they are either (a) Definitely the handmaids of religious, or at least moral, truth – or (b) Admittedly aiming at nothing but innocent recreation or entertainment. . . .

But the great serious irreligious art – art for art’s sake – is all balderdash; and, incidentally, never exists when art is really flourishing.

Fortunately, such words rarely become completely obsolete.

A noteworthy mythopoeic⁂ scholar, Brenton Dickieson, used “balderdash” quite skillfully not that long ago.

“The Prudent Jailer” was originally published in 1947 under the mundane title, “The Romantics.”

Since you’ve read this column to its conclusion, allow me to reward your diligence by presenting the poem in its entirety.

The Prudent Jailer

Always the old nostalgia? Yes.
We still remember times before
We had learned to wear the prison dress
Or steel rings rubbed our ankles sore.

Escapists? Yes. Looking at bars
And chains, we think of files; and then
Of black nights without moon or stars
And luck befriending hunted men.

Still when we hear the trains at night
We envy the free travelers, whirled
In how few moments past the sight
Of the blind wall that bounds our world.

Our Jailer (well may he) prefers
Our thoughts should keep a narrower range.
‘The proper study of prisoners
is prison,’ he tells us. Is it strange?

And if old freedom in our glance
Betrays itself, he calls it names
‘Dope’-‘Wishful thinking’-or ‘Romance,’
Till tireless propaganda tames.

All but the strong whose hearts they break,
All but the few whose faith is whole.
Some walls cannot a prison make
Half so secure as rigmarole.

* Thank you to Jon whose comment below pointed out the connection between Lewis’ allusion to the very famous poem “To Althea, from Prison,” written by Richard Lovelace in 1642. “Stone walls doe not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage…”

⁑ Some people in the States will be more familiar with the variant “rigamarole.”

⁂ Mythopoeia is a modern literary genre in which the author creates a fictional mythology. The finest example of such writing comes from the pen of J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of Middle Earth.

Slippery Crimes

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Faith, History12 Comments

willeIn the hierarchy of criminals within the penitentiary system, murderers are feared, crime lords respected, and pedophiles despised. Where, one wonders, did the butter forgers rank?

Alongside Machine Gun Kelly, and my namesake, the Birdman of Alcatraz, the Pen at Leavenworth housed violators of the Oleomargarine Act of 1886. Notorious, they were not.

Take a look at Chuck Wille’s mug shot above. I wonder what bank robbers and car thieves thought of his dandy mustache.

wirthJoe Wirth, pictured to the right, looks more like a vaudeville comedian than a hardened criminal. I can easily imagine naive people being duped by someone who appeared as unthreatening as Wirth.

mcmonigleJohn McMonigle, prisoner 8468, was not deterred by his stint in prison. He was sent to Leavenworth twice, due to an encore violation of the oleomargarine law.

The word oleomargarine probably sounds alien to most young people. They know what margarine is—well, some of them do—but the oleo part likely sounds more like a cookie than a butter substitute.

Oleomargarine was made from beef fat. A chemical compound of olein and margarine. Olein is “a colorless to yellowish, oily, water-insoluble liquid, C57 H104 O6.” How appetizing!

Most people today opt for margarine made from refined vegetable oils, but even today animal “by-products” can find their way into margarine products.

I recall growing up when oleo was still part of the American lexicon. My mother used it as a sort of synonym for margarine. That faded as I grew, but persisted long enough for me to vividly remember it.

Washington State was one of those with a strong dairy industry. Such locations drew clear demarcations between butter and its “substitutes.” The dairy organizations vigorously challenged the “unnatural” competition.

The primary battle line was whether or not oleo could colored to make it appear more like the food it was replacing. You see, in its natural state it doesn’t look nearly as tasty as when a yellow coloring was kneaded into it.

Congress taxed the invention differently. Ten cents a pound for the yellow version, but only .25 cents (1/4 of a cent) per pound for the raw version. Amazingly, this tax did not end until 1951. Homemakers would color their own oleomargarine to get their unsuspecting children to eat the stuff.

Nowadays, some people prefer margarine to butter. And, even when it was inferior to current standards, if butter was unavailable, most people would be delighted to have access to the alternative.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 32 states—with strong dairy lobbies—banned the coloring of margarine by businesses.

Naturally, where there is a law, there will be lawbreakers. Presumably private citizens were able to continue camouflaging the material in the secrecy of their own homes. The three criminals on this page violated the Oleomargarine Act. And they paid for their illicit marketeering.

C.S. Lewis & Margarine

Regular readers of Mere Inkling may be wondering how in the world this subject connects with the Oxford don.

Lewis wrote a wonderful essay, entitled “Religion: Reality or Substitute?” You can find it in the Christian Reflections collection, edited by Walter Hooper.

The message of the essay is that we cannot completely trust our own experiences. Some people, he says, are inclined to think that the spiritual realm is a sort of “substitute” for reality, rather than real itself. Among the vibrant illustrations he provides for this is the following.

‘Substitutes’ suggest wartime feeding. Well, there too I have an example. During the last war, as at present, we had to eat margarine instead of butter. When I began doing so I couldn’t tell the difference between them. For the first week or so, I would have said, ‘You may call the margarine a substitute if you like, but it is actually just as good as the real thing.’ But by the end of the war I could never again have mistaken one for the other and I never wanted to see margarine again.

This is different from the previous examples because here I started knowing which, in fact, was the substitute. But the point is that mere immediate taste did not at first confirm this bit of knowledge. It was only after long experience that the margarine revealed itself to my senses as the inferior.

Lewis’ essay argues that “There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve,” so it is necessary that we place our truth (faith) in something more reliable than our own impressions.

Lewis is right. Just as there have been secular criminals who sought to profit off of the misrepresentation of oleomargarine, there are religious hypocrites and vermin who desire to deceive people about divine truths.

The deepest purpose of all things dark, is to draw people away from the Light. Evil seeks to substitute the lie for the Truth. It has been this way ever since our first parents resided in the Garden.

Whether one prefers butter or margarine, is left to individual taste, and of little consequence. However, whether we choose to consign ourselves to death, when freely offered Life, is something of eternal consequence.

_____

The criminal masterminds cited here are identified further at the National Archives page subtitled, “Crimes against Butter.”

 

 

Theological Training

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Christianity, Faith, Military Chaplaincy, Ordained Ministry20 Comments

I’m proud I graduated from a well-respected seminary. And I’m proud of following that Master of Divinity degree with an advanced Master of Theology degree in Patristics. And that’s precisely the problem . . . I’m proud.

As a Christian, I recognize that pride is one of the most destructive and insidious sins. As a pastor and chaplain, I have seen all too frequently how pride expressly targets members of the clergy. Our vulnerability to the temptation to be proud is one of the common chinks in the armor of the ordained.

C.S. Lewis recognized this fact. In A Severe Mercy, he wrote:

I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man. St. Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation; and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap. . . .

In fact, the change [to a Christian ministry] might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

Lewis understood that “advancement” in ecclesiastical contexts can mask the inner heart and be mistaken as a form of holiness when it is in actuality vanity. I was reminded of this weakness in clerical armor recently, when I read a tribute to a Chinese Christian whose name is little known beyond his homeland. Dr. Sun Yi-yin, known in America as “Freddie Sun,” died in August at the age of 76. A professor of Geology, he lost his faculty position for failing to deny Christ.

Like thousands of other Christians living under the atheist regime, he was imprisoned for his work in establishing churches and Bible schools. He raised the funds to start no fewer than 154 of these training centers, and was key to the equipping of approximately 60,000 underground pastors and teachers. The “underground” Church in China is distinguished from the government-controlled “Three-Self Patriotic Movement.”

For his labors, Sun endured a decade in a Chinese labor camp. (His wife, Dorothy Chang, was also imprisoned. Rather than reducing his faith, during his sojourn in the harshest of conditions, Sun experienced a personal revival and his zeal increased.

His story is amazing, but here is the aspect that hit the mark in the center of my conscience. In his autobiography, The Man in the Fiery Furnace, Sun described his imprisonment as his “seminary” experience: “Instead of learning homiletics, hermeneutics, Greek, and Hebrew, I was being taught the greater lessons of obedience, submission, forgiveness, love, endurance, and patience.”

Now, I am grateful that God has preserved me from the “fiery furnace,” but I do long to experience the fruit of the spirit that Sun so richly harvested in prison. While not dismissing the importance of the classical subjects of homiletics and hermeneutics, as the Apostle says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-3, ESV).

In The Problem of Pain, Lewis’ treatise on suffering, he addresses how God can redeem terrible things such as unjust punishments. For those desiring to understand how an omnipotent God can allow evil to occur, Lewis’ presentation is quite helpful. And, the life example of Dr. Sun provides a superb example of its validity.

I advance six propositions necessary to complete our account of human suffering which do not arise out of one another and must therefore be given in an arbitrary order. 1. There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by ‘judgement’ (i.e., social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying from city to city, and may pray to be spared it, as Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane.

But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads. In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute.

Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse—though by mercy it may save—those who do the simple evil. And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil.

I thank God for the life and testimony of Sun. I pray God will reap an abundance of believers in China, and elsewhere, due to his faithfulness. And I thank God for using Sun’s words to cause me to stop in the midst of my busy activities and take the time to examine my own heart and motives.