The Horse and His Boy

In 2010 a band known as A Horse and His Boy released an EP entitled Trilogy. From that recording is a haunting song called “Kramer’s Wall.” Jackson Harper (formerly Seth Harper) calls himself a “scrappy Narnian” and thus identifies himself with a genre of literature and music that sees light and darkness, and right and wrong in a world of chaos and apathy. His images are highly influenced by C.S. Lewis’ writings and particularly the book that bears almost the same name as the band. He is a talented singer-songwriter from whom I hope we hear much more. I offer you the lyrics from “Kramer’s Wall” followed by my impressions from the song.

Kramer’s Wall

(Listen while you read)

In the land of apathy

There’s a pretty girl who waits for me

I was standing there when she looked down

From Kramer’s Wall at the edge of town

I stayed ‘til all the rest were gone

And my pretty girl she stood alone

She wouldn’t leave, I asked her why

This my friends, was her reply

She said, shadows fly away from me

They cannot face the light you see

But if they come I’ll fight them all

So, I’m standing here on Kramer’s Wall 

What injustice had decreed

This lonely life she had to lead

I pitied her but didn’t stay

And the road I followed passed away

From that day on I had no rest

And my heart kept burning in my chest

I couldn’t stand my fatal choice

For every night I heard her voice

She said, if you are who I hope you are

You can never run too far

I will never let you fall

I’m watching you from Kramer’s Wall

I realized I would rather be

In chains with her than alone and free

She had shown the kind of love

The greatest ones had been made of

Her haunting words inside my head

Revived the heart I thought was dead

So, I took the higher call

And stood with her on Kramer’s Wall

I said, everything may come undone

The sky may fall and bring the sun

You and I are standing tall

Here on top of Kramer’s Wall

Nothing breaks a lover’s soul

Nothing makes the young grow old

Except the time that kills us all

But there is no time on Kramer’s Wall

I will never let you fall

I will stand with you on Kramer’s Wall

Music and lyrics by Seth Harper

Produced by Andrew Osenga

All rights reserved

At first glance/listen, it sounds like a simple “boy meets girl, boy ignores girl, boy can’t get girl out of his mind, boy goes back to girl, and boy pledges his love to the girl for life.” Simple enough, right? But, at second glance, there is more to this song. The girl is the real hero of the song and she is resolute in her stance against darkness. We get the impression that all of Hell could come against this woman and she would stand upon a crumbling wall until the last vestige of light was extinguished! Yet the darkness would never overcome, and the light would never be extinguished because of this valiant woman. 

The man in this song cannot escape the beauty and justice of this woman and the more he tries to walk his own path, the more she haunts and burns his heart. While others around them are lost in apathy, indecision, immorality, injustice, and indifference, the woman stands alone and draws others into her pursuit of justice and light. The man is drawn in and stands with her and then sees her for her beauty and grace. He pledges his love and the two of them now stand resolute against the apathy of the land. The two stand timelessly like Greek gods in perfect union and perfect defence, there on top of Kramer’s Wall.

Do Faith and Science Conflict?

Many are asking the question, "Do faith and science conflict?" and many would say they know the answer. In this message delivered at Bow Valley Christian Church on January 7, 2018, I offer the answer of one who has worked in and studied the sciences while also living and studying a life of faith. I pray that it might be a helpful voice in the midst of much confusion. To hear this message, select the links embedded in the text.

Good without God?

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” (The Brothers Karamazov). Others have taken up this thought and asked the question, “Can we be good without God?” and John Stackhouse asks the question this way,

Are there adequate grounds to make categorical moral judgments if one jettisons belief in a divinity at least something like the God of Abraham—a God who is all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, and who has communicated a sense of goodness to humanity and expects us to discern and follow it?[1]

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Christian who wrote from a perspective that suggested that God exists and that we need God if we are ever to make judgements about good and evil. On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book, Beyond Good and Evil, came at things from an atheistic, or at least agnostic, position and concluded that we live in a world where there are no moral absolutes. He would suggest that the voices we hear today are merely the views of individuals or groups. Each may be strongly convinced of the obvious and intrinsic rightness of their view but we have no measure by which to choose the views of the white-supremacist society over the Christian church group or humanist think-tank.

Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, two brilliant thinkers of the nineteenth century, make it clear that such determinations indeed come down to a matter of faith. We either start from a perspective of faith in the idea that God does not exist, without being able to prove it; or we start from a perspective that God does exist, without being able to prove it. Once we have chosen one of these two paths, things become clearer, but not completely clear. Stackhouse points out that we still must use the mind we have been given (or for the atheist, the mind that has assembled out of the primordial stardust) to make decisions about how we will live.

Stackhouse concludes that,

… we may find that we lack good (enough) reason for holding to this or that opinion, and we might therefore be open to changing it. We may find instead that we have very strong grounds to keep believing what we believe, and so we will. In both cases, we are better off taking the time to think things through, rather than just blithely (or bellicosely) assuming we’re right.[2]

Paul, the Apostle, concludes that, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT).

---

[1] Can we be coherently good without God? John Stackhouse blog, 2017-12-19, http://www.contextwithlornadueck.com/2017/12/16/im-sorry-patton-oswalt-but-we-have-to-pick/

[2] Can we be coherently good without God? John Stackhouse blog, 2017-12-19, http://www.contextwithlornadueck.com/2017/12/16/im-sorry-patton-oswalt-but-we-have-to-pick/

There is But One Good

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce (1945)

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was brilliant at saying things in ways that make sense and challenge our thoughts. The thought expressed in the previous quote is one which flows through much of my writing and is particularly evident in the novel I have written. To some who read this blog, God is someone that they have come to know and are beginning to understand. To other readers, God is a concept to which they find their minds returning again and again. Still others would say they can no longer believe in a God of any sort. Most of us believe in “good;” and “good” directs us toward something. The question that remains for each of us relates to the direction in which we are pointed. Does “good” point us toward humanity; the universe; or to God? May our hearts and minds lead us to the truth.

Flannery O'Conner on Emotionally Satisfying Faith

Good words from more than 60 years ago by one of the great defenders of the faith.

“But I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does not satisfy emotionally for the person brought up under many forms of false intellectual discipline such as 19^th-century mechanism, for instance. Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God’s existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean that God ceases to exist. M. Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of less stature than he. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion.”

-       Flannery O'Conner in a letter to Betty Hester, September 6, 1955.[1]

---

[1] http://theamericanreader.com/6-september-1955-flannery-oconnor/

Thy will be done

There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."
- “The Great Divorce” (1945)