First post from my freshly online laptop! Rock, rock on!

I rebel against the law.
I rebel against the world.
I rebel against the bubble.
I rebel against…

My middle finger is still up, but I’m the only one in the room.

If you read the post right before this, you will know that I have just read the chapter on Christian Marriage in Mere Christianity. The topic of love is one that has interested me for a while. I never really understand it. Everyone talks about it, it’s all over the media, I’ve sat through numerous youth group bible studies about it, it just seems to be pertinent. But however many opinions on the matter that I hear, the question never seems solved. Well, Clive seems to have a good one, so I though I’d post about it.

He claims there are two kind of love (and this has to do with m last post as well): being ‘in love’, and to love someone. He doesn’t give descriptive terms, about he defined being ‘in love’ as that first sort of rush one gets. “It helps to make us generous and courageous, it opens out eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, and it subordinates (especially at first) out merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust.” This is the type of love you hear about in the media a lot. Lewis says that this love is good, though often fleeting. It doesn’t last forever. He points to this as a reason for much divorce. People think this is all there is, and when it runs out, they do not belong together anymore.

We then arrive at the quote from the last post. When that original bout of being ‘in love’ is over, there is still something more. To love the person. “Love in the second sense - distinct form ‘being in love’ - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity maintained by the will deliberately strengthened by habit.”

I have no real opinion on this all. It sounds right, and Lewis oft is. Tell me what you think. Oh, and he didn’t mention how the first bit of love comes about. Tell me, how do you all believe it does. Is it a “choice of the will,” or something uncontrolled? Inquireing minds wants to know.

I’m still reading Mere Christianity, what can I say, I get distracted easily. Anyway, in reading Lewis’ chapter on Christian Marriage, I’ve been inspired to write two xanga entries. This is the first.

“This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying  that a thing will not really live unless it dies first. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go - let it die away - go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow - and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a board, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim then to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy”
 - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

When I read this (and what surrounded it), I couldn’t help but think about being a Christian. When I first became a Christian, there was an excitement, and energy: I think we all knew it. It was a fervour that had me, believe it or not, spending upwards of two hours a night in prayer for almost a year. Eventually, I came down from this emotional high. I felt like my faith was dieing all together. My goal then became getting back to that place, getting back to that state of mind I was once in. I idolized it, I had to get there.

Enter: isolationism. This became my means. Maybe because I was coached in the art by your friendly neighbourhood youth group, maybe it was something else, I can’t guess it now. Either way, I used it to try and become the person I once was. I couldn’t focus on moving forward, on what God may be doing in the present. He was doing nothing unless he was making me more like the emotionally driven, and quite naïve youth of my past.

Before long, I was sick of it all. I became disillusioned. Haha, I’ve told this story with so many spins on it; it’s a complex story I guess. I rebelled against emotion; I rebelled against isolationism; it all drove me nuts. I was spending my time “endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.” Futility, it seems. What I need to realise was that there was more then that. More then the person who I was, is the person who I can be. That place I was at was a  good place, but it’s no way to live a Christian life. It’s sheer emotion, and while it can carry one for a while (and I believe God made it to work this way), it eventually becomes unfulfilling, and one must more on, they must “go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow(s).”

On to topic the second: love.