I'm with you. Time with the Savior, who is Himself our daily bread, is the primary way to recharge spiritually. And that sounds like a super beneficial practice before going into the Word. I do something like that every now and then, but maybe implementing a more regular practice of prayer before reading would be best.
Love how deeply you self-reflect. Thanks for sharing!
"[The christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us..." (p. 63).
This is a difficult thing to comprehend sometimes especially with a performative mindset that keeps us striving to be good. It is an exhaustive cycle and we can fall into it easily. Whether you grew up feeling like you had to be good to receive love or praise, the examples and lists can go on I'm sure. Feeling like our relationship with God is more check-listy and transactional than resting and knowing that we are loved therefore wanting to do good because of the love He gives. It reminds me of Romans 2, where Paul speaks of God's kindness that is meant to lead us to repentance. God's grace should lead us to repentance and produce fruit in our lives as evidence of salvation. Not because we are wanting to work to earn His favor but because of the kindness, forgiveness, grace, mercy, love He offers.
I grew up in the church, but separated and veered off around 2017/2018. I couldn’t reconcile the teachings I’d faced in my childhood church with my own moral compass and ideas of “right” and “wrong.” I felt frequently like the pastor was yelling at us in the sermons. Similarly, 2017/2018 is the first point in my life that I remember noticing politics and beginning to develop an ideology for the first time. Funny enough, it’s felt like everyone is yelling at everyone else since about then, too 😅 It was around this time that I decided that if I couldn’t see myself and my beliefs within the Christian faith, then I didn’t want it.
My mid- to late 20s and my corresponding venture back into religion have been marked by lots of debunking, unlearning, and reframing of essentially every experience I’d previously had with the church. I was pointed back toward the church when I realized that all the best people I knew and admired were deeply religious and faithful. These were people that I saw myself in, and I rationalized that the church can’t be all that bad if people like them were there.
Since then, my re-learning of Christianity has been lesson after lesson that has delivered many comforts. As odd as it may sound, Lewis delivered several of these comforts to me while I moved through these chapters. The first example was right away on pg. 35 — “you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.” This statement was such a sigh of relief to me because I’ve wondered for a long time if we don’t all have at least a tiny bit of truth within our religious ideologies. This felt like the permission I needed to release a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying in regard to Christian superiority.
This idea, to me, also makes the infighting between different Christian denominations seem silly. I remember participating in a volunteer event with my church as a child. We were at a local gas station offering to wash windows for the customers. Of course, we had to introduce ourselves and state who we were with. I remember clearly that I introduced myself as Alyssa with Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church to one woman, and she responded with “Yeah, and I’m the Catholic that goes to church down the street.” She promptly slammed her door and drove off, no windows washed. This was silly to me then, and it’s still silly to me now. If we can agree that Christianity is the most correct of all the religions, why does denomination matter? Why do we need to “out-Christian” one another?
————————————
Pages 47-48, where Lewis discusses free will and automata, were also very interesting to me. The automata section seemed to be almost a little bit too “on the nose” with regard to today’s society and AI. He says, “A world of automata…would hardly be worth creating.” This immediately made me think of AI and the role it is currently playing to take down social media, and the Internet.
Society and popular culture has quickly grasped on to AI. To me, the anti-AI movement started with art as people fed (stolen) art to AI and trained it to replicate individual art styles. Within my circles, as a collegiate artist at the time, this caused uproar. Since then, and it’s only been a 5ish years, AI has leeched into everything — art, music, content, jobs, and even Google. It is to a point that you can no longer escape it, and it becomes more convincing by the day.
My point here is that this “automata” or the pumping of inauthentic, soulless content into every aspect of our lives, is actually making the online sphere a less pleasant and desirable place to spend time. Whether we admit it or not, social media and the Internet is a tool by which you can transport yourself elsewhere and pretend that you are living someone else’s life. We can skip over the parasocial implications of this for now and just get to the point — AI removes the allure of this entire behavior loop. Who wants to envision that they’re a robot?
I hope, actually, that AI will push people offline and back into reality in order to seek connection with others. At the end of the day, I think that’s all social media scrolling is — a desire for connection and fulfillment. When we do, we’ll be headed in the right direction of feeding ourselves with Him (like Lewis describes on pg. 50).
Love your recap! Really liked the phrase "salvific work" ... never seen the word "salvific" before 🤓
Really liked the first chapter (okay, I really liked all of them 😅).
I have encountered a handful of people who say there isn't one right way, that that is not fair. But "as in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others" was a kind yet firm response 👌🏽
And, I can't imagine letting an atheist know that their thinking is just too simple, that "if the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning." However, that little part did bring a smile to my face 😁
Chapter Two brought more people in my life to mind. I recently had a convo with a family member who complained that the Bible is too hard to understand. I gave her a similar response to what Lewis gave, "if we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something is not more simple."
I really appreciated how he went about explaining evil and how it is allowed in this world.
Chapter Three was great. Many lines were underlined ☺️ Certainly reminded me of Lee Strobel and how he presented that Jesus must be a liar, lunatic, or Lord. You stated my fav quote about God designing the human machine to run on Himself 🙌 Encouraging reminder that I need my daily Bread.
Okay, I think I'm done for now 😉 Can't wait to read what others thought!
How do you get your Daily Bread? How do you personally take in the fuel that is God for your self to run on? What does that look like practically for you?
Well, I am a checklist lady. I like to cross things off my list and consider myself accomplished when they're done. This doesn't really benefit me at all when it comes to refueling spiritually. And I am still in the sanctifying process of learning this.
Oswald Chambers wrote a lil warning about not letting your Christian habits become your god. Ouch.
And Greg Morse wrote a wonderfully convicting article where he asked, "Would my life of hurried prayers, an hour or two on Sundays, and a pinch of morning devotions, sealed with some sincerity and soothed with Christian radio, really last in suffering?" Also, ouch.
Ultimately, the food for my spirit comes from spending time with my Savior.
I cannot just ☑️ one Bible chapter read or ☑️ five minutes spent in prayer to then call myself good and refueled. I wish it worked like that, but it doesn't 🙅♀️
I recently listened to a sermon by Marshall Segal about the FEAST acronym prayer he suggests before diving into God's Word:
Focus my mind
Enlighten my eyes
Address my sin
Satisfy my soul
Train my hands
Do I come out of my prayer and Bible time refreshed and refocused on what God has for me? Am I ready to pour myself out as an offering for Him to others?
If the answer is "no," that means I need to circle back with Him before the end of the day iykwim 😉
Something that was really interesting for me to think about in the portion of the reading you're referencing here is what kinds of activities make me feel refueled.
The #1 thing I can think of is going to church. This makes me feel so light, joyful, connected, abundant, grateful, etc. All the things! The other thing that immediately comes to mind that elicits a similar response is exercise, whether that's yoga, a spin class, or a long walk.
It's known that exercise is one of the most effective ways to resolve stress. It makes sense that going to church and connecting spiritually would also have stress-relieving properties. I think I need to pay more attention to other stress-relieving activities to find out what else can give me that post-sermon feeling!
I'm with you. Time with the Savior, who is Himself our daily bread, is the primary way to recharge spiritually. And that sounds like a super beneficial practice before going into the Word. I do something like that every now and then, but maybe implementing a more regular practice of prayer before reading would be best.
Love how deeply you self-reflect. Thanks for sharing!
"[The christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us..." (p. 63).
This is a difficult thing to comprehend sometimes especially with a performative mindset that keeps us striving to be good. It is an exhaustive cycle and we can fall into it easily. Whether you grew up feeling like you had to be good to receive love or praise, the examples and lists can go on I'm sure. Feeling like our relationship with God is more check-listy and transactional than resting and knowing that we are loved therefore wanting to do good because of the love He gives. It reminds me of Romans 2, where Paul speaks of God's kindness that is meant to lead us to repentance. God's grace should lead us to repentance and produce fruit in our lives as evidence of salvation. Not because we are wanting to work to earn His favor but because of the kindness, forgiveness, grace, mercy, love He offers.
I grew up in the church, but separated and veered off around 2017/2018. I couldn’t reconcile the teachings I’d faced in my childhood church with my own moral compass and ideas of “right” and “wrong.” I felt frequently like the pastor was yelling at us in the sermons. Similarly, 2017/2018 is the first point in my life that I remember noticing politics and beginning to develop an ideology for the first time. Funny enough, it’s felt like everyone is yelling at everyone else since about then, too 😅 It was around this time that I decided that if I couldn’t see myself and my beliefs within the Christian faith, then I didn’t want it.
My mid- to late 20s and my corresponding venture back into religion have been marked by lots of debunking, unlearning, and reframing of essentially every experience I’d previously had with the church. I was pointed back toward the church when I realized that all the best people I knew and admired were deeply religious and faithful. These were people that I saw myself in, and I rationalized that the church can’t be all that bad if people like them were there.
Since then, my re-learning of Christianity has been lesson after lesson that has delivered many comforts. As odd as it may sound, Lewis delivered several of these comforts to me while I moved through these chapters. The first example was right away on pg. 35 — “you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.” This statement was such a sigh of relief to me because I’ve wondered for a long time if we don’t all have at least a tiny bit of truth within our religious ideologies. This felt like the permission I needed to release a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying in regard to Christian superiority.
This idea, to me, also makes the infighting between different Christian denominations seem silly. I remember participating in a volunteer event with my church as a child. We were at a local gas station offering to wash windows for the customers. Of course, we had to introduce ourselves and state who we were with. I remember clearly that I introduced myself as Alyssa with Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church to one woman, and she responded with “Yeah, and I’m the Catholic that goes to church down the street.” She promptly slammed her door and drove off, no windows washed. This was silly to me then, and it’s still silly to me now. If we can agree that Christianity is the most correct of all the religions, why does denomination matter? Why do we need to “out-Christian” one another?
————————————
Pages 47-48, where Lewis discusses free will and automata, were also very interesting to me. The automata section seemed to be almost a little bit too “on the nose” with regard to today’s society and AI. He says, “A world of automata…would hardly be worth creating.” This immediately made me think of AI and the role it is currently playing to take down social media, and the Internet.
Society and popular culture has quickly grasped on to AI. To me, the anti-AI movement started with art as people fed (stolen) art to AI and trained it to replicate individual art styles. Within my circles, as a collegiate artist at the time, this caused uproar. Since then, and it’s only been a 5ish years, AI has leeched into everything — art, music, content, jobs, and even Google. It is to a point that you can no longer escape it, and it becomes more convincing by the day.
My point here is that this “automata” or the pumping of inauthentic, soulless content into every aspect of our lives, is actually making the online sphere a less pleasant and desirable place to spend time. Whether we admit it or not, social media and the Internet is a tool by which you can transport yourself elsewhere and pretend that you are living someone else’s life. We can skip over the parasocial implications of this for now and just get to the point — AI removes the allure of this entire behavior loop. Who wants to envision that they’re a robot?
I hope, actually, that AI will push people offline and back into reality in order to seek connection with others. At the end of the day, I think that’s all social media scrolling is — a desire for connection and fulfillment. When we do, we’ll be headed in the right direction of feeding ourselves with Him (like Lewis describes on pg. 50).
Love your recap! Really liked the phrase "salvific work" ... never seen the word "salvific" before 🤓
Really liked the first chapter (okay, I really liked all of them 😅).
I have encountered a handful of people who say there isn't one right way, that that is not fair. But "as in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others" was a kind yet firm response 👌🏽
And, I can't imagine letting an atheist know that their thinking is just too simple, that "if the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning." However, that little part did bring a smile to my face 😁
Chapter Two brought more people in my life to mind. I recently had a convo with a family member who complained that the Bible is too hard to understand. I gave her a similar response to what Lewis gave, "if we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something is not more simple."
I really appreciated how he went about explaining evil and how it is allowed in this world.
Chapter Three was great. Many lines were underlined ☺️ Certainly reminded me of Lee Strobel and how he presented that Jesus must be a liar, lunatic, or Lord. You stated my fav quote about God designing the human machine to run on Himself 🙌 Encouraging reminder that I need my daily Bread.
Okay, I think I'm done for now 😉 Can't wait to read what others thought!
How do you get your Daily Bread? How do you personally take in the fuel that is God for your self to run on? What does that look like practically for you?
Well, I am a checklist lady. I like to cross things off my list and consider myself accomplished when they're done. This doesn't really benefit me at all when it comes to refueling spiritually. And I am still in the sanctifying process of learning this.
Oswald Chambers wrote a lil warning about not letting your Christian habits become your god. Ouch.
And Greg Morse wrote a wonderfully convicting article where he asked, "Would my life of hurried prayers, an hour or two on Sundays, and a pinch of morning devotions, sealed with some sincerity and soothed with Christian radio, really last in suffering?" Also, ouch.
Ultimately, the food for my spirit comes from spending time with my Savior.
I cannot just ☑️ one Bible chapter read or ☑️ five minutes spent in prayer to then call myself good and refueled. I wish it worked like that, but it doesn't 🙅♀️
I recently listened to a sermon by Marshall Segal about the FEAST acronym prayer he suggests before diving into God's Word:
Focus my mind
Enlighten my eyes
Address my sin
Satisfy my soul
Train my hands
Do I come out of my prayer and Bible time refreshed and refocused on what God has for me? Am I ready to pour myself out as an offering for Him to others?
If the answer is "no," that means I need to circle back with Him before the end of the day iykwim 😉
Something that was really interesting for me to think about in the portion of the reading you're referencing here is what kinds of activities make me feel refueled.
The #1 thing I can think of is going to church. This makes me feel so light, joyful, connected, abundant, grateful, etc. All the things! The other thing that immediately comes to mind that elicits a similar response is exercise, whether that's yoga, a spin class, or a long walk.
It's known that exercise is one of the most effective ways to resolve stress. It makes sense that going to church and connecting spiritually would also have stress-relieving properties. I think I need to pay more attention to other stress-relieving activities to find out what else can give me that post-sermon feeling!