Good Short Read

I received some books for my birthday and one of them was "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis. While Lewis is probably one of the best apologist for God this book shows the opposite side of that coin. In this book Lewis struggles with his faith after his wife dies. He likens his faith to a "deck of cards" in which he didn't know what faith was until he was overwhelmed and the cards came crumbling down. This book is a very short read and very interesting I recommend picking it up. Here are some notable quotes from the book:

Is God a clown who whips away your bowl of soup one moment in order, next moment, to replace it with another bowl of the same soup? Even nature isn't such a clown as that. She never plays exactly the same tune twice.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it; you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbor, but my neighbor. For don't we often make this mistake as regards to people who are still alive--who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture--almost the precis-we've made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow a square or round? Probably half the questions we ask--half our great theological and metaphysical problems--are like that.