THE TROUBLE ABOUT GOD...

"The trouble about God is that He is like a person who never acknowledges one's letters and so, in time, you come to the conclusion either that He does not exist or that you have got the address wrong." - C. S. Lewis, to his friend Arthur Greeves

"There are things, say in learning to swim or to climb, which look dangerous and aren't. Your instructor tells you it's safe. You have good reason from past experience to trust him. Perhaps you can even see for yourself, by your own reason, that it is safe. But the crucial question is, will you be able to go on believing this when you actually see the cliff edge below you or actually feel yourself unsupported by the water? You will have no rational grounds for disbelieving. It is your senses and your imagination that are going to attack belief." - C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections

"Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes...Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable...unless you teach your moods 'where they can get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of digestion." - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

From Not a Tame Lion, Terry Glaspey's biography of C. S. Lewis: (Faith) is coming to the end of our rope and realizing that it is God who holds the other end, it is surrendering and laying down our arms. It is learning that we must stop trying to please God and recognize that He is pleased with our realization that we need Him. "It is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which we turn to God and say, 'You must do this, I can't.'" (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) We must reach a point at which we despair of all our efforts and realize that what we cannot do for ourselves, God will do for us.

(Do you see why I so love C. S. Lewis? Every time I read him, I thank God for giving me just such an older brother.)