I read this in a very distant acquaintance's blog (ie: I think I only met her once at some sort of round-a-bout theater party or something... I honestly cant remember... much less why it was saved in my bookmarks... guess God wanted me to read it). Anywho, I thought I'd just quote a few parts here and there and give you the gist of it... but alas, the whole thing was so good and completely related to my own life (and spirituality) that I figured I'd jank the whole thing.
So here it is, in its entirity, from alisonkelly.wordpress.com:
Recently I’ve read a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time now: CS Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. If you have not read it I highly recommend that you do! It’s incredible.
The book deals with love as an idol. Even something as wholesome as motherly love can become an idol. Storge, philia, and eros love are all encountered within the main character and each becomes an idol to such an extent that one of my favorite lines comes out:
“They say the loving and the devouring are all one, don’t they?”
To love someone so much that you stifle them. You would destroy them before they left or hurt you. It is the nagging, oppressive, possessive kind of love. It is the kind of love that needs the other person so terribly that you place expectation on them that no human could ever meet. This sort of love destroys. Such love can be seen a number of ways. It is found in the oppressive wife who wants to change her husband “for his own good.” It is in the father who wants his son to live up to what he’s always wanted in a son. It is expecting a friendship to save you from yourself. And once that husband or son or friend resists or doesn’t do exactly what they had expected, all hell breaks loose. The one “in love” will grip even tighter, push even harder. They will manipulate, frustrate, and guilt-trip the recipient of their love until the desired response.
In reading this book I immediately looked to my own life at any idols I might have. Instead I saw the idols that were once burned out of me. I once loved someone so much that I would have married him. However, it wasn’t him that I loved. It was the desire for escape and freedom. It was wanting to find my identity in anything other than Christ. I wanted to put my own problems on him and have the marriage fix me. And it never would have. The Lord burnt that out of me, and thankfully saved me from a marriage that would have been doomed by my idolatry.
But at the time I would never have known I had an idol. It wasn’t until, after the Lord took it away, that I saw my state for what it really was. I spoke honestly and frankly with God. And, hearing my complaints, I saw the sin for the first time. Hence why my favorite line in this book comes at the end:
“My complaint was my answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean…when the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech that has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do no speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
I think if I had read this book a couple of years ago I would not have understood it. Now, having gone through the process of forced honesty, of having an idol burned out of me, I understand.
Another Lewis book that will always stand the test of time in my heart!
Whelp... that's about the long and the short of it, I guess. I start rereading tonight.
God can use anything, guys. Even a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's blog from 2 months ago to open up your darkened eyes to your own shortcomings... and prove that He's
still God, He
still loves you (in spite of yourself), and that He's
still in the forgiving business if you only ask it. It's like he's got a big ol' "delete" key :D
