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The Obstinate Toy Soldiers | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  I'm really glad you could join us today.
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  It's good to be here. If you're listening to this, you
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  probably fit the profile of what we like to call the learner.
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  You're not here for just the inspirational quotes or the
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  surface level stuff. Right, you want to get into the
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  Gears of it all. Exactly You want to understand
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  the machinery of the Christian life.
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  You want to know how the theology we talk about actually
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  hits the pavement of daily living, And, to be honest, why
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  it often feels so incredibly hard to do what we know we're
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  supposed to do. And that difficulty is a real
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  thing. It's not something to be brushed
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  aside. We're not interested in
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  platitudes today. We really want to look at the
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  mechanics of our redemption. Why is it a struggle?
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  And what has actually been done about that struggle?
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  To get at those questions, we're pulling a classic off the shelf.
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  We're going to be looking at CS Lewis and specifically a section
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  from Mere Christianity. A book that almost everyone in
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  this space has read or at least knows about.
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  For sure. And I know everyone quotes
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  Lewis. He's kind of the coffee mug
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  theologian for a lot of people, which is fine.
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  But we're going to a specific chapter that I think it's
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  overlooked sometimes because it's it's a little weird.
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  It is. It's the chapter he titled The
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  Obstinate Toy Soldiers. Such a strange image to use for
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  these grand doctrines, but I would argue it's one of his most
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  precise and helpful analogies for understanding the
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  incarnation and what we call sanctification.
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  Why do you say that? Because it Catholics the
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  resistance we feel toward God, that inner friction better than
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  almost anything else I've ever read.
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  It makes the abstract feel very, very concrete.
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  OK, so the mission for this deep dive is, I think, pretty
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  straightforward. We want to understand Lewis's
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  answer to a huge question. Why is the Christian life so
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  hard and connected to that? What did Jesus actually achieve
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  by becoming a human being? Because Lewis is going to argue
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  it's a lot more than just teaching us to be nice people or
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  setting a good example. Far more it's a fundamental
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  change in reality itself. And if we want to frame this
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  theologically, as Lewis does, we're going to be looking at the
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  distinction he draws between two Greek words for life, BIOS and
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  Zoe. Right, BIOS and Zoe.
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  And we're going to look at why, in our current state, those two
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  forms of life are not just different, they're at war with
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  one another. OK.
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  Let's unpack this then BIOS and Zoe.
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  It does sound a bit like something out of a sci-fi novel,
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  but Lewis starts right out of the gate with a pretty bold
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  summary statement. He says the Son of God became a
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  man to enable men to become sons of God.
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  That's the headline, the whole argument in one sentence.
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  It is, and before he even defines his terms, he does this
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  interesting thing where he moves into a kind of what if scenario.
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  He speculates that. He does this often.
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  He likes to clear the ground by showing what could have been, to
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  highlight what is, He says. Look, we don't know for sure how
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  things would have worked if the human race hadn't rebelled
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  against God, if the fall, as we read about it in Genesis, had
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  never happened. I love when he does this because
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  he's just admitting, hey, I'm guessing here, but it's a
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  helpful guess, he says. Maybe, just maybe, if we hadn't
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  rebelled the BIOS, which is that natural biological life we all
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  have. The life of animals and
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  vegetables. The life that decays.
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  Right. That life would have just been
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  drawn up into the Zoe, the spiritual uncreated life that
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  God has. Yeah, automatically it would
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  have been a natural progression. A smooth transition, no friction
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  at all. Like a seed growing into a
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  flower or a child growing into to an adult, it would have been
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  the intended path. The Bluest pivots very quickly
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  from that, he says. And I'm quoting here, but that
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  is guesswork. We can't live in that
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  theoretical what if we have to deal with the reality on the
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  ground? And that reality is messy.
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  It is. And he says the reality is that
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  these two types of life, BIOS and Zoe, are not just different
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  from each other now, they are opposed, they are in conflict.
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  This is such a critical point because I think you're right, So
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  many of us when we first become Christians, we think of the
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  spiritual life as just natural life, plus some religious
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  activities. Yeah, like I'm still me.
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  I have all my same basic desires and instincts, but I go to
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  church now and I try not to cuss.
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  Exactly. It's an add on, an accessory.
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  But Lewis is saying no, no, no. The natural life itself, the
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  BIOS in its fallen state, is actively fighting against the
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  spiritual life. It sees Zoe as an enemy.
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  So let's define them a bit more clearly then the way he does.
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  BIOS is the life we get from nature.
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  Right. It's biological.
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  It's what you have in common with a dog or a cabbage.
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  It needs food, it needs air, it runs on a clock, and it
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  eventually runs down and dies. And Zoe?
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  Zoe is the spiritual life that is in God from all eternity.
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  It's uncreated, it doesn't run down.
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  It's the source of bio. It's the life that created the
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  entire universe. And the problem since the fall
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  is that the BIOS in US has become fundamentally
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  self-centered. It's turned inward on itself.
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  Yes, that's the core of the opposition.
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  The natural life has made itself the center of everything.
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  He paints a really unflattering picture of this self, doesn't
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  he? I was reading this and I have to
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  admit I felt a little called out, he says.
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  The natural life wants to be petted and admired.
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  It does. It craves attention.
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  It wants to be the center of gravity in every room.
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  All its desires and calculations are ultimately about protecting
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  and promoting itself. And then he says it wants to
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  exploit the universe. I mean, that's such a strong
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  phrase. It is, but think about it.
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  It's not just that I want a sandwich because I'm hungry,
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  it's that my natural self wants the universe to arrange itself
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  so I can have the best possible sandwich.
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  And maybe that everyone else sees me with my great sandwich
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  and tells me how great I am at finding sandwiches.
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  That is a perfect illustration of it.
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  It's not about need, it's about ego.
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  About making everything and everyone else an instrument for
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  my own satisfaction. And then there's a darker, more
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  defensive side to it, which Lewis points out.
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  He says the self doesn't just want to be admired, it also
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  desperately wants to be left alone.
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  To be kept away from anything better or stronger or higher
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  than itself, because that makes it feel small.
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  The natural self cannot stand to feel small.
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  If you stand next to something genuinely infinitely superior,
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  your own ego shrinks yourself importance Withers, and the
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  natural self hates that feeling more than anything.
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  So it's terrified of the spiritual world, it's terrified
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  of God, not just because of guilt, but because God's very
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  existence is an affront to its own desire to be #1.
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  Precisely. It's terrified of the light and
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  air of the spiritual world because it knows that in that
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  light it is no longer the king of its own little Kingdom.
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  Its authority is challenged. This is where he uses that
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  analogy of The Dirty child. This one really stuck with me.
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  He says the natural self fears this spiritual world, just as
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  people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a
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  bath. It's such a visceral image,
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  isn't it? It really is.
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  Imagine a child who has never known anything but grime and
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  filth. To that child, the dirt isn't
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  dirt. It feels like a warm layer of
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  clothes. It feels like protection.
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  It's familiar. It's his identity.
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  I'm The Dirty kid. Right.
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  And then along comes a parent saying I'm going to strip all
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  that off of you and scrub you raw with soap and hot water.
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  To that child, that doesn't sound like hygiene.
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  It doesn't sound like love. It sounds like torture.
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  It sounds like a violent assault on who he is.
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  And the cold, you can just picture the kids screaming,
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  fighting against it. And Lewis says in a sense it is
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  quite right. The child is right to be afraid.
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  From his point of view, the self knows that if the spiritual
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  life, if Zoe gets a hold of it, all of that self centeredness is
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  going to be killed. It has to.
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  Be it has to be so the natural life perceives the coming of the
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  spiritual life as an existential threat.
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  It's not just about changing a few habits.
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  The BIOS knows that Zoe is its executioner.
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  Not that the person will cease to exist.
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  No, not at all. But the tyranny of the self, the
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  rule of that inward looking ego, will be executed.
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  It must be for the real person to come alive.
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  And so it fights. It fights tooth and nail to
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  avoid the bath. This whole setup, this whole
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  conflict brings us to to the central image of the chapter,
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  which is the toy soldier. And I think this is one of
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  Lewis's best thought experiments because it's so simple on the
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  surface, but the more you think about it, the deeper and deeper
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  it goes. Walk us through it.
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  Layout the analogy as he does. OK, so he asks you, the reader,
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  to imagine you're a child. And like any child, you've
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  probably thought, wouldn't it be fun if my toys came to life?
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  Right, like Toy Story, it's a universal childhood fantasy.
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  It is. We all get the appeal of that,
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  but Lewis puts A twist on it. He says, Suppose you actually
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  had the power to turn a tin soldier into a real little man.
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  Not just a walking, talking toy, but actual flesh and blood.
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  Exactly. A living, breathing human being.
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  Now to us, the creators, the ones with the power, that sounds
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  like a wonderful gift, a miracle.
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  We're upgrading the soldier from tin to life.
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  We're. Giving him a promotion.
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  We think we are, Yeah. But then Lewis says, Now think
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  about from the soldiers point of view.
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  OK, what is the soldier made of? He's made of tin.
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  He likes being tin. He understands kin.
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  It's his nature. He's shiny, he's hard.
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  He doesn't get sick, he doesn't bleed, he doesn't get cold or
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  hungry. He's stable, he's predictable.
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  That's it. So if you come to him and say
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  I'm going to turn you into flesh, he doesn't think, oh boy,
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  I get to be human. He thinks that you're going to
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  make me soft. You're going to make me squishy
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  and vulnerable. You are spoiling the tin.
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  He perceives the elevation as a destruction.
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  That is the absolute key insight here.
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  To the tin soldier, becoming a man looks like death.
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  It looks like the killing of his tin nature.
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  So he resists. He thinks you're killing him.
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  And Lewis says he will do everything he can to prevent
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  you. He will not be made into a man
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  if he can help it. And this, Lewis argues, is our
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  exact position in relation to God.
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  We are the obstinate toy soldier.
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  It's so humbling when you put it that way.
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  It is. We are clutching our ten nature,
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  our sins, our self protection mechanisms, our pride, our
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  comfortable habits because we think that's what makes us who
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  we are. We think that's what's holding
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  us together. So when God comes to us with the
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  offer of Zoe, with real eternal life, we don't initially see it
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  as a gift. We see it as a threat.
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  We see it as God trying to ruin our fun or destroy our identity.
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  We fight against the very thing that is meant to make us real.
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  We are fighting to stay as tin statues because we are terrified
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  of the vulnerability and the the demands of being real men and
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  women. And there's a strong Reformed
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  undertone here, isn't there? I mean, this is basically the
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  doctrine of total depravity and total inability laid out in an
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  analogy. Absolutely.
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  Notice the soldier cannot turn himself into a man.
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  It's impossible. The tin has no capacity within
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  itself to generate flesh. It has to be done to him from
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  the outside. And not only can he not do it,
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  he actively resists it. He doesn't want it.
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  If it were up to the soldiers free will, he would choose to
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  remain tin forever. That's a perfect picture of what
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  the Westminster Confession means when it says the will is in
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  bondage to sin. We are unable and unwilling to
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  choose God on our own terms. We prefer the tin.
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  Wow, that's a heavy realization. We are fighting the cure.
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  So if the soldiers that's us are resisting and we can't change
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  ourselves and we don't even want to be changed, what does God do?
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  Well, that's the whole point. What is the solution to that
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  dilemma? This is what leads us directly
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  to the incarnation. This is where the story shifts
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  from our obstinance to God's incredible mind bending
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  intervention. Since the soldiers would not and
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  could not submit to the change, God did something completely
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  radical. The Creator became part of the
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  creation. The second person of the
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  Trinity, the Eternal Son, became a tin soldier.
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  I love how Lewis grounds this. He doesn't just say he became
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  human in some vague abstract way, he gets so specific.
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  He says God became a real man, a man of a particular height.
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  With hair of a particular color. Speaking a particular language,
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  probably Aramaic, with a Galilean accent weighing a
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  certain amount. It removes all the religious
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  abstraction. We often think of Jesus as this
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  sort of glowing, ethereal figure in a stained glass window.
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  Lewis is forcing us to remember he had a specific genetic code,
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  he had DNA. He got splinters in his hands.
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  And he goes even further back, which is even more staggering.
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  He says this eternal being who knows everything and holds
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  everything together became a fetus inside a woman's body.
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  Dependent, helpless. The scandal of the incarnation
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  is right there, the infinite becoming finite, the container
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  of the entire universe being contained in a womb.
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  To help us grasp the sheer shock of this, Lewis uses another
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  analogy here that I have to say I found it genuinely shocking.
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  I actually laughed out loud when I read it, but it was a nervous
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  laugh. I know the one you mean.
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  He says if you want to get the hang of it, think how you would
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  like to become a slug or a crab. It is jarring, isn't it?
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  It feels almost blasphemous to put it that way.
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  It feels offensive. It's supposed to.
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  He's doing that on purpose. We tend to think of humanity as
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  this noble, beautiful thing. You know, man is the measure of
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  all things. We think.
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  Of course God would want to be one of us.
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  It's an honor. Right.
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  It's the highest form of life we know.
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  But Lewis is saying, compared to the uncreated, eternal, blazing
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  glory of the divine nature, humanity, this biological,
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  limited, decaying thing is slimy.
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  We're dragging ourselves through the mud.
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  For God to become man is an infinitely greater descent, a
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  far greater humiliation, than for you or me to become a slug.
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  That really reframes the humiliation of Christ.
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  We tend to think of it as just the cross, but Lewis is saying
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  it was the whole thing. It was being born, it was having
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  to learn to walk, it was having a diaper, it was going through
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  puberty. It was the whole experience of
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  being a slug compared to what he was before.
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  And yet by doing this, by undertaking this incredible
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  descent, he achieved something that had never existed in the
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  history of the universe. Before, OK, So what did he
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  achieve by becoming a slug, so to speak?
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  Lewis says. The result was that you now had
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  one man who really was what all men were intended to be.
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  One perfect specimen, one tin soldier that had finally and
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  fully become a man. But the process of how that
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  happened is vital. Here Lewis points out that the
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  created life in Jesus, the BIOS he inherited from his mother
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  Mary, was completely and perfectly turned into Zoe.
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  It was totally taken up into the Divine Son.
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  But that wasn't an easy process, was it?
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  It wasn't like a magic trick where he just snapped his
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  fingers and the BIOS was transformed.
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  Lewis keeps using this language of killing.
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  The natural life have to be killed to make room for the
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  spiritual. Yes, and for us that killing
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  process is painful because we resist it.
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  We fight the whole way for Christ.
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  He didn't have a sinful nature that resisted, but he still had
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  to willingly submit his biological will, his human
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  desires, to the divine will at every single moment.
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  And the world fought him for it constantly.
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  Loose gives a list of the things that killed his human desires,
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  and it's a brutal list. He starts with poverty.
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  Just the daily grind of not having enough, the lack of
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  comfort and security that the natural self craves.
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  Then misunderstanding from his own family that one.
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  It's hard. Imagine being the black sheep,
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  the weird one in your family because you are actually perfect
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  and everyone else is broken. To be seen as mad by the people
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  who should have known you best. Then betrayal by his intimate
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  friends, people in his inner circle.
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  And then Lewis uses this very modern sounding phrase, being
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  jeered at and manhandled by the police.
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  That phrase just brings it right down to earth, doesn't it?
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  It strips away all the religious gloss.
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  He was arrested, he was shoved around.
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  He was publicly humiliated by the authorities.
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  He was a victim of state sanctioned violence.
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  And finally, execution by torture.
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  Lewis's point is that Christ was killed every day.
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  In a sense. He was constantly having to
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  suppress the natural human desire for safety, for comfort,
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  for reputation, for his own ego in order to allow the Zoe life
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  to flow through him perfectly. And then you have the climax of
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  that whole process. After being physically killed on
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  the cross, the human creature in him, because it was perfectly
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  united to the divine sun, rose again.
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  And this is the point Lewis wants us to grasp with all our
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  might. The man in Christ rose, not just
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  the God part. The BIOS, now fully transformed
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  into Zoe, came back to life. He says 1 tin soldier, real tin,
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  just like the rest, had come fully and splendidly alive.
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  That's the payoff of the whole story.
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  For the first time in human history, we saw a real man.
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  Everyone else up to that point had been 1/2 finished statue or
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  a broken toy. Jesus was the first one to
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  actually be human in the way we were all designed to be from the
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  beginning. He blazed the trail, he broke
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  the mold of the tin existence and established a whole new
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  category of being glorified humanity.
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  Precisely but. Here's where the skeptic in me
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  and in Lewis's audience comes in.
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  Louis anticipates this objection perfectly.
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  The skeptic says OK, great. So 1 soldier turned into a man.
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  Good for him. Wonderful story.
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  What does that have to do with me?
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  I'm over here on the other side of the toy chest.
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  I am a separate soldier. And this is where Louis
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  brilliantly deconstructs our modern Western individualism, he
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  says. Here are my illustration about
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  the tin soldier breaks down. Why does it breakdown?
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  Because toy soldiers really are separate pieces of metal.
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  They're manufactured individually.
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  If one of them magically comes to life, the guy standing next
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  to him on the shelf stays tin. There's no connection.
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  Right. But Louis is going to argue that
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  human beings are not separate in that way.
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  We just think we are. We suffer from a kind of optical
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  illusion, the. Illusion of time.
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  Exactly. We see people walking around as
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  separate individuals because we can only perceive the present
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  moment. We're seeing a thin cross
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  section of reality. But Louis asks us to imagine
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  seeing humanity the way God sees it, spread out across all of
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  history at once. It's a mind bending thought
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  experiment. It is.
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  He uses the tree illustration here.
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  He says if you could see humanity spread out in time, it
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  wouldn't look like a bunch of little separate dots walking
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  around. It would look like one single
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  massive growing thing. Complicated tree.
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  And each one of us is like a leaf or a small twig on that
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  tree. Think about it just on a
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  biological level, you're not truly separate from your
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  parents. You grew out of them.
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  You were physically a part of your mother.
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  For nine months, she was physically a part of her mother.
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  If you trace it back, humanity is 1 continuous biological
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  Organism that has been branching out for thousands of years.
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  That really messes with our modern sense of self, doesn't
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  it? We think of ourselves as
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  islands. I am me, you are you.
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  We are separate. But physically that's not
• 18:16
  entirely true. We are just different branches
• 18:18
  of the same human tree. And Lewis adds that spiritually,
• 18:21
  we're not separate from God either.
• 18:23
  He says we're only breathing right now, in this moment,
• 18:26
  because God is keeping us going breath by breath.
• 18:29
  We're utterly dependent. So if we are all part of 1 human
• 18:32
  mass, or one tree as he puts it, then what happens to one part of
• 18:37
  the tree has implications for the whole thing.
• 18:39
  What happens to the root inevitably effects all the
• 18:41
  branches. That's correct.
• 18:43
  If we were totally separate individuals like the tin
• 18:45
  soldiers, then Christ's work would just be an isolated event,
• 18:49
  a nice story, a museum piece. But because humanity is one
• 18:53
  interconnected Organism, when Christ, who is God, becomes a
• 18:57
  man, it's not just one soldier changing in a vacuum.
• 19:00
  It's like, what's the other analogy is the glass of water?
• 19:03
  Right, It's like dropping something potent into a glass of
• 19:06
  water. A drop of dye maybe, or a potent
• 19:08
  chemical? And it changes the color or the
• 19:09
  taste of the entire glass, not just the spot where it landed.
• 19:13
  Yes, when Christ, who is God, entered the human race, He
• 19:16
  entered the very bloodstream of humanity.
• 19:19
  He fundamentally altered the stuff of human nature at its
• 19:22
  core. This that that Reformed doctrine
• 19:24
  of federal headship. Just as Adam's fall in the
• 19:27
  garden poisoned the whole glass of humanity, Christ's perfect
• 19:30
  obedience begins the process of purifying it.
• 19:33
  Lewis puts it this way. It is as if something which is
• 19:36
  always affecting the whole human mass begins at one point to
• 19:40
  affect that whole human mass in a new way.
• 19:42
  And from that one point in history, the incarnation, the
• 19:46
  life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that new effect starts to
• 19:50
  spread. And here's a very interesting
• 19:52
  and sometimes controversial theological point Lewis makes.
• 19:55
  He says this effect spreads through all of mankind.
• 19:58
  It makes a difference even to people who lived before Christ.
• 20:02
  Yeah, I caught that. I had to read that sentence
• 20:04
  twice. And he also says it affects
• 20:06
  people who've never even heard of him.
• 20:08
  He's suggesting that the work of Christ changed the ontological
• 20:11
  status of humanity itself. It changed what it means to be
• 20:14
  human on a universal, cosmic level.
• 20:17
  The infection of Zoe was introduced into the BIOS of the
• 20:19
  entire species, and now that life is available in a way it
• 20:23
  ever was before. OK, so this brings us to this.
• 20:25
  So what question the practical application?
• 20:28
  We've got the war between BIOS and Zoe, we've got the obstinate
• 20:31
  soldier, we have the incarnation where God became the first real
• 20:33
  man. We have this idea of the
• 20:35
  interconnectedness of the human race, right?
• 20:38
  So how does that actually save me sitting here today?
• 20:41
  Lewis is very clear on this, and his view here is, I think, very
• 20:45
  much in line with a reformed understanding of the finished
• 20:47
  work of Christ. He asks what is the difference
• 20:50
  which he has made to the whole human mass?
• 20:53
  And his answer is this. The business of becoming a Son
• 20:56
  of God, of turning from tin to flesh, has now been done for us.
• 21:00
  He says humanity is already saved in principle.
• 21:04
  That's a bold statement. It's a very bold statement, but
• 21:07
  what he means is that the hardest part, the impossible
• 21:10
  part, the part we could not do for ourselves, which is turning
• 21:13
  tin into flesh, is accomplished. The prototype now exists.
• 21:17
  The path has been cut through the jungle, the rope has been
• 21:20
  thrown down into the pit we were stuck in.
• 21:22
  So we don't have to invent the spiritual life from scratch.
• 21:25
  We don't have to try and climb up to heaven to find it.
• 21:27
  No, it has come down, he says. We have not got to try to climb
• 21:30
  up into spiritual life by our own efforts.
• 21:32
  It has already come down into the human race.
• 21:34
  That is such a relief, because if you told me my salvation
• 21:37
  depended on me figuring out how to turn my own tin into flesh,
• 21:40
  I'd be hopeless. I don't have the first clue how
• 21:43
  to do that. None of us do.
• 21:44
  That's the whole point of the obstinate soldier.
• 21:46
  He cannot do it, but now the power to do it is available.
• 21:51
  It's circulating in the human bloodstream, so to speak,
• 21:54
  because of Christ. So what's our job then?
• 21:57
  If the tough work is done? Do we just sit back and do
• 21:59
  nothing? No, not at all.
• 22:01
  Our job shifts, it's no longer about creation, but about
• 22:04
  reception, Lewis says. We must lay ourselves open to
• 22:07
  the one man. We have to get close to him.
• 22:10
  This is where he brings in that fantastic concept of the good
• 22:13
  infection. I just love that phrase.
• 22:15
  We think of infection as a bad thing, a disease, right?
• 22:18
  But here he flips it. He says one of our own races.
• 22:20
  This new life, if we get close to him, we shall catch it from
• 22:24
  him. It's a contagion of life.
• 22:26
  Spiritual life is communicable. It spreads.
• 22:29
  If you stand near a fire, you get warm.
• 22:31
  If you jump in a pool, you get wet.
• 22:33
  If you get close to Jesus, you patch Zoe.
• 22:35
  You catch the spiritual life. It makes faith sound less like a
• 22:38
  legal transaction, you know, like signing a contract with
• 22:40
  God, and more like a relationship of proximity.
• 22:44
  You just hang out with a healthy person until you start to get
• 22:46
  healthy too. Yeah, that is the absolute
• 22:49
  essence of it. In theological terms, we call it
• 22:51
  union with Christ. The more you open yourself to
• 22:54
  him through prayer, through the sacraments, through reading
• 22:56
  Scripture, through fellowship, the more the tin in you begins
• 23:01
  to soften and transform into flesh.
• 23:03
  Not because you are trying really hard to be fleshy, but
• 23:06
  because his life is infecting yours.
• 23:10
  OK, now as he wraps up this section, Louis addresses the how
• 23:14
  he knows that people, especially theological people, love to
• 23:17
  argue about the precise mechanism of how the atonement
• 23:20
  works. Was it a payment of a debt?
• 23:23
  Was it a victory over evil? Was it a substitution?
• 23:26
  The formulas, as he calls them, the theories of the atonement.
• 23:29
  Right. And Lewis lists a few of the
• 23:30
  common ones. He says you can say Christ died
• 23:32
  for our sins. You can say the Father forgave
• 23:34
  us because of what Christ did. You can say we are washed in the
• 23:37
  blood of the Lamb. You can say Christ defeated
• 23:40
  death. And his advice on this point is
• 23:41
  just pure pastoral wisdom, he says.
• 23:44
  They're all true. Wait, all of them, Even if they
• 23:47
  seem to emphasize different things.
• 23:48
  Yes, because they are all human attempts to describe a divine
• 23:53
  reality that is bigger than anyone human formula.
• 23:57
  A photograph of a mountain from the east looks different than a
• 24:00
  photograph from the West, but it's the same mountain.
• 24:03
  These formulas are different angles on the same glorious
• 24:07
  event. He actually says if any of them
• 24:10
  do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the
• 24:12
  formula that does. That is surprisingly liberating
• 24:15
  to hear. It is.
• 24:17
  He's giving people permission to not have it all figured out.
• 24:20
  But then he adds the really important warning.
• 24:22
  What's that? Do not start quarreling with
• 24:24
  other people because they use a different formula from yours.
• 24:27
  That is the kicker, isn't it? My goodness, how much time and
• 24:30
  energy have Christians spent over the centuries fighting over
• 24:33
  the exact mechanics of the atonement while completely
• 24:35
  missing the good infection itself?
• 24:38
  Far too much time. The formula is not the food.
• 24:41
  The formula is the description on the menu.
• 24:43
  You can stand there and argue about whether the font on the
• 24:46
  menu is optimal, or you can sit down and eat the meal.
• 24:49
  Lewis is pleading with us. Eat the meal.
• 24:52
  The reality of the change, the actual experience of the tin
• 24:55
  turning to flesh, is infinitely more vital than the specific
• 24:58
  theory you use to explain it. So let's just recap the flow of
• 25:03
  the argument we walked through today.
• 25:04
  It's a pretty powerful journey. It is.
• 25:06
  We started with this fundamental war inside of us, the war
• 25:08
  between BIOS, our selfish natural life, and Zoe, God's
• 25:13
  spiritual eternal life. And we saw that we're like these
• 25:15
  obstinate tin soldiers who don't want to be changed because we
• 25:18
  think being changed means being destroyed.
• 25:20
  Then we saw God's solution, that God, in the person of Christ,
• 25:23
  became a tin soldier Himself to show us the way.
• 25:26
  He willingly submitted to the killing of His natural human
• 25:29
  desires in order to resurrect, correct as the first real man,
• 25:33
  the prototype for a new humanity.
• 25:35
  And we looked at how this wasn't just an isolated event because
• 25:38
  humanity is like one big tree. We're all connected.
• 25:40
  So what he did effects all of us.
• 25:43
  He dropped the cure the Zoey life into the glass of water
• 25:46
  that is the human race. And finally, we saw that our
• 25:49
  role isn't to try and replicate that work, but to receive it.
• 25:53
  To stop resisting, get close to him and let the good infection
• 25:57
  of his life take over in US. To accept the work that has
• 26:01
  already been done on our behalf. It really is a thoroughly
• 26:03
  reformed way of looking at starvation when you break it
• 26:06
  down like that, isn't it? It is all of grace.
• 26:09
  It is all about Him doing for us what we could not possibly do
• 26:13
  for ourselves. It is.
• 26:14
  It takes the immense burden of self creation off of our
• 26:17
  shoulders. We don't have to make ourselves
• 26:19
  real, we just have to surrender and let him do it.
• 26:22
  That brings us to the end of the source material we wanted to
• 26:24
  cover. But before we sign off, I just
• 26:26
  want to leave you, the listener, with a thought to chew on this
• 26:29
  week. What's on your mind?
• 26:31
  It's that image Lewis gave us of a human tree, the idea that if
• 26:34
  we could see humanity spread out in time as God sees it, it would
• 26:38
  look like one single interconnected Organism, every
• 26:41
  individual past, present and future connected to every other.
• 26:45
  Yes. If that is true, I mean really
• 26:48
  truly true, how does that change the way you view your neighbor
• 26:52
  or the person who cuts you off in traffic, or even your enemy?
• 26:55
  That's just a sharp question. If we are all just leaves on the
• 26:58
  same tree, does the health of 1 branch inevitably in some way
• 27:03
  determine the health of another? If I hate my enemy, if I wish
• 27:06
  them ill, am I essentially pouring a little bit of poison
• 27:08
  on my own branch of the tree? It would seem so.
• 27:11
  If we are one Organism, then there's really no such thing as
• 27:13
  a purely private sin or a purely private virtue.
• 27:16
  We are all participating in the life or the sickness of the
• 27:20
  whole body. Something to think about next
• 27:22
  time you're stuck in traffic or scrolling through social media
• 27:25
  and feeling that anger rise up. We're all part of the same tin
• 27:28
  soldier army, just waiting and sometimes fighting to come to
• 27:31
  life. Indeed, a sobering and a hopeful
• 27:34
  thought. Thank you so much for listening
• 27:36
  to Reform Thinking. We hope this deep dive into a
• 27:39
  little corner of Lewis gave you some fresh oxygen for your
• 27:42
  faith. Keep thinking we'll.
• 27:44
  See you next time.