Pretending to be Jesus

I have discovered the wonders of audiobooks. I purchased Mere Christianity (CS Lewis) and have listened to it twice. This is a great way to redeem the time we spend alone in our automobiles.

Toward the end of the book, he addresses more "practical matters" of Christian living. He claims numerous times and in several different books that God expects nothing less than moral and spiritual perfection from us. That is why God aims us toward Heaven. "We are made for Heaven." For it is only there that we can be completely glorified - "clothed with garment of Christ." (This not Christ's garments.) Until then we must daily strive to "put on Christ" in every circumstance of life.C.S. Lewis attributes this quote to George McDonald (his spiritual mentor). "God is often pleased with us, but never satisfied."

So, how is this practical? Here is what is advised. When you face a situation, pretend you are better than you really are. Pretend you are Jesus. I hope this is more than applying that silly question "What would Jesus do?" I think it is far more but it is not completely unlike it. He uses a provocative illustration. He says that a man is saying his prayers when he hears his wife calling him downstairs to help her with some task. To follow Christ (as he did when his disciples were tossed about by an angry sea) the man should live the presence of God to be with his wife - it is there that he is truly close to God.

It is in this context that he revisits the Trinity. I will interpret this to suit myself and have taken it farther than he does. I do believe, that is I trust, I am on the trajectory he started. God, the Father, stands above us offering a kind of transcendency and, with it, a mysterious holiness that humbles us. God, the Son, stands beside us to give us direction and provides an image of God in a form we can understand (imminence). God, the Holy Spirit, lives within us, to offer us power and wisdom (even judgement). (intimacy of God).

So, in every circumstance of life - the moral and the spiritual - we live and move, and have our being, in the presence of the Triune God.