Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Art Ross - Till We Have Faces 2

One of my favorite sections of Till We Have Faces is at the very end of the book:

“I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words. Long did I hate you, long did I fear you. I might–”

I love how raw this passage is, it is so vulnerable. Over the summer I head an awesome series of sermons about being angry with God. It was something I had never really thought about before – that God wants us to experience all of our emotions with him, not just the positive ones. I think if we look at the Psalmists and Jesus’ life and the True Myth in the Bible we find a massive range of emotions and feelings. Myth is rarely one dimensional; instead it has hundreds of facets, like a symphony. Symphonies cannot function with only one instrument and in the same way our lives don’t function in only one state of being.


The more I walk through life the more I pay attention to wise people and how they act; I think in Till We Have Faces we peer into a really enlightened room of Lewis’ mind. The piece was said by Lewis to be his best work and the entire thing about a woman angry at the Lord. Even though Orual/We fear(s) being “[struck] mad or leprous or [turned] into beast, bird, or tree” for being angry with God, Lewis isn't. Instead his honesty is rewarded with an intimacy and fuller picture of God’s face than he had ever seen before. We should follow suit…

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