More affectionately known as Super Chicken.
I’m feeling a close affiliation with Henry right at the moment. This past Sunday Pastor Carr challenged me directly. Well it was actually what he said in his sermon that challenged me, but it was one of those times when you feel like the pastor both wrote and is now delivering the sermon for your personal benefit. I’ve come to believe, over the years, that the Spirit of God truly takes certain opportunities to open our ears and our minds more to what is being said in the Word and this was definitely one of those times.

It was a simple enough message, and was unquestionably one that we’ve all heard preached before. It was simply (and I use that word only because we’ve heard sermons like this so many times that we could almost write them ourselves) a sermon on spreading the gospel. So why is it that this time the entreaty that was placed before all of us drilled straight into my heart and now leaves me quaking with trepidation? Because the Holy Spirit pulled my ears open and started whispering to me to…

Listen he’s talking about you reaching out to your family. Do you hear what he’s saying? Do you hear what he’s asking of you? Do you hear what I’m asking of you? You know this is all true. You know you have to do this, that you have to talk to your Dad and the rest of your family or you’ll never forgive yourself.

Yeah I need to go talk to my Dad. Not because he isn’t a religious man, but because he’s Catholic and I just don’t know what he actually believes when it comes to salvation. I’ve been doing some research as to what the Catholic church teaches, but I know from my own past that doesn’t necessarily equate to meaning what someone personally believes. I just know that this is going to be a tremendously hard topic for me to bring up with him. My Dad was raised in the Catholic church, went to Catholic schools, he even went to a Catholic University. He’s got the keys to the church (that he’s attended since 1966) and unlocks the doors each morning to help prepare for the morning service. He’s been involved in just about every lay position that you can have in the Catholic church; from choir boy to Eucharistic minister. He goes downtown (Washington DC) every Spring for the Pro-Life March. What I’m trying to paint for you is a man who is as solid in his beliefs as anyone can get. And now, his son, who has left THE CHURCH is going to have the audacity to ask him about his faith!?

Dad told me years ago, “There are 3 things you never talk about in public unless you want to start something. A man’s salary, politics or religion.” Yeah we didn’t talk about faith in our house it was just something that one did. It was looked upon in the same vain as breathing, you just did it. It couldn’t be conceived that there would be any other option.

So, it is into this that I must boldly ask my earthly Father, “Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” I’m certain the response will be yes, but I then need to flesh out if he understands what I mean when I ask that question. I just can’t imagine, getting my Dad to understand the Good News, being an easy task. I’m not interested in pointing out my concerns about the Catholic church, I just want to make sure that Dad understands that Christ has already done all the redemptive work that can be done. That there is nothing that my Dad can do or needs doing other than accept the gift that has already been offered. Boy that sounds simple enough when I have it written out in front of me. Perhaps that’s what this post was all about – simply my need to flesh this out.

Please pray for me,
Rong

The word chivalry has meant at different times a good many different things–from heavy cavalry to giving a woman a seat in a train. But if we want to understand chivalry as an ideal distinct from other ideals–if we want to isolate that particular conception of the man comme il faut which was the special contribution of the Middle Ages to our culture–we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights in Malory’s Morte D’arthur. “Thou wert the meekest man”, says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. “Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.”*

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature. The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, “he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten”.

What, you may ask, is the relevance of this idea to the modern world? It is terribly relevant. It may or may not be practicable–the Middle Ages notoriously failed to obey it–but it is certainly practical; practical as the fact that men in a desert must find water or die.[...]

The medieval ideal brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another. It brought them together for that very reason. It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson. It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop.

In so doing, the Middle Ages fixed on the one hope of the world. It may or may not be possible to produce by the thousand men who combine the two sides of Launcelot’s character. But if it is not possible, then all talk of any lasting happiness or dignity in human society is pure moonshine.

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections–those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be “meek in hall”, and those who are “meek in hall” but useless in battle–for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed. When this disassociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair. The ancient history of the Near East is like that. Hardy barbarians swarm down from their highlands and obliterate a civilization. Then they become civilized themselves and go soft. Then a new wave of barbarians comes down and obliterates them.[...]

The ideal embodied in Launcelot is “escapism” in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.

~C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns, “The Necessity of Chivalry” (1st published in Time and Tide, Aug. 1940)