A Severe Mercy

I cannot get Sheldon Vanauken’s words in “A Severe Mercy” out of my thoughts, so I’ll share a few quotes from his book as well as my fragmented response. If you have not read this book yet, read it!

At his conversion:
“It was a rather chilly realization that I could not go back. In my old easy-going theism, I had regarded Christianity as a sort of fairy tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him — or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me, too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble– but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God–but, God, there was no certainty that He was not. If I were to accept, I might and probably would face the thought through the years: ‘Perhaps, after all, it’s a lie; I’ve been had’ But if I were to reject, I would certainly face the haunting, terrible thought: Perhaps it’s true –and I have rejected my God! This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was one thing to do, once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.”

In his sanctification, after the death of his beloved wife:
“But no guidance came, and God seemed remote. The world was still empty without Davy, and now God seemed to withdrawn too. My sense of desolation increased. God could not be as loving as He was supposed to be, or — the alternative. One sleepless night, drawing on to morning, I was overwhelmed with a sense of cosmos empty of God as well as Davy. ‘All right,’ I muttered to myself. ‘To hell with God. I’m not going to believe this damned rubbish any more. Lies, all lies. I’ve been had.’ Up I sprang and rushed out to the country. This was the end of God, ha! And then I found I could not reject God. I could not. I cannot explain this. One discovers one cannot move a boulder by trying with all one’s strength to do it. I discovered –without any sudden influx of love or faith–that I could not reject Christianity. This brief aberration of despair, never to happen again, lay in the indication of how certainly I belonged in the army of the King.”

In a letter from his friend, C.S. Lewis:
“You were brought to realize the impossibility (strict sense) of rejecting Christ. Of course He must often seem to us to be playing fast and loose with us. The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by ‘wind’ appears you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would be — as He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind.”

My response:
I am made in your image, not you in mine
Though you could justly reject, you accept
Though I should humbly accept, I reject
You are God and I am not;
You are the Creator and I the rebellious creature.

My heart foolishly attempts rejection;
Demands to read the signs and be given an explanation.
Give me what I want, explain to me what I see;
I hold on to my conditions until your mercies take hold of me.
Mercies — both severe and kind

You are the living God, in whom my hope rests.
You are the author and perfecter of this faith;
You have brought me this far, your grip will not loosen now.
I am sealed by your Spirit for the day of redemption.

And finally, I settle into a good Spurgeon quote:
“It is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee — it is Christ!
It is not thy joy of Christ that saves thee — it is Christ!
It is not even thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument — it is Christ!
Christ’s blood and merits! Therefore:
Look not to thy hope, but to Jesus the source of thy hope;
Look not to thy faith, but to Jesus the author and finisher of thy faith.
It is what Jesus is, not what we are that gives rest to the soul.”