Big thanks to Jordan Duncan for spending some with me on That Hideous C.S. Lewis and a great big Texas welcome to the C.S. Lewis Seroni Club! We had a great back-and-forth discussion on Jack’s top-shelf sermon, The Weight of Glory which I know you will enjoy.
In this episode, you will learn how Jordan came to re-discover Lewis as a young man and how a “what, you too? I thought I was the only one” moment served as the catalyst to launching the Lesser-Known Lewis podcast. Jordan is a very gifted pastor and uses his talents to effectively communicate Christ to others. As a pastor, Jordan gets to preach at his church and admits to having used a certain mud pie quote from The Weight of Glory in a sermon. Interestingly, The Babylon Bee published an article about a pastor doing just this. Did reporters from The Babylon Bee sneak into Jordan’s church looking to catch him quoting Lewis? The Babylon Bee has not yet returned my calls for comment…
Conversation Roadmap:
Introduction: 0:00 - 10:39
Opening quote and intro: 0:00 - 1:14
Small talk & chit chat: 1:15
Jordan’s background & personal details: 2:14
Lesser Known Lewis podcast story: 5:54
Seroni Club induction: 9:27
The Weight of Glory discussion: 10:39 - 35:28
Historical context: 11:00
https://babylonbee.com/news/congregation-sees-pastors-c-s-lewis-quote-coming-mile-away: 13:52
1st quote discussion: 15:04
“We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
2nd quote discussion: 21:01
“Now if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.”
3rd quote discussion: 23:29
“If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolic relation to what will truly satisfy.”
4th quote discussion: 25:32
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols…”
5th quote discussion: 30:46
“The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare”
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors…Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”
Communicating Christ in a secular age discussion: 35:29 - 42:39
Opening quote discussion
Lewis as a communicator (fiction, metaphor, myth, imagination, intellect): 40:00
Upcoming Lesser Known Lewis Season: 42:40 - 45:33
Apologetics for a Disenchanted World
Where to find Jordan and Sean: https://www.pintswithjack.com/lesser-known-lewis/
Wrap up & thank you: 45:34 to end
A Conversation About Mud Pies, Desire, and the Promise of Glory with Jordan Duncan