Your Life in Christ

Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts, by George MacDonald

If the title alone doesn't do it for you, let me preface this review by noting that everything this guy writes is about two miles above my head.  Ok.  Now that you're properly warned, here's what my dear friend Jack has to say about Mr MacDonald:

I dare not say that he is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.... I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.

I could not agree more, nor have put it better myself (as is all too often the case with Lewis and me).  MacDonald has such a distinct perspective on so many aspects of theology, and while I agree with the majority of it, there are glaring dissimilarities between what I believe to be true and what he argues with such passion.  I would encourage you to read him for yourself and see what you think... rather than use my space and your time to split hairs and indict one who is clearly more intelligent and spiritual than both you and I.  Ha.

So.  Read this book.  Even if you can't get through the denser stuff (it's all pretty dry, honestly, and as I said above, so far over my head), I urge you to read the chapter entitled Opinion and Truth.  Heartbreakingly relevant in this period in my life, I am almost certain it will be in yours.  Listen to what he says on page 206:

Do you ever feel thus toward your neighbor: 'Yes, of course, every man is my brother.  But how can I be a brother to him so long as he thinks me wrong in what I believe, and so long as I think him wrong in his opinions and against the dignity of truth?'  I return: Has the man no hand that you might grasp, no eyes into which yours might gaze far deeper than your vaunted intellect can follow?  Is there not, I ask, anything in him to love?  Who said you were to be of one opinion?  It is the Lord who asks you to be of one heart.  Does the Lord love the man?  Can the Lord love where there is nothing to love?  Are you wiser than he, inasmuch as you perceive impossibility where he has failed to discover it?

Ouch.  Can you relate?
Here are three other excellent quotes (seeing as I am doing a thoroughly inadequate job of reviewing the book as a whole.)

But if anyone be at all otherwise minded -- that is, of a different opinion -- what then?  Is it of no consequence?  No, verily -- it is of such consequence that God will himself unveil to them the truth of the matter.  This is Paul's faith, not his opinion.  Faith is that by which a man lives inwardly and orders his way outwardly.  Faith is the root, belief the tree, and opinion the foliage that falls and is renewed with the seasons.

Let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, "God is.  Jesus is not dead.  Nothing can be going wrong, however it may look to our hearts that are unfinished in childness."

I find in Paul's writing the same artistic fault, with the same resulting difficulty, that I find in Shakespeare's -- a fault that, in each case, springs from the admirable fact that the man is much more than the artist.  It is the fault of trying to say too much at once, of pouring out stintless the plethora of a soul, swelling with life and its thought, through the too-narrow neck of human utterance.

And if that doesn't convince you of MacDonald's brilliance... I'm not sure what will.