Synthetic Division Quotes

away through his envy of others, seeking what he can gain from—not what he can give to—believers and religion, then pretending something is wrong with those he cannot control, those who get things done like Jesus did, disparaging them while he himself accomplishes nothing but division, diversion, and destruction.

But for those with eyes to see, the father of lies always gives himself away through his envy of others, seeking what he can gain from—not what he can give to—believers and religion, then pretending something is wrong with those he cannot control, those who get things done like Jesus did, disparaging them while he himself accomplishes nothing but division, diversion, and destruction.

It was a joy to see those new units do the Forward March, About Face and Company Halt; and afterwards, when they were dismissed, they took to chatting, and later, through the open windows of the barracks one could hear voices booming in chorus, disputing such matters as absolute truth, analytic versus synthetic a priori propositions, and the Thing-in-itself, for their collective minds had already attained that level. Various philosophical systems were hammered out, till finally a certain battalion of sappers arrived at a position of total solipsism, claiming that nothing really existed beyond itself. And since from this it followed that there was no King, nor any enemy, this battalion was quietly disconnected and its members reassigned to units that firmly adhered to epistemological realism. At about the same time, in the kingdom of Atrocitus, the sixth amphibious division forsook naval operations for navel contemplation and, thoroughly immersed in mysticism, very nearly drowned. Somehow or other, as a result of this incident, war was declared, and the troops, rumbling and clanking, slowly moved towards the border from either side. The law of Gargantius proceeded to work with inexorable logic. As formation joined formation, in proportion there developed an esthetic sense, which reached its apex at the level of a reinforced division, so that the columns of such a force easily became sidetracked, chasing off after butterflies, and when the motorized corps named for Bartholocaust approached an enemy fortress that had to be taken by storm, the plan of attack drawn up that night turned out to be a splendid painting of the battlements, done moreover in the abstractionist spirit, which ran counter to all military traditions.

we can’t bring him in without your help. I want you to understand you are far more important to us than Leo. If we lose him, we can still proceed with your knowledge and influence alone. But if you refuse, the real-world design division ends now. I can’t do it without you.” The weight of Jol’s words hung in the air. The manicured garden around us, with its perfectly clipped hedges and synthetic tranquility, only heightened my sense of unease. HERE wanted me to bridge two worlds—one steeped in corporate ambition and another born from rebellion and counterculture.

The trouble is that we reflexively think of obedience as doing what we don’t want to do. Ponder the word obedience for a moment. Don’t you immediately think of that as submitting to what another wants us to do? I can either obey God, we think, or I can do what I want to do. C. S. Lewis exposed this way of thinking with remarkable clarity in a little 1940s essay entitled “Three Kinds of Men.” He points out that there are not two ways to conceive of obeying God but three. It is not so simple as merely obeying or disobeying. For even “obeying” can be done from a wrong heart. So Lewis explains that there are three sorts of people. The first live totally for themselves. The second know they should live a certain way, and they sincerely try to do so, but only after they have first ensured their own security and happiness. Lewis compares this kind of obedience to paying a tax—they pay it all right, “but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on.”2 In other words, their time is divided, so that every action is either for their own sake or for the sake of this other, higher power, whether God, some ethical code, the government, their own conscience, or whatever. The third kind of person, however, no longer has this divide. These people have killed their old self. They aren’t trying to balance their internal desires and the external claim on them. The external claim has become their internal desire. As Lewis says, “The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His.”3 Lewis then draws the following conclusion: And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no “salvation” by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically. The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort—it is to want Him.4