SOUTHBOROUGH L’ABRI PRAYER/NEWSLETTER
49 Lynbrook Road, Southborough, MA 01772

September 2006

I doubt that I was the only one discouraged by the news this last month that from now on we will not be able to carry liquids on airplanes. It is not as if this will be a great sacrifice any more than going through metal detectors, taking off my shoes to have them checked for explosives, or remembering to put my jack knife in checked baggage.

It is that I find it easy to feel afraid in our extreme vulnerability, living in a society interconnected and dependent on a web of fine-tuned technologies. The wonderful powers and freedoms that our technologies have brought us have also left us absurdly exposed and fragile. Any one wanting to do us grievous harm and who is willing to die doing it, has a fearful range of options. We have seen the vulnerability of the airplanes, the trains, the subways, the bridges, the tunnels, the tall buildings, the electric power grids, nuclear energy and its waste, and our own computers. One of the great ironies of 9/11 was that all the hijackers had to use was hardware store box-cutters. They could have brought down the World Trade Center and Pentagon with knives made of flint … stone age technology.
As the conflict grows between radical Islam and the West – and I sense that it may only be beginning -- how should we think of these dangers and the inconveniences they bring to our lives? What are we trying to preserve? I have found the perspective of C.S. Lewis helpful, written as his own country was in the middle of World War II. (It is from “First and Second Things”, 1942)

“The woman who makes her dog the center of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication… Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.

“…You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. From which it would follow that the question, what things are first? is of concern not only to philosophers but to everyone.

“It is impossible, in this context, not to inquire what our own civilization has been putting first for the last thirty years. And the answer is plain. It has been putting itself first. To preserve civilization has been the great aim; the collapse of civilization, the great bugbear. Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement – all these, which are what we usually mean by civilization, have been our ends. It will be replied that our concern for civilization is very natural and very necessary at a time when civilization is so imperiled. But how if the shoe is on the other foot? – how if civilization has been imperiled precisely by the fact that we have all made civilization out our summum bonum (highest good)? Perhaps it can’t be preserved in that way. Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.

“… To be sure, if it were true that civilization will never be safe till it is put second, that immediately raises the question, second to what? What is the first thing? The only reply I can offer here is that if we do not know, then the first, and only truly practical thing is to set about finding out.”

I suspect that we will not do justice to Lewis’s insight if we say easily, “Oh, the first thing is the kingdom of God”. Though true, if it comes as a cliché we miss his point and continue stumbling on, unaware that respectable idols have displaced the true God. Lewis has fingered the seductive workings of idolatry in human lives under stress. Are we in danger of having the “first thing” our peace, high standard of living, hygiene, transport, science and amusement – what Dr. Schaeffer called “personal peace and affluence”? Has the “American Lifestyle” become sacred to us? Is the kingdom of God really the first thing for us? Lewis made a civilization-level application of Jesus’ supreme, paradoxical challenge, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”(Mtw. 16:25)

We finished the spring and summer term in late July. It was a really good term, with some extraordinary people as students, almost all with really serious and urgent questions and issues. It is also a particular joy when people come to faith after wading through such jungles of ideas, disillusionments, doubts and misconceptions. It makes us profoundly glad that we are able to have a place where this can happen. Somehow after all the years we have been doing this, the particular angles, experiences, questions and struggles that students bring here still take us by surprise and keep us both praying and scratching our heads hard.

We had three really good helpers, which made a huge difference. Joe and Jen between them did a lot of computing, meal preparation and work organization. Danny, with experience as a carpenter, rebuilt our leakiest gutters. Together, they helped to make a very good atmosphere.

Taylor has been working on getting our branch into the digital age. He has undertaken the massive job of getting our working library of recorded lectures onto MP3 so that one day we will be able to by-pass cassettes altogether. He also asks for prayer for a novel that he is writing.

Sarah has made a very hospitable home in the upstairs apartment of the big house. She has been doing a lot of meals, some tutoring and manages the library and our bookstore. She is very happy to be joined by her sister, Amanda, who is going to be a helper. Do pray for Amanda since she is the only helper so far this term.

The Morrells are doing well, and have had the main responsibility of running the big house and grounds. Pray for Luke as he starts the 7th grade this week and Nate who starts 4th grade. Pray also for the survival of their car, which is in doubt at this point.

Mardi and I went to do a conference in Sacramento at the end of July with Mark Ryan who came down from Bowen Island to meet us. We went from there up to Vancouver to see our son Ben and his wife, Nickaela, to audit a course at Regent College summer school and visit Bowen Island. It was great to see a number of our “L’Abri graduates” who are students there now.
I am thankful to finally see copies of Seeing Through Cynicism, and have them out and available. Please pray that it would get into the hands of the people who would be helped by it.

Please pray for a lecture and discussions that I will be giving in Hollywood on heroism on November 17 and 18, arranged by Vishal Mangalwadi.

As you receive this letter we will have just welcomed a full house of new students. If everyone comes, it looks as if we will be full for the whole time. Please ask God to establish a good atmosphere in the house, good interaction between the students and that he might give us the strength, insight and wisdom to see God work in powerful ways. Pray for our teaching, the Friday lectures, the Wednesday Bible studies, the Monday seminars, the tutorial sessions, the meal times and all the many informal discussions. Pray that God would enable us to communicate a living faith in the living Lord who will keep our first things first and our second things second.

Dick Keyes