Settling for Less; Playing with Mud Pies
We have a mindset that if something is really important, if it has true moral value, then we need to be cautious that we don't enjoy it too much. We are hesitant to seek our own happiness out of concern of selfishness, and we often settle for far less than what God wants us to receive and enjoy. The following is from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses by C.S. Lewis in 1965 on this issue:
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, "Unselfishness." But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, "Love." You see what has happened? A negative term has ben substituted for a positive, and this is of more that philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to 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.
Where we err is not in the intensity of our desire to seek happiness, but in the weakness of our desire, but we must be cautious to seek the ultimate happiness in what can ultimately fulfill, namely, the only unchanging immutable object that has ever existed and will exist throughout eternity, namely, the Most High God. I love C.S. Lewis' analogy of settling for playing with mud pies in a slum in my own ignorance rather than taking up an offer to take an extended vacation at a holiday resort.
© S. Chan, 2004. All rights reserved.
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, "Unselfishness." But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, "Love." You see what has happened? A negative term has ben substituted for a positive, and this is of more that philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to 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.
Where we err is not in the intensity of our desire to seek happiness, but in the weakness of our desire, but we must be cautious to seek the ultimate happiness in what can ultimately fulfill, namely, the only unchanging immutable object that has ever existed and will exist throughout eternity, namely, the Most High God. I love C.S. Lewis' analogy of settling for playing with mud pies in a slum in my own ignorance rather than taking up an offer to take an extended vacation at a holiday resort.
© S. Chan, 2004. All rights reserved.