C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis
I have drawn little stars by this chapter. I thought you might like it.
Mere Christianity, book 4 chapter 8
by C.S. Lewis "The First Job" c. 1943
The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not
usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each
morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild
animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving
them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other
point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come
flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural
fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.
We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new
sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are
letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between
paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which
soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He
said, "Be perfect," He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the
full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all
hankering after is harder--in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard
for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it
to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present.
And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.
We must be hatched or go bad....
This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so
easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church
has a lot of different objects--education, building, missions, holding
services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different
objects--military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way
things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote
and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A
husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a
game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging
in his own garden--that is what the State is there for....
In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into
Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all
the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are
simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is
even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any
other purpose.
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