I've been reading and re-reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" lately. I'd attempted to read it as a teenager a couple of times but found it just a little over my head at the time. It was recently given to me by friends, or should I say "prescribed"? Thanks friends! It has definitely provided some relief and keen insights for some of the puzzling things I've thought and felt during the past several months.
So, in the order of mammals, humans are very different in that we contemplate things. We are often found pondering why things unfold they way they do? What happens when we die? What's the purpose for humanity? Is there a purpose to faith? Or is it a self-imposed trick for helping us deal with life with some level of joy and sanity? Sure, I'm guilty of way too much contemplation a lot of times. It often feels like I'm just spinning my wheels and at that point I just try and go out for some fresh air and conversation, or find another safe distraction that lets me escape the questions that seem to generate fear and hopelessness at the lack of clear cut answers. You know like listening to music, soldering wires, cleaning the house, playing guitar, obsessing over my pedalboard configuration, etc... Over the past couple of years I've identified at many times with the Agnostic perspective. I don't find it to be absurd at all to think that we cannot ever prove the existence of God. Sure the next logical step, a.k.a. "pat answer" is to say that it all comes down to faith. True. But what is faith? It is believing as though something is real when it isn't yet. I have to be honest. That sounds very similar to being "delusional". But when I read what C.S. Lewis said in his chapter on Hope I became encouraged and my skepticism softened.
He writes that Christianity asserts, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of my life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same. There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books that are written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them."
Just when I thought my proverbial ladder had no more rungs to climb, I just found a whole new set. After reading this I breathed a sigh of relief. I'm still hanging on for dear life mind you, and the stakes are high. I'm just glad to have found some solid thoughts that point to hope.
Thanks Mr. Lewis!
