It's been a span of nine days since my last entry on Substack, and I want to extend my apologies for the recent absence. The past week has been consumed by challenging matters at church that demanded my attention. Now that these issues are resolved, I feel compelled to share insights from C.S. Lewis on navigating rough times, which I've personally found enlightening.
Understanding the profound perspective Lewis offers can shed light on what God is achieving through our difficulties and reveal His plan for our lives. Indeed, if we can understand this, it may very well re-enchant how we view hard times. This morning, I found myself reflecting on a poignant quote from C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity," and I believe it resonates well with the broader context of my Inklings Option project.
Lewis writes this:
Of course we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us. He is the inventor, we are only the machine. He is the painter, we are only the picture. How should we know what He means us to be like?…We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people”: but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.
Here is another way of putting the two sides of the truth. On the one hand we must never imagine that our own unaided efforts can be relied on to carry us even through the next twenty-four hours as “decent” people. If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death.
That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along—illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation—he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us…
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
This landed for me this morning, especially in light of some of the difficulties I’ve been working on in the past week or so.
So often we think to ourselves “why am I going through this rough time now that I’m a Christian? Shouldn’t it be smooth sailing from here?” The thing that we must come to realize is that contrary to popular belief, God is not a gentleman. He is the Inventor of inventors. He is the Painter of painters, and He has the right to do with us what He will (Rom. 9:18).
He does not ask our permission to make us into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. He is “forcing” us “up”, Lewis says, “to a higher level.” Of course, it’s true that man, having a will, exercises human responsibility, but we must also acknowledge that God sovereignly brings about things that forces us to grow upwards like trees towards heaven (Ps. 1). He is making us into saints and placing us in situations that we never desired that requires of us greater bravery, greater patience, greater love than we ever dared desire. Ultimately, this is for Good, and in the process, we become more Beautiful and more oriented towards Truth.
We shouldn’t be surprised when hard times come. We are like living houses, and God comes into rebuild us.
We know that there’s some work that needs doing and some renovation that needs done, so we expect that. But it’s when God starts knocking things down in the house in painful ways that we start asking and shouting, “what the hell is He doing knocking that down?”
Come to find out, God is building a different house than the one we thought. As the Builder, He is building what He means to build. He is building something so much more glorious than we could have ever imagined. This pain is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. We thought we were going to be made a decent little cottage hidden away in the Shire, but he’s building palaces and courtyards like in the White City of Gondor, where the White Tree lives on.
Like Aslan, He is not safe. But He is Good, and He intends to make us Good however painful that may be. The Lord gives and the Lord takes way, removing the mudpies we might settle for in the slums, replacing them with a beautiful holiday at sea. Praise be to the name of the Lord!
Brother this project just keeps getting better. Words cast spells and what the Inklings were doing was casting spells. Every word is enchanted. God made us in his image and in a weigh our words have magic in them in a derivative way that God has in his speech. We are sub creators with our speech and Christians need to have a positive view of the world with our word like you are saying. Keep going!!!!
The Weight of Glory. A hint of beauty shimmering from what you described about man being restored.
I very much enjoyed the essays in that book, in particular, but had a hard time understanding their relation to each other, especially in light of the Title. An essay or two about this would be a joy.
Thank you