Just a little something to think about...
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means the only complete realist.
C.S. Lewis
A great quote from New Testament this year.
Merry Christmas everyone!!
posted by J-E-N @ 1:28 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
I am not so sure that Lewis is correct. I think there is much truth in the statement that we don't know how bad we are until we try to be good. You don't know how weak your weaknesses are until you test them. (A separate, but difficult question is "what is good", but that discussion would derail discussion.)
Having said that, testing one's weaknesses, or finding out how bad we are by trying to be good, is not the same thing as finding out how strong temptation is. The strength of any particular temptation is relative. Some temptations are strong for some people and not for others. The strength of any particular temptation has little if anything to do with the objective power of the temptation (unlike the strength of the German army, to use his example) and everything to do with our internal susceptibility to that temptation. Therefore, when Lewis talks about the strength of temptation, he is really talking about something quite different. He is really talking about one's weaknesses which make one susceptible to a particular temptation.
I have never been tempted by heroin. I don't think that this means that I know better than the heroin addict just how strong that temptation is. In fact, I have no clue how strong that temptation is because I have never experienced it. I think that is true for a wide variety of temptations. Thus, I don't believe that I understand temptation better than one who succumbs to temptation more than I do. I disagree with Lewis on this point.
This raises another interesting issue, though. I think we place entirely too much emphasis on "resisting" temptation. Our discourse about good and evil often assumes that evil is something to be resisted, and that good consists of resisting the temptation to do evil. I don't that is correct, but we can talk about that some other time.
Have a good trip!
Whoa. Awesome quote, and awesome intellectual rebuttal. I like smart people. Hey, Jen I think you're amazing. I love you lots!
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