Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What a Wise Man.

...But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one can really reach the rainbow's end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed 'common sense' we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.

...The Christian says, '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 thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably 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 to be thankful for, these earthy blessings, and on the other, never 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 till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others so the same. '


C.S. Lewis
FromMere Christianity

1 comment:

no simple highway said...

i just quoted this in one of my papers...hahah - you should read "the weight of glory" it's a nine page sermon he gave to students at Oxford about this sort of topic...and it's awesome...