C.S. Lewis on our Religion–CQ

Every day I say to God, “I love you, Lord.”  I’m not exactly sure what I mean by that though.  Maybe “I’m grateful”?  The problem lies in my extremely imperfect attempt to love God or anyone else for that matter.  To illustrate:  I love this CS Lewis quote (italics mine):

“All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through….

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love– a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–”

The parrot just repeats words he has heard in his master’s study but he doesn’t really have any real idea of what Homer was talking about.  I have heard about ‘loving the Lord’ all my life. I hope to really do it sometime in my life.  Really to love God more than me and to totally release myself into Him and make Him my everything–with absolutely no reference to myself or what i get out of this relationship.  There’s just so much self-interest and reward even in my religion.  Guess that’s what total depravity is all about in theology….

When I was a kid I heard someone preaching and he said this, “I dealt with the sin question long ago.”  Even as a child I didn’t believe him.  It’s not that sin reigns in me.  It can’t make me do anything.  The choices are now my own….but truly to rid myself of self…its like trying to take all the salt out of the sea.  I mean I try…but there’s just always more salt in the water somehow.  (Yes I do fully understand that I am saved by Grace. I have just been at this for 30 years now and I am still selfish and the minute I stop watching over it, self takes charge again.)  That’s my experience.  Maybe this is my prayer for the night.

How do we really break outside being the center of our world?  Of seeing everyone else  and their importance through the lens of their relationship to me…Has anyone really ever done it?

I think too much at 1:30am, but these are pretty good thoughts…  Thanks, Mr. Lewis, for the honesty.  You’ve had my head spinning for the last two days since I read your poem. Amen.