Posts Tagged ‘C.S. Lewis’

Knowing our sinfulness makes us more, not less able to serve God. Jesus chooses Simon

February 8, 2025

Epiphany 5 -2025

Luke 5:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God, all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present. Amen.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to come face-to-face with the living God? 

Would you be filled with a deep sense of security and love? Would you be overawed and want to step back in the presence of such power and majesty? Would you be filled with the knowledge of your unworthiness, suddenly conscious of all the ways in which you fail to come up to your own standards, let alone those of God?  Would you be terrified of what God might do to you? Or would you, preferring to continue on your current course of selfishness and hedonism be annoyed and angry that God’s presence should suggest that there should be any other way of being?

In his Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis depicts the reactions of his characters when they come face to face with Aslan, the God-figure in the narratives. In The Magician’s Nephew, in which we first meet Aslan, Uncle Andrew, the self-absorbed, thoughtless experimenter sees the lion only as an impediment to his plans – he wants to get away so that he can continue doing what he has always done free from scrutiny and judgement. The witch – the symbol of all that is evil wants only to flee from the presence of all that is good.  She prefers the darkness and dreariness of her own world.  

In the second book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, four siblings enter Narnia. When three of them first see Aslan, they cannot believe that anything could be both terrible and good at the same time[1].  On seeing “the great, solemn, overwhelming eyes, they find that they cannot look at him and they tremble all over.” It takes some time before they find the courage to approach Aslan (who was after all the purpose of their journey) and when finally, they are face-to-face, the lion’s deep and rich voice puts them at ease, and they feel glad and quiet and not at all awkward. 

Edmund, the fourth sibling who had been beguiled by the witch, reacts quite differently. When he comes before Aslan, he experiences a choking feeling, knowing that it was he who warned the witch of Aslan’s appearance. He also has a desire to speak, to offer excuses which thankfully he supresses. 

The reaction to Aslan of each of these characters depends in part on their character – their arrogance or lack of it, their openness (or not) to scrutiny, their willingness (or not) to change, their wilfulness or their compliance, their innocence or their worldliness, and their sense of what is right and what is wrong. 

Lewis takes as his starting point the biblical stories of encounters with God and the various reactions of prophets, kings, disciples and others. 

Today’s readings – Isaiah, Corinthians and Luke – describe the ways in which Isaiah, Paul and Simon react when they find themselves in the presence of the divine. The experiences of the three are quite different, but each in their own way expresses a sense of unworthiness or sinfulness when face-to-face with the living God. Isaiah declares that he is lost – for no one can see God and live. Paul comes to see that his sense of right and wrong was misguided, he tells us that he is the least of the apostles and unfit to be called an apostle. 

Simon’s story is similar – though it includes many other details. According to Luke, Jesus is already known to him as a healer and worker of miracles, as Master, but not as Lord. Early in Jesus’ ministry Jesus visited the house of Simon and healed his mother-in-law. Perhaps this is why Simon is happy to let Jesus use his boat – he is already a little in awe, but not to the point of recognising Jesus for whom he is. When Jesus tells Simon to have one more try at a catch, Simon objects. A night on the lake has gained nothing. He calls Jesus, “Master” a term of respect for someone with authority – sufficient authority that Simon does what Jesus suggests though he has no expectation of success.  To his absolute surprise he nets more fish than his nets can hold, more than he and his fellow workers can bring in themselves, and more than can fit in the boats without causing them to sink.

We will never know what changed Simon’s heart – the catch of fish representing Jesus’ divinity, or the fear of sinking – being punished by God. Either way, he realises that he is in the presence of the divine and urges Jesus (whom he now addresses as “Lord”) to get away from him – stop the boat sinking or protect himself from Simon’s uncleanness. 

Jesus is having none of that.  He can see beyond Simon’s weaknesses to his strengths. He knows that the very fact that Simon is alert of his shortcomings, makes him an ideal candidate for a disciple.  Simon won’t be hampered by pride or self-confidence. His self-awareness will mean that he will be more receptive to instruction, more willing to rely on God than on himself, and more tolerant of the failings of others.

Scripture is filled with examples of people who felt unworthy to be chosen by God, who in the presence of the divine saw themselves for who they truly were – unworthy to be carry out God’s will.  

God choses them anyway and equips them to serve. God makes the lips of Isaiah clean so that he can speak the word of God. God changes Paul’s passion for the faith of his youth to faith in Christ and so the church is born. God tolerates the foibles of Simon, indeed of all the disciples knowing that there will be time when they come into their own. 

I am not at all certain that I could stand tall in the presence of God, but scripture tells me that God chooses those who are prepared to see themselves as God sees them, those who do not put up barriers between themselves and God, those who can stand God’s scrutiny and, of course, those who have nothing to fear. These are the people whom God can use – people who have room for the Holy Spirit in their lives, who know how little they can do on their own and who will allow God to work in and through them.

It is not the weak, the vulnerable and the foolish whom God rejects, but the self-assured, the self-contained, and those who are so pleased with themselves that they have no room for God.

“Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful person.”

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

Knowing our sinfulness makes us more, not less, useful to God.

[1] p 117

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Hearing the call of Jesus

January 20, 2024

Mark 1:14-20

Third Sunday after Epiphany – 2024

Mark 1:14-20

Marian Free

In the name of Gods who insistently calls us. Amen

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis tells of his long and convoluted journey to discipleship. Lewis’s mother died when he was quite young, and his childhood appears to have been emotionally deprived. Like many fathers of that era, his did not know how to relate to children, and again, like many children of that generation, Lewis was sent away – first to a tutor and then to boarding school. At a young age Lewis abandoned Christianity but, while he felt that that was unsatisfactory, he did not stop searching for meaning (joy), particularly in the works of various philosophers[1]. Over time however, his resistance to the faith was worn down and one evening he finally gave in. He describes the moment as follows:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Earlier in the book, Lewis describes the slow drip that wore away his resolve not to believe, concluding:

“The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. I felt myself being there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable.”[2]

People come to faith by different routes – by straight lines or circuitous, by gradual revelation or sudden conversion, by a slow burn or a bright light. What Lewis makes clear is that we have a choice – to open our hearts and let God in, or to close the door to God’s insistent knocking and to retain our separation and independence. There is always a choice, though as Lewis reports, it is often more like a compulsion – the lure is so strong that it becomes almost impossible to say ‘no’. Closing the door on God is possible, but it can take more effort to keep the door closed that to open it. Locking God out can feel like committing oneself to a life, if not of regret, then at least of constant curiosity as to what lay beyond the door (and to what we had said ‘No’.)

In today’s gospel, we hear the account of Jesus’ call of the four fishermen. As the story is told, Jesus walks beside the sea and calls first Simon and Andrew and then James and John. All four respond without hesitation. Their reaction to Jesus is often held up as a model response to the call to discipleship– leaving everything without question and without regret.

One wonders though. Did Jesus’ call really come out of the blue? Or had word of his mission reached Galilee? Or were the fishermen in touch with the Zeitgeist of the time – dissatisfaction with the current religious leaders; a degree of scepticism about the value of Temple worship; a desire for religious reform and were they waiting for a leader? Alternately, did they see in Jesus an integrity, an openness and a Spirit-filled life that was absolutely compelling? Or – was Jesus’ presence so authoritative that they knew that they could have complete confidence in him? 

Of course, it could have been a combination of things that led to the fishermen abandoning their nets (and their livelihood) to follow Jesus. One thing is sure that though they followed without question, it took the rest of their lives to truly become disciples. The choice that they made beside the sea was a choice that they had to make over and over again. Mark’s gospel tells us of their faltering beginnings, their questioning, their foolishness and, in Jesus’ moment of need, their terror and their abandonment. 

There are many ways to come to faith. For the fishermen, it seems that it was immediate and without question. For C.S. Lewis, it was the result of years of following false trails and dead-ends. 

In the same way, the journey of discipleship is not uniform. The fishermen, for all their enthusiasm took time to learn the ways of the gospel and to change their lives accordingly. Lewis, for all his scepticism was well-informed when he came to faith. Lewis’ reluctance sprang from his prior knowledge, the fishermen’s eagerness, reveals how little they knew of the cost of discipleship.

However enthusiastically or however reluctantly the fishermen and Lewis made a choice. A choice to live as they always had, or a choice to leap into a future in which God, not they, is in control. 

Our choice may have been made for us by our parents, or it may have come on us so gradually that we cannot put a finger on the time and place. We may have felt the insistent call of God or experienced a sudden transformation. It matters not how the choice came about, but that a choice was made and that a choice continues to be made to give our lives to Christ, to place our selves at the disposal of the living God. 

Do you hear the voice of Jesus? or the nagging tug of God? Is your answer ‘yes’ – this time, next time and every time?  

[1] This is my memory of his story. The book is readily available.

[2]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/joy.html#:~:text=by%20Sigmund%20Freud-,From%20Surprised%20by%20Joy%3A%20The,of%20My%20Early%20Life%20(1955)&text=%22I%20gave%20in%2C%20and%20admitted,reluctant%20convert%20in%20all%20England.%22

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Don’t wait for heaven – live it now

December 11, 2021

Advent 3 – 2021

Luke 3:7-18

Marian Free

May we allow Christ into our lives so that we might be transformed into people who will know themselves at home in heaven. Amen.

Some years ago, I was impressed by a statement written be C.S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity Lewis wrote: “We might think that the ‘virtues’ were necessary only for this present life – that in the other world we could stop being just because there is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there is no danger (or stop being good because there is no reason to be bad)[1]. Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or courageous (or virtuous) acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for being the sort of people we can become only as a result of doing such acts here. The point is not that God will not refuse you admission to his Eternal world  if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of these qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make it Heaven for them, that is could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakeable kind of happiness that God intends for us.”

I find Lewis notoriously difficult to re-phrase but I took this to mean that if we want to feel at home in heaven that we should begin changing our behavior now. That is if, as we imagine heaven is a place of peace, joy and harmony we should, in the present begin to practice those qualities in our own lives and to begin to excise those parts of us that will not be comfortable in such an environment. We should in the present, try to remove from our lives anything that would make others feel uncomfortable – self righteousness, judgementalism, anger, hatred and so on. It is a challenging concept – especially for those of us who are carrying grudges and who have an expectation that we will be vindicated in the life hereafter. A heaven filled with sour, unforgiving people would be no heaven at all and those who are sour and unforgiving would not be at all comfortable in a place full of peace and joy. Fear of hell is no reason to be good now, but wanting to be at home is every reason to practice being heavenly now.

In her sermon commentary for this week Chelsea Harmon says a similar thing from a different perspective. She asks: “When the world ends and all that’s left of you is what is of God and his Kingdom, will you be able to recognize yourself?”[2] If I found Lewis’s idea challenging, I find Chelsea’s even more confronting. What would remain of me if everything that was not of God was taken away?

Lewis’s image allows us to imagine that we can act in a way that prepares us for heaven, that we can practice the virtues that will fit us for everlasting life. In Harmon’s image we see ourselves completely stripped bare, with only what is Godly remaining. In essence, the ideas are exactly the same but the first allows room for us to act, the second reminds us that one of our tasks in this life is to get ourselves out of the way so that our lives and our actions are determined by the presence of God in us.

Either way, as Richard Rohr points out, “We don’t go to heaven, we learn how to live in heaven now. If try to prove that we’re better than everybody else or believe that we’re worse than everybody else, we are already in hell.” (12/3/21)

According to today’s gospel, crowds have been drawn into the wilderness seeking John’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Among those who came were tax collectors and soldiers – those despised by the general population because (for whatever reason) they were in the service of Rome. Instead of welcoming the crowds, John’s tone is harsh and judgmental: “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” he asks. Apparently, he doubts their sincerity. By implication, he is accusing them of being self-serving – wanting to find an easy (superficial) way to avoid God’s judgement. Their question tells us otherwise. They (especially those whose situation is one of compromise and obligation) genuinely want to know what they must do. John’s response is to tell them how to behave according to the values of heaven. That is, instead of taking advantage of others because of their positions they are to live (as much as is possible) generously and with integrity. In other words, they are to live the life of the kingdom now, so that when it comes, they will be at home.

It is quite clear to us that the urgency with which John proclaimed his message was misplaced. The world did not come to a physical end. His generation did not experience the wrath of God. But God did come. God came – not in power and with wrath but in obscurity and with peace. Jesus entered the world, not to judge but to transform, to turn hearts to God and lives to God’s way of being. John did announce the end, but perhaps not the end he expected. The Incarnation, the coming of Jesus heralded the end of one way of existence and the beginning of a new. John’s listeners had a choice – to continue in their old ways, to demonstrate by their behaviour and their attitudes an unwillingness to become part of God’s kingdom, or to repent (to turn around), to let go of their old, self-centred ways and to begin to live lives focused on God and on their neighbours. They were live as if they were in heaven now.

So it is with us, whether by practicing kingdom values, attitudes and behaviours as Lewis suggests, or divesting ourselves of worldly values, attitudes and behaviours as Harmon says,  John calls us to turn our lives around, to “flee from the wrath to come”, to begin to live in the present as we hope to live for eternity.

This is the choice we are offered again and again every Advent – to hold fast to the values of the world (which is coming to an end) or to allow ourselves to be transformed by the values of the kingdom which never ends.

We have been warned. We have a choice to make.

Will we choose earth or heaven, the present or eternity?

 

 

[1] Italics mine. In Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, he creates a fictional story about a variety of people who self-exclude themselves from heaven – the angry and the bitter who cannot bear to see that the person who has wronged them is already there for example.

[2] For the full article go to https://cepreaching.org/authors/chelsey-harmon/

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Smashing boundaries, confronting stereotypes

May 28, 2016

Pentecost 2 – 2016

Luke 7:1-10

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who welcome all those who seek God. Amen.

C.S. Lewis had the most extraordinary ability to express complex theology in a way that is easy to understand. This is demonstrated above all in his stories. The Screwtape Letters proved a light-hearted insight into the subtleties of evil and The Great Divorce reveals Lewis’s understanding of the final judgement. Perhaps his greatest achievement is The Chronicles of Narnia – children’s stories that Lewis wrote for his god-daughter. In seven short books, Lewis manages to sum up some of the central tenets of our faith in story form. From an account of creation in The Magician’s Nephew to an imaginative presentation of judgement and the end of the world in The Last Battle Lewis manages to share the faith in an adventure story that is so compelling that even on the one hundredth read is impossible to put down and that even on the one hundred and first read still has greater depths to reveal.

Narnia is an imaginary land into which children from this world are unexpectedly thrown and in which they find themselves confronting, challenging and fighting the forces of evil. In Narnia the divine is represented by a huge lion – Aslan – who appears terrible to those who don’t believe or who have gone their own way, but full of light and love to those whose hearts are open and who have nothing to hide. Because Lewis is writing from a Christian perspective, it is clear to us that Aslan represents the Trinity and in particular Jesus. Readers observe Aslan breathing the world into being, being destroyed and yet being restored to life and being present as an invisible presence and power. Aslan is welcoming, forgiving and understanding, but not without expectations of those who would be his friends. He expects the children to trust him and to show the same sort of care for others as he shows to them.

Perhaps the most extraordinary book in the series is the last. In this story, he tries to capture the theme of Revelation – a difficult enough book for any of us to grasp. Suffice to say, the story deals with the destruction of the world and the final judgement. It is impossible to summarise the plot here and I simply want to focus on one aspect of the story. The final battle is between the cruel Calormenes and the Narnians. In the course of the battle the heroes are slain and find themselves in the most wonderful land in which everything is larger, brighter and somehow more real than the land from which they came. They are not alone in this new place. All the Narnians who have fallen in battle are there with them. There too are a small group of dwarves, huddled together in terror, so bound by their unbelief that they simply cannot see the beauty and bounty that surrounds them.

Also in this new and wonderful land is a Calormene who is wandering freely and in wide-eyed wonder. Emeth, for that was his name, had spent his life faithful to the god of his own people and was deeply disturbed by what the deceptions that had brought Narnia under Calormene control. Unlike the dwarves who were blinded by their skepticism and arrogance, Emeth was open to the presence of the divine, by whatever name it went. When he found himself in the strange new land, he was at first unafraid. It was only when he came face to face with Aslan that he threw himself to the ground, certain that he – a follower of the god of the Calormenes – would be struck down and destroyed. Instead he feels the lion bend down and touch his tongue to his forehead saying: “Son you are welcome.” Despite Emeth’s protestations that he is not worthy, Aslan assures him that his life, his goodness and his desire for God were all in fact in the service of Aslan and that he belongs in this strange new place.

There are a number of surprising aspects to today’s gospel. The centurion is not only not a Jew, he is a Roman and a soldier at that. He cares for his slave almost as a father cares for his child yet, despite his authority he does not feel that he is in a position to ask for Jesus’ help directly. Instead he sends some Jews to ask on his behalf. They assure Jesus that he is worthy of Jesus’ attention however, when Jesus’ nears the home of the centurion he sends another delegation – this time his friends – to tell Jesus that he is not worthy to have Jesus come to him.

It is clear that the centurion has seen the divine in Jesus and that, in the presence of the Jesus, he is acutely aware of his outsider status, his unworthiness. He is seeking Jesus’ help even though he does not worship the God of the Jews. The centurion knows that he does not belong, that in the eyes of many he represents the enemy, the oppressor.

Jesus sees in him, not an enemy but someone who is open to the presence of the divine, someone who is not so bound by his own ideas or by his skepticism that he cannot see Jesus for who he is. Jesus sees not someone who worships another god, but someone whose life, goodness and desire for God are in the service of the one true God. In fact Jesus rather than being disturbed is amazed – even among the Jews he has not found a faith to match that of the centurion.

Unlike Jesus, there are many who are quick to judge, who believe that they know who is in and who is out, who think that they know just what faith entails and how God will judge their faith and the faith of others.

The gospels are quick to destroy the arrogance that insists that there is only one way to God and only one way to be accepted by God. Rather than creating strict definitions of who belongs and who does not, Jesus is constantly smashing boundaries, confounding stereotypes and confronting the self-confidence of those who think that they are the only ones who will be saved.

Then who will be saved when that final curtain falls and Jesus comes again to judge? Those who seek God in the ways that are known to them and whose understanding of God is not limited to a prescribed set of ideas but who are open to the presence of God in themselves and in the world, those who have the humility to recognise their own unworthiness and who do not feel that the world/God owes them anything and who understand that they do not cannot deserve Jesus’ attention. In other words salvation belongs to those who trust in God – whoever and whatever God may be – and who, instead of trusting in themselves, admit their faults and throw themselves on God’s mercy.

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God and slugs

December 24, 2015

Christmas 2015

Some thoughts

Marian Free

 In the name of God who could chose to be anything and yet chose to become one of, one with us. Amen.

 From time to time, I dip into a collection of daily readings that uses the writings of C.S. Lewis[1]. Recently, in the readings for December, I came across this statement: “The Eternal being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab[2].” I have to admit, that as much as I have pondered the nature of the Incarnation, I had never grasped the enormity of God’s decision as clearly. Lewis’s comparison really puts the concept of the Incarnation into perspective. In fact, as I absorbed the new point of view, it occurred to me that the difference between divinity and humanity is so vast that even Lewis’s distinction may not be sufficient to capture the chasm that exists. In fact it is almost certainly impossible to come up with an image that does the notion justice, but it might be more useful to consider our becoming an amoeba, a mould or some other microscopic life form.

It is beyond imagining that a human being would voluntarily trade their human form for something so base and so insignificant as a single-celled organism. Is there any circumstance under which a human being would make that choice? Is it conceivable that there would be a situation that would draw out the sort of love and compassion that would compel a person to make such a radical sacrifice?

I suspect that there is no way that any one of us would willingly choose to give up our independence, our rational thought, our self-determination. There is no imaginable state of affairs that would cause us to make a choice that would leave us completely at the mercy of the elements, adrift in the world with no power to change our position or to influence the direction that our lives might take. Human beings can and do make enormous sacrifices for others, but it is hard to imagine any human being giving up their humanness for any cause whatsoever.

Yet, God, the source of life and love, God who could and can do anything, who could choose to be anything at all and who could determine any number of ways to save the world, made the choice to fully and completely enter our existence. There were no half measures. God did not appear to become human. Jesus was not merely similar to us. God took on human flesh with all its frailty. God abandoned power and glory, imperishability and immortality to fully enter the human race. In so doing, God exposed Godself to all the indignities associated with being human. God sentenced Godself to all the restrictions, all the limitations of the human form – the spewing, mewling, incontinent state of infancy and old age, the vulnerability to disease and accident, the risk of being emotionally abused or abandoned.

We cannot come close to envisaging the cost of God’s abandoning the glories of Paradise for the uncomfortable realities of life on this planet. We cannot take lightly God’s love, commitment and compassion for the human race.

This is what the Incarnation, what Christmas is all about. God’s desire that we should be saved that is so powerful and so overwhelming, that what to us is an unimaginable decision becomes a realistic solution. God could see no other way to demonstrate God’s love and to bring us to our senses than to share our existence and to show us our real potential. I have no desire to become an amoeba or even a slug, but I will for this life and the next be overawed and filled with gratitude that God should love so much that God would become one of us.

 

Christmas 2015

Family service

If you could be anything at all when you grow up, what would it be?

(Take responses and comment – something like there are some pretty ambitious and amazing goals there. I hope that you work hard enough to make them a reality. If there are no outrageous comments, mention some that came up at our grandson’s Kindy graduation – princess, batman, Prime Minister)

God can do or be anything that God wants, and what did God decide to be? (Wait for answers or simply provide the answer.) Yes, God decided to be a baby. God could be anything at all, and yet God became a baby – a baby that cries, that needs its nappy changed, that throws up after it is fed. Yuk! Why would God want to become a baby? Why? Because God loves us so much, that God will do anything to get our attention. Why? Because God knew that we wouldn’t really trust God unless God became like us and that if God was to become like us, then God had to be just like us – starting as a baby. Why? Because God knows that everyone loves a baby and God hoped that if we loved the baby, we might learn to love God.

So Christmas is all about the baby, and the baby is all about love – God’s love for us that is bigger than anything we can begin to imagine.

God loves us, and hopes that we will learn to love God.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] In C.S. Lewis. The Business of Heaven. Ed Walter Hooper. Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks, 1984.

[2] op cit 300.

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Being aware – looking inwards

December 15, 2012

Advent 3

Luke 3:7-18

Marian Free

In the name of God whose unconditional love challenges us to accept ourselves for who we are so that we may seek to be made whole. Amen.

 You will have gathered by now that I am a great fan of the writings of C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately, while his ideas are sometimes quite simple, his writing is complex and it is not always easy to re-frame his thoughts in a way that accurately captures what he is trying to say. Lewis was a late comer to Christianity and he used his great intellect to write not only books on theology, but also children’s books, as in the Narnia series, science fiction and imaginative theology. One of my favourites in the latter category is a light-hearted but deadly serious look at sin. The book is called The Screwtape Letters[1] and it takes the form of a number of letters written by a senior devil to a much younger devil who is just starting out. The ultimate goal of these devils is to weaken a believer’s connection to God while at the same time convincing them that their faith and their practice of that faith is just as strong as it ever was.

Among other things, one of the achievements of the book is to illustrate how difficult it can be for human beings to adequately identify sin. In particular it demonstrates how often and how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that what we are doing is selfless, humble and abstemious when in fact we are being selfish, proud and greedy. Screwtape (the senior devil) urges his nephew Wormwood to exploit these weaknesses – to encourage the believer to pursue those things that make him or her feel virtuous but which in fact increase the distance between themselves and God. He uses an example of a person who thinks that his or her modest diet is evidence of their economy and self-control when in reality their apparent virtue lapses easily into an obsession with food and into attention seeking behaviour. “No, no, I couldn’t eat all that, just bring me a dry biscuit.”

Screwtape also encourages Wormwood to make use of those supposed virtues which, if engaged in simply for the sake of being virtuous, tend to lead to bitterness and resentment – the exact opposite of their intention. For example, he suggests that Wormwood take advantage of what he calls the petty altruisms – the affected unselfishness which hides a person’s true needs and feelings and which creates, instead of satisfaction, feelings of resentment and a sense of being unappreciated.

In today’s gospel, those who come out to John the Baptist ask the direct question in response to his challenge that they repent. “What then shall we do?” they ask. His answer is very specific. True to the Lukan communitarian values John’s answer to the crowds is that they should share what they have with those who have nothing. Tax collectors and soldiers are singled out for even more specific advice which relates to their professions. That is well and good, but for twenty-first century listeners these suggestions are not entirely helpful and the very specific nature of the advice does not allow us to generalize it to our own situation. The advice only allows us to deal with a very narrow band of sinful actions and provides only a limited number of ideas as to how to behave well.

Jesus’ attacks on the Pharisees later in the gospel make it clear that simple, rule-bound behaviour is not sufficient for entry into the Kingdom of God. He is adamant that the state of a person’s heart is just as important – if not more so – than external behaviour. The behaviours and attitudes of the Pharisees as described by the Gospels demonstrate that it is relatively easy to deal with the surface sins, to paper over deeper issues such as insincerity and a need for recognition with an outward appearance of virtue, selflessness and goodness. An example of a conflict between external behaviour and internal insufficiency can be seen in the apparent selflessness of a parent or spouse which is in fact a way of feeding their own need to be needed. Instead of helping their partner or child, such a person may be fostering the other’s dependence on themselves and, as a result, making themselves feel useful and virtuous at the expense of the other. Their own low self-esteem and deeper need for affirmation is hidden beneath a veneer of self-sacrifice which in turn becomes a burden not a relief for the person whom they claim to be assisting. To quote C.S. Lewis: “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

Again the Gospel description of the Pharisees is evidence that religion and its practice may be another way of hiding one’s inner faults and failings with a veneer of religiosity. Asceticism, fasting, and other spiritual practices may serve not to build holiness but to disguise a spiritual emptiness. Instead of modelling a deep and meaningful relationship with God, such people can seriously damage the vulnerable seekers who come to them for guidance.

Sometimes the obvious sin is not the real problem. The real sin is not what can be seen but an underlying condition which needs to be healed and addressed before the surface behaviour can properly go away. For example the outward sin of bullying may be driven by an inward urge to be recognized and valued by others. The outward sin of greed may cover up a feeling of emptiness and reveal a belief that possessions will fill the void. The outward sin of arrogance may compensate for a deep sense of unworthiness. A person who feels that they are of little value may go to a great deal of trouble to convince others and therefore themselves that they are of some importance. If only the outward expression of such sins is managed, then the inward issues may fester and grow and be expressed in some other equally damaging or unhealthy way.

All of this should go to show that sinning is a much more complex issue than simply breaking one of the Ten Commandments, or practicing any one of the seven deadly sins. The problem with simply following rules, is that it allows us to feel OK and doesn’t force us to examine our ulterior motives, to question whether or not our behaviour assists or damages others or to face our own inner demons, insecurities and needs.

During Advent we are challenged to be awake and alert, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus. In this time of reflection and preparation let us have the courage to be awake and alert to our inner selves, to have the nerve to examine not only our outward appearance but to look deep inside to see what drives us and our behaviour, to ask if our selflessness is really selfishness, if our abstemiousness covers up our greed and if our attempts to serve others lead to resentment rather than to satisfaction. To ask, in other words, what specific advice would John the Baptist offer us, were we to find ourselves in his presence.

[1] Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters.

(There are a number of internet sites which offer a free PDF version of the book.)

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