Seemingly Impossible

C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity


'...many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility.


Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can.


You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone.


Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it.


It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.


We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity-like perfect charity-will not be attained by any merely human efforts.


You must ask for God's help.


Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.


Never mind.


After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.


Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.


For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul
which are more important still.


It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.

We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.


The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.


C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity

(((I really get a lot from this excerpt from C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity.


So often we want to give up because things do seem impossible. It's impossible to give up that cherished sin, or those cherished sins. We try and try and pray until we think we can pray no more and yet still we fall victim to the cherished sin. We soon focus on the sins that do so easily beset us. -- Paul had this to say --


Romans {7:18} For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but [how] to perform that which is good I find not. {7:19} For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. {7:20} Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. {7:21} I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. {7:22} For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: {7:23} But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. {7:24} O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? {7:25} I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.


He had a lot to say didn't he? Can you empathize with him? I can. Lewis says that 'many are deterred'. We become deterred because we feel it's impossible. Then he says this... 'You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.'


It does seem this way doesn't it? Even getting that desire to give up cherished sin seems hard. The sin seems to become more ingrained, harder than ever to give up. The harder we try, the more elusive and hopeless it seems, right?


I really like this part of what Lewis says-


'Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.'


To me that says we don't give up! God works in ways we can't possibly understand and if we're not given the answers in the ways we want we can't give up on God. That's what we do isn't it? When we give in to our sins and never try to rid ourselves of them, if we give up the fight, if we give up hope, we are giving up on Jesus and we are saying that He doesn't have the power to save us. Whether we want to admit it or not, that's what we're saying. We can try and blame ourselves by saying we'll never be good enough so why bother, but that's only stating the obvious truth that Jesus already knows. Is this a license so sin, no, no, no. Admitting that we can't save ourselves is essential towards the true realization that only Christ can save us. Paul called himself a wretched man and then asked who could deliver him from the body of death... he answered himself, he thanked God through Jesus' Christ our Lord. We have to thank God knowing that even though we can't imagine a sinless life that He can do even that for us. We can't give up the hope! And we can't ... like Lewis said, 'be content with anything less than perfection.' And that perfection is Jesus' Christ.


May God help us now and always, by the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus!


Amen.