Daily Meditation

On Fasting

C. S. Lewis

The problem about avoiding our own pain admits a similar solution. Some ascetics have used self-torture. As a layman, I offer no opinion on the prudence of such a regimen; but I insist that, whatever its merits, self-torture is quite a different thing from tribulation sent by God. Everyone knows that fasting is a different experience from missing your dinner by accident or through poverty.

Fasting asserts the will against the appetite—the reward being self-mastery and the danger pride: involuntary hunger subjects appetites and will together to the Divine will, furnishing an occasion for submission and exposing us to the danger of rebellion. But the redemptive effect of suffering lies chiefly in its tendency to reduce the rebel will.

Ascetic practices, which in themselves strengthen the will, are only useful in so far as they enable the will to put its own house (the passions) in order, as a preparation for offering the whole man to God. They are necessary as a means; as an end, they would be abominable, for in substituting will for appetite and there stopping, they would merely exchange the animal self for the diabolical self.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in Words to Live By The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Daily Devotional

Beware the Diabolical Self

On fasting

C. S. Lewis

The problem about avoiding our own pain admits a similar solution. Some ascetics have used self-torture. As a layman, I offer no opinion on the prudence of such a regimen; but I insist that, whatever its merits, self-torture is quite a different thing from tribulation sent by God. Everyone knows that fasting is a different experience from missing your dinner by accident or through poverty. Fasting asserts the will against the appetite—the reward being self-mastery and the danger pride: involuntary hunger subjects appetites and will together to the Divine will, furnishing an occasion for submission and exposing us to the danger of rebellion. But the redemptive effect of suffering lies chiefly in its tendency to reduce the rebel will. Ascetic practices, which in themselves strengthen the will, are only useful in so far as they enable the will to put its own house (the passions) in order, as a preparation for offering the whole man to God. They are necessary as a means; as an end, they would be abominable, for in substituting will for appetite and there stopping, they would merely exchange the animal self for the diabolical self.
From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

These Are the Days of Mourning and Lamentation

Why Do You Cast Us Off Forever?

One lesson that stands out in both biblical redemptive history and in the history of the Church is that God is never in a hurry.  One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  His plans and purposes unfold slowly, deliberately, and ultimately exhaustively.

One of the challenges to Christian maturity is learning to live coram Deo--before the Face of God--with patience and perseverance.  Our lives on this earth are of course ridiculously fleeting and brief, like the flower in the field which blooms at the dawn, but is limp and spent by day's end.  There is a perpetual temptation to expect (even demand) that all of God's promises come to pass now, in our days, in our lifetimes.  Another, opposite temptation is to conclude that since God's promises are not going to be realised in our lifetimes, why worry?  Be happy.  Such thoughts are anthropocentric, man centred, not God centred. They do not flow from living coram Deo.

One of the essential steps to Christian maturity is to learn to live our lives in God's time, not ours.  In many cases this requires that we need to live through seasons, if not lifetimes, of lamentation.  Unfortunately, it's not something we hear much about today, which is a sure sign that the Church in the West is misdirected, impatient, triumphalist, and, thus, largely irrelevant.  What do we mean?

In the West, the First Christendom has fallen apart.  Unbelief rules the councils of our lands.  Christians are assailed on every hand by militant secularism.  We are regarded as irrelevant relics, piteous anachronisms of a darker, ignorant age. Yet Christians are not found in lamentation before God.  Why?  We suspect that most Christians believe that the travails of our age and generation are not our travails, and in any event, will soon be over.

Some Christians expect to be "raptured" off the planet--in their lifetimes.  Others have locked themselves in Christian ghettoes, separating as much as physically and mentally possible from the militant march of Unbelief.