Snippet from an email I sent to a friend.
I read this yesterday and wanted to comment on it, I think Lewis is dead-on. I’m going to comment with the assumption that what is said in Future Grace is true…. In Letter XXI (21), which immediately follows the discussion of sexual immorality in 20, the topic of ownership comes up in this one. Here are some things he has to say:
Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.
“Conceived” is the key word, here. In other words, that someone is driving slow in the left lane, that there is a long line at the grocery store, that you have an event you must attend… these are all conceived of as “misfortunes.” But a man is not angered by such things except to the degree that they seem to take away from his perceived rights.
“The left lane is for driving FAST, you moron!” means “I have a right to drive fast in the left lane, and YOU are preventing me from doing so.”
“Ugh, I’ll be in line forever,” at the grocery store means “I have a right to get my food and pay for it without being hassled by others who have to do the same thing.”
“I have to attend this meeting tonight when I would rather spend it with my friends,” means “I have a right to spend my time with my friends, and this meeting is preventing me from doing so.”
It’s all about thinking of these events as if they are injurious to us. Keep that in mind.
And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.
Playing off of that, to the degree we do not believe and delight in the promises of Romans 8:28-39, or Matthew 5:25-34, or Jeremiah 29:11, to that degree will these little things set you off. “I have a right to a computer that won’t crash,” when it is God who says, “I will work your computer crash together for good.” Poor us, our plans are not working out. Nevermind the fact that not one atom can move apart from the will of our Father in heaven (Matthew 10:29), who is working all things after the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11), for His glory and for our good (Ephesians 1:6; Romans 8:28).
Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.
This is key. Remember how we’ve said in the past, “When you see God for who He is, man loses ALL his rights.” Like when Isaiah saw the glory of God and seems to delight in the fact that God is hiding His truth from people, keeping them from repenting… intentionally (John 12:39-41). We have no rights…. As much as we’d like to think we do (and I woke up this morning feeling that right very strongly!), we do not. We are slaves, either to sin resulting in death, or to obedience resulting in righteousness, with the outcome, eternal life (Romans 6:16-23).
Who are we? Who are we to think that our time is our own? We merely redeem the time which has been freely given us by God to gladly make others glad in Him (Ephesians 5:16). The very reason you and I exist today, that we have another hour to live, is to glorify God by enjoying Him. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defense…. And all the time the joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say “mine” of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says “Mine” of everything on the pedantic [an ostentatious concern for formal rules], legalistic ground that He made it. Our Father hopes in the end to say “Mine” of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.
All from C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour and Company, 1941), 106-110
I read this yesterday and was like, “Whoa. I am sooooo screwed up.” And it’s not solved by saying, “I’m going to just be better at this. Lord, make me more grateful.” It’s a moment-by-moment trust, and bringing ourselves back to that NOW that will fight unbelief in the form of impatience. What I do in ten minutes does not matter; what I do right now does. That’s all I can control, and I must live in the ocean of future grace, being poured out on me at every moment. What promises there are that are worth believing! And how by delighting in them will we overcome the sin of impatience!
Leave a comment