more from C.S. Lewis

More from C.S. Lewis-- this an excerpt from "Mere Christianity.":

"The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail.  If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam. and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out.  If there was any idea of a sort of bargain-- any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debt so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side-- that has to be wiped out.
I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam. or of a bargain in his mind.  The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.  When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up.  They seem to imagine that God is very simpleminded. In fact, of course, He knows all about this.  One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits.  God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam. or putting Him in your debt.
Then comes another discover.  Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.  If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His won already.  So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.  It is like a small child going to its father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present.  It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction."



It was quite a day when I had this paradigm shift. It's so easy to think that God's love or position to us moves with our actions... I think it's a common thing to believe, but this is just another view of God that He Himself blows up!!  I'm so thankful that His Love for us stays steady despite any attempt to earn it on our parts.  He gives to us freely. Salvation is free. His direction is free. And you just stop "hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."-- who is the Holy Spirit.