C.S. Lewis and 'Mere Christianity' - Part 3: Self

C.S. Lewis on "self":

 "The moment you have a self at all, there is the possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the center - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan; and that was the sin he taught the human race (beginning with Adam and Eve).

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could 'be like gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make them happy.

The reason we can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other."

That explains a lot, don't you think?  Why humans evolved like they did. Why there is evil. Why bad things happen like poverty, greed, war, hate, etc. It was never God's intention. Since God is perfect (Matthew 5:48 - "....as your heavenly Father is perfect.") and God created man in his own image (Genesis 1:27- "God created man in His own image"), logic indicates that everything prior to the episode in the Garden of Eden had to be perfect.

Some time before that, Satan became selfish and challenged God and lost. Then he took Adam and Eve with him. Sin was introduced, perfection lost, and now we're paying the price. As a result, we shouldn't be blaming God for every little bad thing that happens. Mankind only has itself to blame.

And God even reminds us that in Proverbs 19:3- "People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord."

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Next blog:  Making better sense of what Jesus did and why: "God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form".