Do you listen to dead people? I do. And I do it for the simple fact that there is so much wisdom to be had from those who have gone before us. C.S. Lewis is one of those dead guys who I consult with on a regular basis. . . not in any weird kind of spiritual way, but through reading the great wealth of insight and wisdom he committed to the printed page. In recent months, our cultural situation has made Lewis’s words come to life for me.
This morning, I read some very helpful words from the classic and-oh-so-relevant C.S. Lewis book, Mere Christianity. I immediately thought about how our impressionable children and teens would benefit from hearing and heeding these words. I very quickly realized they were words for me as well. They mesh very well with something I’ve been telling my own kids their whole lives: “Every time you make a decision you are choosing sides.” Lewis writes. . .
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
That’s some good advice.