“No man knows had bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know
what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.”
Bad people don’t know wickedness because they live a sheltered life. Sheltered from the resistance of evil. If we resist evil, evil fights back. If we don’t resist evil, evil leaves us alone.
Lying down in a windstorm doesn’t give one an appreciation for the strength of the wind. Only standing up against the wind can one appreciate the power of the wind.
“We never find out the strength of the evil impulse until we try to fight against it.” (Mere Christianity, p. 124-5)
This is good. I like this brief post.
I was taken back by this because there are multiple modes of learning. “Smart people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others”. I don’t have to experience your trial to have empathy for you or strive to avoid having the same thing happen to me. Experience is a wonderful teacher and probably the most common way to learn. That is why we can read biographies and even the Holy Scriptures so we can learn from third successes and failures. “Those that refuse to learn history are destined to repeat it” this is a nice thought but I believe that it is a primary concept.
Regardless of one’s learning style, temptation and challenges must be part of the process. I believe the point made by C.S. Lewis is the fallacy that people who strive for goodness live a sheltered life. The opposite is true. How much challenge is there to go along with the crowd? Smoking, drinking, fornicating, and breaking the sabbath are easier behaviors than not-smoking, not drinking, chastity, and obeying the sabbath when the crowd is highly motivated to sin. The challenge is to forge the path least traveled instead of the path of least resistance.
thx for your thoughts
rh