C.S. Lewis: The Nooks and Crannies of Sin

*** “I felt sure that the creature was what we call ‘good,’ but I wasn’t sure whether I liked ‘goodness’ so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible; the last card has been played” (Perelandra).

Lewis combined a love of goodness and virtue without the typical concomitant pretense to having achieved much of it himself. Lewis was not politically correct. He believed in depravity all the more as his vision of God grew. Lewis loved truth more than his own honor. By his own account Lewis suffered more from selfishness (the desire to have one’s way) than from self-centeredness (fixation upon and fascination with oneself and how one is viewed by others). This comparative division of weakness freed Lewis to “let God be true and every man a liar,” more clearly and boldly than is usual.