is that way) that it stands alone and needs no comment:
If we claim to be without sin (1 John 1:8)
- Until the evil man finds evil unmistakably present in his
existence, in the form of pain, he is enclosed in an illusion.
Once pain has roused him, he knows that he is in some
way or other "up against" the real universe: He either
rebels (with the possibility of a clearer issue and deeper
repentance at some later stage) or else makes some
attempt at an adjustment, which, if pursued, will lead
him to religion. It is true that neither effect is so certain
now as it was in the ages when the existence of God (or even
of the gods) was more widely known, but even in our own
day we see it operating. Even atheists rebel and express,
like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God
although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist;
and other atheists...are driven by suffering to raise
the whole problem of existence and to find some way of
coming to terms with it which, if not Christian, is almost
infinitely superior to fatuous contempt with a profane life.
No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument;
it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives
the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment.
It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the
fortress of a rebel soul.
- We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent,
inoffensive, worthy people -- on capable, hardworking
mothers of families or diligent, thrifty, little tradespeople,
on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their
modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the
enjoyment of it with the fullest right...Try to believe, if
only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest
prosperity and the happiness of their children are not
enough to make them blessed; that all this must fall from
them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know
Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them,
warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day
they will have to discover. The life to themselves and
their families stands between them and the recognition of
their need; He makes that life less sweet to them. I call
this a Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike
our colors to God when the ship is going down under us;
a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up
"our own" when it is no longer worth keeping.
- I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary
contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a
merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of
work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book,
when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens
serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that
threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack
of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and
all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then,
slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself
into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times;
I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to
possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and
my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace,
I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously
dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right
sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole
nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God
forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that
supported me under the threat because it is now associated
with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible
necessity of tribulation is only too clear: God has had
me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of
taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe
that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the
hated bath is over -- I shake myself as dry as I can and
race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in
the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed.
And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either
sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.
.
