C.S. Lewis and the Perils of Self-Will

"… the terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ..."

I need to read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity more often. His thinking is both timeless and powerful. For instance, he helps with a profound puzzle: how to solve the tension between what Jesus wants and what we want. Lewis knows that:

… the terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ…but it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead…to remain what we call ourselves, to keep personal happiness as our aim in life.

Lots of us wonder, with significant unease, what claims Jesus might put on our life, what transformation of the self it might require. We often interact with the person and work of Jesus in the hope of finding support for views we presently hold and the current habits of our heart. Lewis says that in doing so:

We are looking for an ally where we are offered either a Master or—a judge.

Total Reorientation

I’ve never thought of myself as bad. I was never arrested or thrown into prison. I never got a DUI or flunked an audit from the IRS. I thought I was an easy case for Jesus. Now, looking back over decades of following Jesus I see stubborn sins that grieve God’s heart, hurt me and the ones I love, and keep me from being a better servant to God and others. My experience echoes Lewis:

Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms…[and] surrender…[and] realize that he has been on the wrong track…

Lewis helps us see we are not just occasional sinners who drink too much, attend church too little, swear too much, or are too impatient with life’s little irritations. We are fundamentally misaligned to the aims of Jesus. In John’s Gospel, we find seven I Am statements that reveal Jesus’ self-knowledge. He says things like, I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me (John 6:38), demonstrating an inner directedness to the person and purposes of his Father.

When we do not share Jesus’ aims, we are, in fact, rebels living a life contrary to the whole track laid down by purpose and plan of God. The purpose for naming the rebel in us is to deal with our self-will and trust and follow Jesus. 

Jesus doesn’t call for the inner rebel to make some minor changes—he calls for a total reorientation based on the purposes of God in and for humanity. He calls for fundamental change in the way we are building our lives. His words must be kneaded into our lives, not just into our religious rhetoric. 

Even for the most committed followers of Jesus, challenges remain. I can testify to an occasional clinging to rights, entitlements, and privileges. I sometimes discover to my dismay places of faith-resistance in my thoughts and feelings. I work against this. I take it as the process of my spiritual transformation into Christlikeness, the route of my education in learning to live united with Jesus’ aims. I still stumble in confusion. I still have intuitive and sincerely-held wrong ideas. I am occasionally frustrated or bewildered over doctrine or my experience of Christian life. I find that I need courage to identify and wrestle down, best I can, the things that make confidence in and followership of Jesus seem to be anything but easy and free. 

No matter where you are in your Christian life, Jesus’ invitation to come follow me calls for a decisive break from your past, for getting off the broad road and entering a narrow gate. It is a life-long process in which we make progress but never arrive. It calls for surrender. 

Surrender

Surrender may sound weak—a word for the uncommitted. However, surrender to God and his kingdom through following Jesus is not weak; it is the greatest human strength. Surrender to God calls into being and animates special qualities: courage, long-suffering, and servant-heartedness. The sort of surrender or abandonment I have in mind means giving yourself to becoming an actor in the context of God’s unfolding story.

In the biblical and spiritual sense, surrender has a beauty, goodness, rightness and power to it. It is the grace-enabled ability to let go, stop fighting and deny self-will in order to follow Jesus. Such surrender, which is one of the greatest gifts a human being will ever receive, comes from resources within the kingdom of God, not from the bullying of God. Wholehearted surrender and the abandoning of outcomes to God is not fatalism. It is not passive. It is a thoroughly-reasoned abandonment to the aims of Jesus, taking them to be the aims of our life and ministry.

In the midst of this life of surrender, Jesus invites us to pursue goals such as washing our inward life, cleaning out our soul, trimming our volition in the direction of God’s will, and creating habits of the heart that overflow to the good of others.

Today, will you join me in this simple but powerful prayer?

Lord, I hear your invitation to reorient my life to your purposes. I will surrender my own desires and follow you.