Pastor Tim’s Blog

THE CHOICES WE MAKE

Along with my Bible reading this year I’m going through a collection of author C. S. Lewis’ writings called A Year with C.S. Lewis that is broken down into 365 daily readings. It’s quite good—and certainly gets both the heart and the mind engaged! The other day, this is what I read (taken from his book Mere Christianity):
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that 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 heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: 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, it 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.

So, if Lewis is correct (and I believe he is), we are becoming more and more one kind of person or another. Judging by the choices you’re making today, what kind of person are you becoming and where will that ultimately get you?