In my opinion C. S. Lewis’s series of radio addresses called Mere Christianity reach their zenith in the chapter on Hope. Here we find the famous line; “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
He has been talking about human longings that are stirred up in beautiful things around us but never ultimately fulfilled by anyone or anything in this world.
People have different ways of dealing with those unfulfilled longings. He names three:
1. The Fools Way. This is trying on an endless variety of sinful things or legitimate things never finding full satisfaction in them.
2. The Way of Disillusionment and Despair. (He called it the Way fo the Disillusioned “Sensible Man”) This is giving up on the possibility of ever having one’s longings fulfilled.
3. The Christian Way. In this way, instead of turning our longings into idolatry or varieties of sin, or instead of giving up on the very possibility of satisfaction, we turn to Christ and, Lewis says, to contemplation of heaven when and where our deepest longings will be fulfilled forever.
Thus: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that Iw was made for another world.”
A simple way to say this might be: We have two choices when we discover deep unfulfilled desires: We can sin or we can worship.
When we discover deep
unfulfilled desires in our hearts
we can sin
or we can worship
When we gather in Christian worship it is to stimulate our appetite for these desires, it is to indulge them… to indulge them in hope and in the worship of Christ.
Bittersweet Farm
March 5, 2020
