For awhile there, it seemed like every new day or new experience was bringing out a character trait that I either didn’t know I had, or knew about but thought I had it under control. Each trait was nothing to be proud of, and it was hard not to get discouraged. Am I really that terrifically selfish? That tremendously rude and thoughtless? That sinfully lazy? Yes, yes, and yes.
Nice. How did I escape noticing these things for nearly 26 years? It’s nothing that’s really picked up over night; these are all carefully developed habits, cultivated over years of practice. How is it that no one ever told me that I’m such a jerk?
I know there’s hope in Christ, that he can help me renew my mind, but I’m getting to the point that grace and unconditional love are foreign concepts. How could he possibly love me with all those things in my foul heart? Haven’t I obviously trampled over his grace and cheapened it with all my years of letting these things breed in me?
C.S. Lewis came to my rescue today. I was reading about nice men vs. nasty men, and how many times, nice men are quite content in who they are and how they behave, and they don’t think they’re so bad, so why would they need God’s help? But, Lewis explains that these "nice" traits are all natural gifts, they are things that God gave them, and are not their own. “Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered.” Oh, that’s what all that clatter was…
Nasty men on the other hand, “If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them. It is taking up the cross and following—or else despair.” They know they need help, they can’t do it alone, so to them God says “blessed are the poor in spirit” and leans down to help them when they call.
Phew! It’s way easier nowadays to think of myself as not a great person, to acknowledge all the despicable things that Jesus would like to wrench out of my tight little fist. Dare I say that would even be a sign of spiritual maturity? The farther along I get with Christ, the more willing I would be to see myself and be seen by others as a lowly, wretched being without a hope outside of my Creator?