While It Lasts


A friend posted the above on Facebook. It made me laugh, particularly since Old Jack (how C.S. Lewis was known to friends) is smoking a ciggy. Sorry Jack, smoking cigarettes is just a nasty habit, so don't think I approve. An occasional good cigar or pipe, I have no problem with at all.   


This is the whole quote: 


Question:
 Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness?

portLewis: 

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best. I have an elderly acquaintance of about eighty, who has lived a life of unbroken selfishness and self-admiration from the earliest years, and is, more or less, I regret to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view it is very difficult! I am not approaching the question from that angle. As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy.  I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can’t give my advice on it.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 58-59. 


I think the key phrase on which CS Lewis's premise turns the lock on is "While it lasts." For nothing in this world can ease the eternal ache of a soul not at peace with God through the lasting Christ. Everything is temporal and a distracting quick fix at best from the angle of forever. The Port bottle runs empty, you have too much and your head aches the next day. The cigarette of pleasure turns to ash, and you might just have a horrid death of hacking and wheezing with lung cancer (hence my disapproval of it as a practice). The world will pass away and everything in it. Thus, we are not to anchor of hearts and affections to it. We become what we have given ourselves to, and temporary is hardly wise because we are eternal. A reasonable conclusion, or "Mere", as Jack might have said.    

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