“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.” CS Lewis
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13
Here is more CS Lewis from a letters compilation…
"Of course I have had and still have plenty of temptations. Frequent and regular prayer and frequent and regular Communions are a great help, whether they feel at the time as if they were doing you good or whether they don't. I also found great help in monthly confession to a wise old clergyman."
Perhaps, however, the most important thing is to keep on: not to be discouraged however often one yields to the temptation, but always to pick yourself up again and ask forgiveness. In reviewing your sins don't either exaggerate them or minimise them. Call them by their ordinary names and try to see them as you wd. see the same faults in somebody else -- no special blackening or whitewashing. Remember the condition on which we are promised forgiveness: we shall always be forgiven provided that we forgive all who sin against us. If we do that we have nothing to fear: if we don't, all else will be in vain. Of course there are other helps which are mere commonsense. We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations. Like motoring -- don't wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off." Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III, pp. 1285-1286
I find great solace in the fact that there is forgiveness, as well as the “way out so that I can stand up under it.” However, even in the knowledge that there is forgiveness is the thought that maybe I can get away with it, after all. It is at these times that my “way out” comes into question: Is it my fear of consequences that prohibits me or my love for God? If the former, then is my faith really what is sustaining me, or is it my natural inclination to want to avoid long-term suffering over and against a short-term pleasure? If it is not the latter, then is my faith really based on relationship, or on the rule of law? Am I any better than the Pharisees, who simply sought to be seen as righteous, not inwardly, but outwardly? Can I escape that terrible judgment of Jesus wherein he chastised them for being whitewashed tombs, who were beautiful on the outside, yet full of dead men’s bones within?
All of my motives are mixed. None can truly be called fully righteous, but then there is something in me that I know is pleasing to God – something that desires to be rid of the old and to embrace the new. Yet, there is also the same old man who wants what he wants – especially to embrace the sweetness of temptation and the deceitful fruit that says that I can be like God, knowing good from evil. The mastery of that fruit would thereby allow me to become the master of my own destiny, to supplant the God that would not grant me the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
It is true that the one who denies man’s sin nature is often more sheltered than the Christian, as CS Lewis states, because he is guilty of oft giving in to that nature and then denying its existence to justify his lack of discipline. My father would tease me when I was a teen, and a young Christian, chiding me for doing things or having attitudes that a Christian ought not to have. After several years of enduring these taunts I, with some insolence, retorted that it was easy for him to point out my failure to adhere to a standard that was beyond my immediate ability while he himself arrogantly shunned all standards and slipped comfortably into the arms of a self-made god who made no demands on his character.
I find myself still fighting those hypocrisies inherent in my faith, being the one about whom Paul writes when he says, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” (Romans 7:18b,21b) Even so, recognizing the forgiveness that is the inheritance of the soul tortured over its essay into righteousness, I rejoice with him also, who said, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25) And I resolve to live daily in that inheritance, knowing that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” (8:1)
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