City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

John 14:6

Exegesis

In Book 3, Chapter 10, of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes of the desire for something outside of ourselves that can only be satisfied by God. Lewis notes three responses to this desire. The first is the person who puts the blame on things for this unsatisfied desire. He imagines that when he buys the fancy car or his dream home, or when he finds the woman of his dreams, his desire will be satisfied. Lewis calls this “The Fool’s Way.” 

I suppose Lewis call this way the “The Fool’s Way” because only a fool would continue to seek satisfaction of a desire the same way if that desire was never satisfied. The Fool’s Way is often the way of the young, who are still bewitched by the promise of our culture and advertising that the new car, or new clothes, or a bigger house will be the thing that will make them happy.  And it might in the beginning, for a short time, but it is fool’s gold. The more mature move on.

The second way is “The Way of the Disillusioned ‘Sensible Man.’” This is the person who decides the desire was really just childhood fantasy, “And so he settles down and learns not to to expect too much” and represses that which, in his youth, yearned for that something more outside of himself. This is the way of the Stoics, and it is sensible if there is no personal God. 

Stoicism taught that people should be virtuous, attempt to conform their lives to the Divine Reason but be indifferent to the capricious pains and pleasures of life. One of my favorite writers is a Stoic, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C – 65 A.D.). Seneca wrote, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor,” and that “true happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that wants nothing, has what he desires.” Seneca’s sayings were so wise many first century Christians speculated Seneca was secretly a Christian. But while Seneca’s way is better than The Fool’s Way neither are God’s way.

G.K. Chesterton in The Everlasting Man, contends that before Christianity, people attempted to satisfy their innate desire for God through either their imagination, which gave rise to paganism’s mythology, or through their intellect, which gave rise to philosophy. Modern man’s attempt to satisfy that desire is similar. Lewis’s first man chases his imaginative thoughts about a romantic life in an attempt to satisfy the desire, while the sensible man does so by attempting to eliminate it through philosophy.

Application

As Lewis, notes, however there is a third way, the Christian way. And, that third way is a Person.  That Person announced to the world that He was “the Way,” but he also declared He was the Truth, thereby satisfying those who sought God through the intellect, and that He was “the Life,” satisfying those who sought God through their imaginative romanticism. See John 14:6. In other words, Jesus is the answer for the romantic and the philosopher, the pagan and the Stoic, the fool and the sensible man.

Prayer

Ask the Lord to show you where you have sought to substitute the desire for things in His stead and where you stopped hoping for fear you would be disillusioned.