C. S. Lewis in his book ‘Mere Christianity’ wrote in chapter 10 about Hope:
“Hope is one of the theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the middle ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth “thrown in”: aim at Earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main direct objects you start becoming a crank (an eccentric, bad tempered person) and imaging there is something wrong with you. You are only to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else more.
Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in insofar as “Heaven” means meeting again with friends who have died. One reason is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is in us we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise . . . Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one.
(1) The Fools Way.— He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his life thinking that if he only tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are all after. Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type. They spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman (through the divorce courts), from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is “the Real Thing” at last, and always disappointed.
(2) The Way of the Disillusioned “Sensible Man.”—He soon decides that the whole thing was moonshine. “Of course”, he says, “one feels like that when one’s young. But by the time you get to my age you’ve given up on chasing rainbow’s end. And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, “to cry for the moon.” This is, of course a much better way than the first and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society. It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior to what he calls “adolescents”) . . . It would be the best line we could take if man did not live forever. But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow’s end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed ” common sense” we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.
(3) The Christian Way— . . . .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. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing… I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death: I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside [i… below]. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”
There is no reason to be worried by facetious[ii] people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. (condensed from ‘Mere Christianity’, p.118-121 MacMillan Publishing Company, New York 1943,1945,1952)
[i] This would result from many things that can draw us away from God and Jesus Christ including pet projects, hobbies, gaming, substance abuse, habits which stifle spiritual growth and productivity… a ‘loyalty’ to anything that would draw us away from eternal possibilities). Notice I said ‘preoccupation’. All the above are ok in balance; yet for some (too many?) it is so easy to lose balance and leave the really important eternal objectives behind.-k
[ii] Characterized by flippant, inappropriate humor – Oxford dictionary
