The irresistible light

I read something a couple weeks ago that has become a significant part of my thought life and my spiritual life since then. I want it to become even more woven into my thinking and feeling and praying and doing in the months and years ahead.

Here’s how I would summarize what I read: I am to live now according to what will really matter at the final judgment.

I was reading C.S. Lewis’ essay, ‘The World’s Last Night.’ Lewis reflects on the radically different moral impulses created by a belief that the world will end vs. the belief that the world will be brought to an end by God, in an act of judgment.

Lewis makes the point that if we believe the world will simply end – fall apart, dissolve – this will encourage less moral effort on behalf of future generations.

However, our response is very different ‘if we remember that what may be upon us at any moment is not merely an end but a judgement…’ As Lewis says, a judgment is a verdict, and God’s future judgment will be the only absolutely infallible and final verdict on every person. ‘We shall not only believe, we shall know, beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other.’ Think about that. Think about being know publicly for who you really are. Not who you’ve portrayed yourself as being, but who you really are, deep down.

Here’s the point: Lewis claims that this idea of future judgment is crucially important now, in the present. ‘I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe – that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll – help one so much as the naked idea of judgment.’ We must train ourselves, Lewis says, to ‘ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon it; that light which is so different from the light of this world – and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer’ (53).

Brothers and sisters, let us live for the irresistible light. That may mean forsaking a hidden sin even though no other person has yet discovered it. It may mean giving up frivolous pastimes and pursuits and devoting more time to speaking gospel words and building gospel-centered relationships. It may mean having a rock-solid hope that even though you’re not known and you get no credit, you’re living with integrity and for Jesus, and that matters; it is not forgotten or overlooked by God. It will certainly mean more humility and less posturing and more joy and more earnestness in our Christian lives.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Jun 22, 01:19 PM