"The Lie of Self-Help"
In an age burdened with identity construction and self-generated purpose, CS Lewis believed that surrender to Christ offered the only path to finding one's true self.
I thought the following was a bold and incisive clip from C.S. Lewis that confronts the spirit of our age that sees identity as something we create and define. It leans heavily into a theme of the New Testament: that surrendering to Christ and being born again changes us in profound and mysterious ways. When we fully surrender ourselves to Christ, we come to discover that we are liberated from the burden and bankruptcy of a life lived as an experiment in self-constructed identity and purpose, and into a transformed understanding of both God and oneself.
And this change does not happen through willpower, but a wholehearted surrender to Christ.
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25
Speaking about the effect of conversion to Christ is a tricky thing. Christians don’t experience a hard-drive reset that utterly reforms them into someone entire distinct from what was. Dimensions of our personality are hard-wired and are profoundly good. But neither do all aspects of those things we believe are “truly us” remain untouched by God’s refinement and regeneration. We are changed. We become something different: a “new creation” that is both congruous and incongruous with who we’ve been up to the point of our embrace of Christ.
But I suppose this is where I should stop my rambling and foreground CS Lewis’ ability to articulate these matters in a much more compelling way: