Sharing some wisdom from C.S. Lewis, Richaél Lucero explains why God doesn’t want rule followers. Instead he wants people who have a special quality of character. A quality that eggs them on to persevere. Like athletes who train even when they’re tired and their muscles fatigued—God is conditioning us to be spiritual athletes.

SHOW NOTES

Episodes referenced

quotes referenced

Virtuous living means a life of perseverance not doing the right thing on the outside.

There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is not a good tennis player may now and then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is the man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on. They have a certain tone or quality which is there even when he is not playing, just as a mathematician’s mind has a certain habit and outlook which is there even when he is not doing mathematics. In the same way a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of “virtue.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

God teaches us perseverance so we can run the

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Scriptures referenced

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:37:39

Special thanks

David from Pints with Jack podcast reminded me about the passage from Mere Christianity used in this episode.