January 9, We are far too easily pleased

The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.... We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
-C.S. Lewis

I've read a good deal about the green martyrs of Ireland. I have a fascination with ideas of leaving everything to sit in the wilderness. Probably because I'm a bit of an introvert and I love the great outdoors but truly Christianity often times seems that it's all about self-denial. Don't do this and don't do that and don't be this way and don't be that way. If you would make a list of all the things you're supposed to give up... well I won't encourage anyone to do that.

Lewis makes an incredible point in this quote, if you would make a list of all the promises in scripture, shoot just start out with the fruits of the Spirit; sure there are a few self denial type ones but a person living with all the fruits of the spirit would certainly be a very happy individual. God has the absolute best for us, and nothing less. He desires to bless us, to pour upon us His love and His goodness. There can certainly be nothing of what looks like self-denial under a rain shower of that sort. "We are far too easily pleased," there are so many greater things that we don't even desire because we've our eyes set on simpler things, meaningless things, things we think we want or need that in reality are so far below the Lord's plan it's simply absurd, "like a child who wants to go on making mud pies..."

If you had asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, an this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that Our Lord find our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.
-C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven