I just re-read C.S. Lewis’ book Out of the Silent Planet (the first book in his Space Trilogy). Lewis is often overquoted in Christian circles, but every time I pick up a book he’s written I am reminded why…

The guy was a genius!

He is always so insightful into human character and the human condition. Right now I’m reading the second book, Perelandra. The latest thing that has grabbed my attention are a couple statements in the book that deal with our compulsions towards pleasurable experience. I was thinking about this lately before I picked up the book. There is something in man (in me) that isn’t satisifed with a good thing. Whether it’s good books, food, movies, vacations, or experience in general, I find myself wanting to replicate the enjoyable. It’s a form of greed and one that we rationalize away. Here’s what Lewis says:

"As he stood pondering over this and wondering how often in his life on earth he had reiterated pleasures not through desire, but in the teeth of desire and in obedience to a spurious rationalism, he noticed that the light was changing…" [emphasis mine]

Here’s another one…

"He had always disliked the people who encored a favourite air in the opera–‘That just spoils it’ had been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards…was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself–perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film." [emphasis added]

I think contentment is something I struggle with and yet it seems to be so crucial to being a passionate follower of Christ.