On the origins of sadness

         C.S Lewis had the notion that Christ demands we hand over our whole selves to Him, not just the part we want Him to heal, but the whole package. “We give Him and inch, He takes an ell.” He proposed that it would be more difficult to try to only give Him part of ourselves, clinging to the rest. As C.S Lewis puts it “..like a father watching his child take its first steps He is glad to see us making ours but He will not be content only to watch us stumbling about forever.” In my mind it was easy to see this in regards to my spiritual life, my faults etc and to never realize this in fact applies not only to our love for Him in our minds and private prayer life but in every part of every day. For, in fact, the love we give and receive is all from Him and returning to Him from and through us. Therefore, a failure to give others all of our love, not just the pieces we want to, but the pieces we are afraid to give is a failure to love Him. He told us that whatsoever we do to the least of His people that we do unto Him. Frightfully this includes failure to love. In other words, what we do not do is just as significant. This may seem obvious at first, but let me expand.
         As we have conjectured, it is much more difficult to hold on to these pieces of love which we fail to return than we think. In our mind we find them difficult to give, when in reality it is because we hold on to them that they torment us. Think of the relationship between man and woman. A man may love a woman and give her all the love she deserves and perhaps more, as a friend, yet though he would like to give it up, he clings to the piece of his love for her which would tell her he loves her as more than mere friends. As many of us men (and women) know, it is much more frustrating to keep that piece than it is to give it, regardless of whether it is accepted, reciprocated, or rejected. For He demands it from us because it is His and is meant to return to Him from the man, through her, in love, in friendship, perhaps in marriage. We all know from experience that indeed it is far better, and in that respect, easier to love and be rejected than to love and never give that piece back to Him, for then we spend our whole lives in regret. That piece will haunt us forever because it does not belong to us and will always remind us of that. The difficulty in the long run then lies in keeping it rather than giving everything, and in order to give everything we must know and trust that whatever we give back to Him He will make new and more perfect and give back to us more radiant and full of life and joy and happiness than we ever could have imagined. Turn them from Satan and “give to Christ what is His, and the world what is theirs.”
You may be wondering what this has got to do with the origin of sadness, well it is precisely that. All misery as we know it is a direct result of our failure to love as He loves, to return fully that which is given us by Him. Do not mistake the love you show others as your own or virtues and talents or gifts as your creation. They are in fact Christ living through us, His love given to us so that we might have something to give. I cannot emphasize more that every ounce of joy, every loving memory, every second of true happiness is 100% from Christ and is to be returned to Him. We by our selfish nature want to hold on to these things, to horde this love for we fear giving it away. he assures us that all the love we give will be returned to us greater and in more abundance than before. “It is in giving that we receive.” Is it not quite obvious then that if we are miserable it means we are failing to return to God what is His?
         We are creatures designed with a need for change. God knows this. We get something, we like it, we are content for a time but we grow bored of it, we long for something better, more original. Christ wants to give them to us but we must give Him what we have if we want something new and better. We have got to bring our books back to the library if we want new ones and that requires getting up and going to the library, it will not come to us. Only now imagine that the library is always moving and we have got to seek it out, keeping our eyes peeled lest we miss it. Imagine that instead of books we had different shaped objects and instead of a book drop there were some even stranger shaped openings. These strange shaped books sometimes fit well through the openings, sometimes not at all, but all the time there were new openings so that eventually we could return all our “books”; this how Christ love works. Sometimes its easy to give it back, sometimes it may be very difficult to find where it applies and how and when and where to give it. We become discontent with what we have and if we aren’t continually offering up all our love, our hopes and needs and dreams and aspirations, faults and sorrows and hatred we will never get that freshness and joy we seek from change or that greater love which can only come from letting Christ transform you. Remember, He demands us to give Him all of ourselves not just the parts we think need work or the pieces we know need improvement, but also those which we may be perfectly content with and would have a strong aversion to losing. If you aren’t submitting every aspect of your life and will both spiritual, physical, romantic, practical, private, public, old, new, good, bad then you are doomed to misery and in refusing to give back what is His you are a rebel and continually excommunicate yourself from Him.
         Surely there are some of you yet who are thinking that it mustn’t be every kind of sadness, badness, evil, or despair that comes from our choices; what about the grief of losing a loved one? Surely that sadness isn’t a lack of love for God? Perhaps we have confused emotions with pure spiritual misery. Spiritual misery is from within and results from conscious acts of defiance against God and His will which distance us from Him and block us from His love and grace. The emotion sadness is a symptom of spiritual misery and like any symptom can apply to many illnesses and sometimes things which are not illnesses at all. An upset and skittish stomach may be a symptom of the flu or it may just as easily occur when a man is nervous around a woman he is attracted to or before and important sports match or performances of other sorts. In the same way emotional sadness as a symptom cannot by itself diagnose spiritual misery and the distinction is this. If my mother dies, I may be very sad because I miss her or perhaps she died in a misfortunate or terrifying manner. I can offer this up to the Lord and expect in return some comfort or peace or inspiration or some other gift for sure which will be better than wallowing in despair and focusing on emotional sadness. Spiritual misery however would come if instead of offering up my despair and fears and grief and sadness I became very angry with God for taking my mother and held on to those feelings of sadness, grief, etc and like anything which must be offered up to the Lord, would leave me writhing in in confusion and regret and misery. Spiritual misery then, as far as I can tell, is a choice; emotional sadness is a symptom of many of life’s events. It is necessary, spiritual misery is not. Emotional sadness can inspire joy and peace, spiritual misery promises only eternal agony and separation from the Love you refuse to return.
         I think James Hetfield of Metallica put it well with his lyrics to the song “Fade to Black.” “Life it seems will fade away, drifting further every day. Getting lost within myself, nothing matters, no one else. I have lost the will to live, simply nothing more to give. There is nothing more for me, need the end to set me free.” He is right in the sense that we may become so self consumed and drift so far from God that there is seemingly nothing else for us as we are looking totally inward for that love and happiness which we as Christians know can only come from God. He is wrong in saying he has nothing more to give, for as I have shown you he has everything to give, he has kept it all for himself and it has spoiled and he must give it back to God or he will indeed fade to black, the absence of light, empty of God’s love and graces. If in the end when God reclaims what is His you have already given it all back He will claim you as His own, for in giving and receiving He makes us anew and makes us His sons, not merely His created creatures. However, if we have much left to be reclaimed it will be taken from us and we will be left with nothing. Let us pray for strength and faith enough to give and be poor in that way so that we might receive in Him new life.