“As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
To be loved is to be corrected. To be left alone is to be abandoned. The sign of a legitimate child is the presence of discipline and instruction. These are administered out of love and in order to spare the child from needing discipline and instruction as an adult. Those who spare the rod, spoil the child, but do not save him from discipline, they only delay it by delegating it to future enforcers in the forms of bosses who must fire them, spouses who must leave them, children who resent them, and magistrates who must apprehend or worse yet, execute them for their lack of discipline.
“One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. in the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
When we push back against discipline and instruction, we demonstrate our proclivity for puny affections. We are begging for less love, not more. Yet we may frame our request in such a way as to define more love as more license, but a loving parent never gives the child what he wants, he gives him what is best for him according to another standard. The child's desires are not submitted to as the standard of health and well-being.
“We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.'" — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Love looks beyond short-term affairs to long-term affluence. The prosperity of the whole person before God and man is taken into account, not merely meeting the passion of the person at present. For even a moment's pleasure may be tomorrow's painful memory.
"I am not sure that this is quite how I feel even about human love. I do not think I should value much the love of a friend who cared only for my happiness and did not object to my becoming dishonest." — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Love is a transitive verb and requires an object on which to transfer its affections. That is to say, love is not good on its own. In fact, depending on the object, it can actually be quite bad. To love dishonesty is evil. To love malice is maniacal. Empathy insists that love is loving whatever anyone else loves, but true love must refuse love on those terms. True love cannot endorse what harms the beloved. True love cannot support the sheep's infatuation with wolves. It cannot love the sheep and love that sheep's twisted love of being devoured.
"I am speaking throughout of the good man who takes all these pains with the dog, and gives all these pains to the dog, only because it is an animal high in the scale because it is so nearly lovable that it is worth his while to make it fully lovable. He does not house-train the earwig or give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses — that He would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more Love, but for less." — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
We wish at times that God would just leave us alone and at other times that He would intervene and interfere and change us to His liking on the spot. We can need the surgery and not want it. We can fear the surgery and still seek it. God does not refine and sanctify us because He likes putting us through pain, but because He loves us enough to endure our protests to the pains He goes through to sanctify us.
Hebrews 12:5-11
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby
Discipline is not the sign of abuse, but of delight. Abuse is being left to yourself. Love is being corrected by Someone who knows better.
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