Ahhhhh...I've been putting this off guys. A) Because I'm mundo busy and wanted to reserve enough time to do a quality post, and B) because my topic today is un peu painful and scary. Something that I have not brought myself to reconciliation with yet. So! Should be fun for all.
Perelandra. Ever read it? It's great. It is unabashedly theistic (it's Lewis. Were you surprised?) and overtly symbolic. In brief, Perelandra is an Eden parallel, looking at if the fall were to happen on Venus, what the results would be, etc. The serpent character is enacted by the Un-man (the Devil having taken over a human body), the Eve type is a green lady later named Tinidril, and as a new element in the Eden story-line, Ransom (a philologist from earth) acts as the Christ figure whose job is to steer Tinidril away from the Un-man's tempting.
The stakes are high. The fate of a world hangs in the balance...and Ransom has just discovered (page 238) that he is Maleldil's representative, responsible for keeping the Green Lady from following the Un-man's whisperings. He is staggered by this newfound weight on his shoulders, and goes through several levels of rationalization before finally accepting his responsibility.
His first line of reasoning is to deny that he can really be responsible for such a terrifyingly huge thing. He tells himself "As long as he did his best..God would see to the final issue. ...As for the fate of Venus, it could not really rest on his shoulders. It was in God's hands." Oh man. How many times have I quieted my churning mind with this rationale? All the time. "As long as I do my best, God will fix it in the end." This way of thinking (granted) can bring great peace of mind...and hits on a really good attitude most of the time. The issue, however, is that 'leaving it all to God' can breed complacency. Our urgency is gone. We no longer feel responsible for the consequences of our actions (after all, we've tried 'our best'), and thus chalk it up to God's will when we don't find success. It's not really our fault, see? Struggling with a job? Not going on dates? Doing poorly in your classes? Well, you're doing your best, so it's really God's will that you have these trials. Right.
Moving on from this level, the Darkness (the voice of Christ) impresses upon him that he's seeing things incorrectly. He has been placed on Perelandra for a reason. "The fate of a world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours." What? Oh my goodness. That's a lot of responsibility. Ransom responds against this wildly, asking why on earth God would count on humans to accomplish things with such serious consequences. But no. This is an existence with real risk. "Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices," and in Ransom's case (and ours), the answer is certainly something.
So what does that mean? Frightfully enough (for me, especially), it means that we really can fail. We can fail to live up to God's will, and suffer disastrous consequences. Or we can fail to live up to his will and (as is more often the case) live at a lesser degree of joy and satisfaction than we could've found by obeying him.
In all honesty, the place I struggle with this dichotomy the most is looking out towards marriage. I really really like the 'I'll just do my best, and God will do the rest' philosophy for this one. Because...I don't want to choose! I don't want to accept responsibility for the consequences if I get it wrong! This comes against a scary truth; that on some level I would rather blame God than myself. Whew...:/ That's not the world we are faced with however. We are faced with a world where our choices matter. Where we can miss opportunities and never get them back again. A world where we can fail hard.
Two points of light however (I apologize, I know this is long...) 1) Right after Ransom has the nasty realization that his actions have eternal consequences, he comes to a lovely realization. He doesn't know what to do. "No definite task was before him" (240) All that is required of him is a willingness to do what God asks...and he doesn't know what that is yet. He is required to "do his best--or rather, to go on doing his best, for he really had been doing it all along". Even though our actions can have great consequences, if we don't have a specific injunction from the Lord doing our best with a prayer in our hearts is all we can do. Further (point of light 2), if we mess up, even to the extent of allowing a world to fall (in Ransom's case), Christ will make good of it. Not as much good as could have been found by following the first command, perhaps...but good. All will not be lost.
Both these things are serious comforts to me. Yes--we really are free agents. A great amount depends upon the choices we make every day. But, mistakes are planned and accounted for. And even if we know the task is ours (like in marriage, picking a school, etc.), if we don't have clear directives on how we should behave, doing our best is all we can do until we receive greater light. And with or without greater light, when we fail Christ is there to pick up the pieces and turn them into something beautiful again.
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