“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” – C. S. Lewis
This is a long time favorite quote of mine. But it jumped out at me again recently after writing the post last week on the unfortunate popularity of the “prosperity gospel.”
If I look for truth, I may find comfort – but I may not. Life is not about being comfortable. It’s about pressing forward out of my comfort zone. It’s about getting up everyday and accepting whatever challenge I am faced with, staying faithful to the truth and allowing the suffering I endure to be joined with Christ’s to receive grace and complete my sanctification. That’s how we make the most of our life.
If you look around at the majority of things in our culture, however, we see the opposite. We run from our suffering in search of ultimately unsatisfying remedies, quick fixes and distractions that all seek comfort ahead of truth. And then we wonder why we have so much soft soap, wishful thinking and despair.
Also, not too long ago, I wrote a piece over at the National Catholic Register on this topic as it applies to “Social Justice.” You can read it here.
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Great post. This is the problem with religious attitudes today (it was a problem for pretty much all of human history, actually, but whatever). Instead of searching for which religion is True, they search for which one is “right” for them…in other words, most comfortable. Which is, of course, missing the point entirely.
Wow… I love this post.
I completely agree with you, especially about how we seek comfort ahead of truth. As you’ve mentioned, life is not about being comfortable. If comfort is all that we seek, we become stagnant, and when we are stagnant, we become extinct.
I agree with you. We must stay faithful to the Truth, or at least to our quest for the Truth. Sometimes it is good to be uncomfortable. It makes us get up and move! Comfort brings complacency. Thanks again for a thought provoking post!
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