“There are three kinds of people in the world. The first class
is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and
Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them.
In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them – the
will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society – and honestly
try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They
try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a
tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for
them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier’s or a schoolboy’s life,
into time ‘on parade’ and ‘off parade’, ‘in school’ and ‘out of school’. But
the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them ‘to live is
Christ’. These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting those
rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of
Self altogether. The old egoistical will has been turned round, reconditioned,
and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is
theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are
His.” (Three Kinds of Men by C.
S. Lewis)
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
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