Work and Pleasure

C.S. Lewis was a man of great insight. Today, I encountered an excerpt from his book, The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters was written as a series of exchanges between a senior devil named Screwtape and his amateur nephew tempter. I have a copy of this book. =)

Here's the excerpt:
(In the words of Ravi Zacharias from his article here - also highly recommended.)

The junior (devil) is being urged to go and lure an individual suspended between going God's way or the devil's way. "Go get him away from the Enemy," says the senior devil. Sometime later the young imp returns and says, "We lost him, he has gone all the way over to the Enemy's side." "How did that happen," inquires the evil one? "Well," comes the answer, "he started to take a long walk every morning, just for the pleasure of it, and on these walks, the Enemy* became more audible to him. Further, he read a good book, just for the pleasure of it, and the Enemy found him more receptive." "That's where you blew it," comes the response. "If you had only had him walk for the sake of exercise, it would have become dreaded and tedious, devoid of pleasure. If you had only had him reading so he could parrot the contents to someone else, reading would become burdensome and boring rather than pleasurable. We could then have easily snared him." (End of quote)

Alright, how true is that in your life? I know I've blown off many good books because my focus shifted from reading for the pleasure of it to reading so that I could improve my vocabulary, so that I could write about it in my blog, so that I could blab about it to a friend etc. etc. These aren't bad aims. See, I am writing now about something I've just read. Still, the worthy pursuits of reading, listening to Christian music, washing the dishes (yes, I find pleasure in that!), organizing files, cleaning my room and writing random ideas often change into something dreaded and tedious in my mind when I begin to regard them as inescapable, mandatory errands rather than little tasks from which I derive pleasure.

And what about attending Church services for example? Instead of going there to build up and be built up, how many times do we force ourselves to go there just because we think it's expected of us? Then instead of waking up excited to encounter God through the sermon, songs and the fellowship, we wake up dreading the prospects before us. Perspective makes a huge difference.

"The nearer we are to legitimate pleasure, the nearer we get to God's voice," (Ravi Zacharias, Bring me the books) Please read Dr. Ravi's article for insight into this and more, especially if you love books like I do. :-)

*The Enemy referred to by the devils is, of course, God.