Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through
a turnstile or past a post: You know what happens (apart from his usual
ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go the wrong side and gets his lead
[leash] looped round the post. You see that he can’t do it, and therefore pull
him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly
the same thing—namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your
pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of
duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: though in fact it is only by
yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.
Now if the dog were a theologian he would regard
his own will as a sin to which he was tempted, and therefore
an evil: and he might go on to ask whether you understand and ‘contained’ his
evil. If he did you could only reply ‘My dear dog, if by your will you mean what
you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only
understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you
to go. If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against
the collar and try to force yourself forward in a direction which is no use—why
I understand
it
of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you
don’t understand) I
cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathize with your real wish—that is, the
wish to get on—the less can I sympathize (in the sense of ‘share’ or ‘agree
with’) your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering
the attainment of your real wish impossible.’
Yours, Jack -- Letters of C S Lewis
Yours, Jack -- Letters of C S Lewis
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