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LET&039;S PRETEND

May I once again start by putting two pictures, or two stories rather, into your minds? One is the story you have all read called Beauty and the Beast The girl, you remember, had to marry a monster for some reason And she did She kissed it as if it were a man And then, much to her relief, it really turned into a man and all ell The other story is about someone who had to wear a mask; a mask which made him look much nicer than he really was He had to wear it for years And when he took it off he found his own face had grown to fit it He was now really beautiful What had begun as disguise had become a reality I think both these stories may (in a fanciful way, of course) help to illustrate what I have to say in this chapter Up till now, I have been trying to describe facts - what God is and what He has done Noant to talk about practice - what do we do next? What difference does all this theology ht if you are interested enough to have read thus far you are probably interested enough toyour prayers: and, whatever else you say, you will probably say the Lord&039;s Prayer

Its very first words are Our Father Do you now see what those wordsyourself in the place of a son of God To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ If you like, you are pretending Because, of course, the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God You are not a being like The Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centred fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doo up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it

Why? What is the good of pretending to be what you are not? Well, even on the hu There is a bad kind, where the pretence is there instead of the real thing; as when ayou But there is also a good kind, where the pretence leads up to the real thing When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are And in a fewfriendlier than you were Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already That is why children&039;s garown-ups - playing soldiers, playing shop But all the ti their wits, so that the pretence of being grown-up helps therow up in earnest

Now, theup as Christ,&039; it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretence could be made less of a pretence andon in youron there if you were really a son of God Well, stop the your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash-up Well, go and do it

You see what is happening The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is man (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side and is already at thatto turn your pretence into a reality This is notyou what to do If you siet one result; if you reet a different one There are lots of things which your conscience s in yourif you are seriously trying to be like Christ For you are no longer thinking siood infection fro a portrait than like obeying a set of rules And the odd thing is that while in one way it isrules, in another way it is far easier

The real Son of God is at your side He is beginning to turn you into the sa, so to speak, to &039;inject&039; His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin

Some of you may feel that this is very unlike your own experience Youhelped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other hus&039; That is rather like the woman in the first ho said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast If there is no bread there will be no toast If there were no help fros He works on us in all sorts of ways: not only through e think is our &039;religious life&039; He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, soh experiences which seeto church in a routine way honestly realises that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going-provided he does it for honesty&039;s sake and not just to annoy his parents-the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before But above all, He works on us through each other

Men are mirrors, or &039;carriers&039; of Christ to other ood infection&039; can be carried by those who have not got it themselves People ere not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity But usually it is those who know Hi Him to others That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Hiht say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much

But do not forget this At first it is natural for a baby to take itsits mother It is equally natural for us to see theChrist behind hinise the real Giver It ison hu to let us down The best of them will make mistakes; all of them will die We must be thankful to all the people who have helped us, we must honour them and love the: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world There are lots of nice things you can do with sand: but do not try building a house on it

And noe begin to see what it is that the New Testa born again&039;; it talks about the for to &039;have the ht out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out - as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out Theymuch more than that They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very roos to you It is not a question of a goodMan, still as much a man as you, and still asand interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has At first, only for oes well, turning you per; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity And soon we in to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about e do, but about e are This may sound rather difficult, so I will try toprayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine tiainst charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stors to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off uard, I had not ti circuards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated On the other hand, surely what a uard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the uise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are o in very suddenly But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents the In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I ao in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament And if (as I said before) e are matters even more than e do - if, indeed, e do matters chiefly as evidence of e are - then it follows that the change which I e thatabout And this applies to ht motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circuht equally have led to soive myself new motives After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God And that brings us to soe up to now

(2) I have been talking as if it ho did everything In reality, of course, it is God who does everything We, at ht even say it is God who does the pretending The Three-Personal God, so to speak, sees before Hi, rebellious human animal But He says `Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit Let us treat it as if it hat in fact it is not Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality&039; God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one I daresay this idea of a divine e at first But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? Ato it as if it understood long before it really does We treat our dogs as if they were &039;almost human&039;: that is why they really become `almost human&039; in the end