Catching up with CS Lewis (again)

I'm terrible at this daily reading thing. I'm on my A Year with C.S. Lewis kick again. It's July 2 and I'm only on February 23. I probably won't catch up today. But we're going to get closer to being on track.

Lewis notes that the Original Sin that our remote ancestors committed wasn't something sexual in nature. In fact he suggests that the corrupt sinful nature we have now is a direct result of the fall. The Original Sin was related to the danger of the self. We sin when we place our self above God. Essentially, the whole of human history and all of its issues are on account of misplacing our priorities. "All that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy" (Lewis, 59).

Basically, what Lewis is stating is that our Original Sin was substituting our self for God, trading true happiness for something temporary and fleeting. Lewis terms this the turning from God to self. In turning from God to self, the original sin is the creature denying and acting on that denial of the creatures true position in the created order. Lewis calls this turning from God to self the 'self-will'. It is a danger inherent to creatures with Free Will. Lewis remarks that God chose, in His wisdom, to create the world as such - it was a risk that God apparently thought worth taking. In Screwtape Letters the demon writes, "When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the glamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever" (Lewis, 61).

In committing the Original Sin (and whenever we place ourselves above God) we turn to self-will. That self-will is a direct contradiction to the purposes we were created for. As Screwtape says, when we deny the self-will, and surrender our wills to His, we become more ourselves than ever.