Is C S Lewis' moving description of what it means to believe in Christ. He writes:
The experience is that of catastrophic conversion. The man who has
passed through it feels like one who has waked from a nightmare into ecstasy.
Like an accepted lover, he feels that he has done nothing, and never could have
done anything, to deserve such astonishing happiness . . . . All the initiative
has been on God’s side; all has been free, unbounded grace. And all will
continue to be free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would
be as helpless to retain the joy as they would be to achieve it in the first
place. Fortunately they need not. Bliss is not for sale. Cannot be earned.
‘Works’ have no ‘merit’, though of course faith, inevitably, even
unconsciously, flows out into works of love at once. He is not saved because he
does works of love: he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith
alone that has saved him: faith bestowed by sheer gift. From this buoyant
humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety,
scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally
sprang.”
—C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p.
33.
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