Far Too Easily Pleased

Now I am thinking about this:

If you asked twenty good men to-day

what they thought 

the highest of the virtues, 

nineteen of them would reply, 

Unselfishness. 

But if you asked almost any 

of the great Christians of old 

he would have replied, 

Love. 

You see what has happened? 

A negative term 

has been substituted for a positive, 

and this is of more than philological importance. 

The negative ideal of Unselfishness 

carries with it the suggestion 

not primarily of securing good things for others, 

but of going without them ourselves, 

as if our abstinence 

and not their happiness 

was the important point.

I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. 

The New Testament has lots to say 

about self-denial,

but not about self-denial as an end in itself.

We are told to deny ourselves 

and to take up our crosses 

in order that we may follow Christ; 

and nearly every description 

of what we shall ultimately find if we do so

contains an appeal to desire. 

If there lurks in most modern minds 

the notion that to desire our own good 

and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it 

is a bad thing, 

I submit that this notion has crept in 

from Kant and the Stoics 

and is no part of the Christian faith. 

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward 

and the staggering nature of the rewards 

promised in the Gospels, 

it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, 

not too strong, 

but too weak. 

We are half-hearted creatures,

fooling about with drink and sex and ambition 

when infinite joy is offered us,

like an ignorant child 

who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum 

because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer

of a holiday at the sea.

We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory