We are Far too Easily Pleased

"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

How could CS say that God finds our desires too weak? Seems to me that most peoples' desires are pretty strong. We see it everyday - people doping whatever it takes to fulfill their own agendas and goals. But I think that's the point he's making. Our desires actually are pretty strong... And I reckon that's the problem. They are just strong enough to have us satisfied with the wrong things, but not strong enough to make us push toward the right things. 

We love going to church, we speak fluent Christianese, we love our Christian community and fellowship. And we are content with those things. 

Do you remember being young and having your parents force you to eat food that looked gross, smelled funny, and you just knew would taste terrible? You didn't even have to try it, you just knew. Your parents would always insist that it was good for you and you needed to eat it or else you wouldn't be healthy, your teeth would rot out, you couldn't have dessert, or some other unimaginably cruel and unbearable punishment would be forced upon you. So, you'd try to eat it. And then you'd gag. If you were experienced, you could maybe work up some tears about how much you hated it and couldn't eat anymore. (I was sneaky enough to get a mouthful of the stuff I didn't want to eat and then ask to go to the bathroom and spit it in the toilet... Sorry, mom. I love your cooking now. I was just being picky back then.) You had it in your head before you even tried the food that it would taste bad, so when you finally did take that teensy-weensy bite, you almost threw up because your expectations were determining your experience..

If it would've been left up to us, we would've eaten cookies, ice cream, and candy all day every day... And one day we would've grown up and been enormously obese, unhealthy, and in danger of dying much earlier than we were meant to. 

I use this as an example because I think it does a solid job of describing the state of Christianity these days. We want what we want. Don't inconvenience us with what we need. 

Feed me on Sunday morning. Tell me how God wants me to be a bajillionaire if I just keep giving Him more money. Talk to me more about how I can do whatever I want and God will always forgive me. I want to hear more about all the bad people outside of the faith and how God will punish them one day.

We are being given exactly what we want and it is killing us.

Fast forward 15 or 20 years from your childhood. You and your taste buds have grown up and you're realizing how much amazing food you missed out on as a kid because you were too scared to try something new. And you're probably pretty thankful your parents didn't give you everything you wanted. They were older and wiser and knew what you needed was more important than what you wanted. For example, I always operated under the belief that broccoli had no legitimate reason to be purposefully ingested ... Alas, all these years later, I have seen (tasted?) the light and absolutely love it. 

Now imagine your favorite meal in your favorite setting with your favorite person. For me, I would have Hibachi style Japanese food (sushi; fried rice with scrambled eggs; grilled broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, and zucchini; fillet Mignon cooked medium, and scallops seared in butter and soy sauce... Oh, man.), on the back porch of a log cabin in the middle of the mountains with a female companion yet to be named. I cannot imagine a better meal for the life of me. But that kind of meal takes time and effort to prepare. There are many, many ingredients and components and it can't be thrown together in 20 minutes. And that's part of what makes it so enjoyable. There is preparation and planning and precision involved to make it the best.

But, if you would have presented that option to me 20 years ago, I would have declined and politely requested Chuck E. Cheese's instead (young fool that I was).

Where I'm going with all of this is: just because something is easy doesn't mean it is the best thing for us. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with cookies for breakfast - but cookies will never satisfy you. You'll eat them and feel happy because they tasted so good going down, but within the hour, you'll be hungry again because your body can't survive on junk food.
On the other hand, I have had that exact same Japanese food meal (minus the cabin and female companion) and I can barely move after I finish. If I have it for lunch, I won't need to eat for the rest of the day because my body will be so nourished.

But our desire for cookies is just strong enough to keep us from realizing how much stronger our desire for real food would be if we just tried it (with no negative expectations).

It is high time we told our taste buds to grow up and start looking for more out of our Christianity than just cookies and ice cream. It's time we start searching for the things that will sustain us and challenge us. We need to be looking for those spiritual things that will sit inside of us for days on end because we can't quite wrap our head around them. We need to be challenged and confronted.

I don't want to be satiated anymore.

I want a taste of that heavenly Japanese food that will make me forget all about these earthly cookies.