What, Me Sin?
Reading CS Lewis on “Human Wickedness”
Accustomed to stink
we don’t stop to think
that though late the hour
we might take a shower.
In slop so pervasive,
we grow quite evasive
when offered a clean start,
but we swine ain’t so smart.
“But everyone does it,”
is our lame because. It
is too hard to fess up
when we always mess up.
Instead of sty cleaning,
we squeal as if keening
while fighting injustice
and righting what’s busted.
The world’s not our issue,
what’s sick is the tissue:
our bodies are cesspools,
our minds are a mess, fools!
Yet we and the rest of
the drove have all left off
believing in sin.
We blithely let in
each cute little devil
to wallow and revel
with us, having fun,
we fat pigs in the sun!
Reading “The Problem of Pain” by CS Lewis, I came upon the chapter on “Human Wickedness,” where Lewis writes:
“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed.”
And this:
“It is wise to face the possibility that the whole human race (being a small thing in the universe) is, in fact, just such a local pocket of evil—an isolated bad school or regiment inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection.”