The Inside Revealed

"...surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is?...If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am..." -C.S.Lewis Mere Christianity


Ok, my mom told me about this quote and I had to find it for myself. I did, and had to stew on it for awhile. But this is what I have been thinking concerning this quote:


What C.S. Lewis is saying here is that the yucky stuff inside of us is best and most accurately revealed before we have time to put a mask/disguise to cover up the bad stuff inside us. His words make me picture myself going to my basement door and opening it and flicking the light on just in time to see a hundred rats dashing for cover. (Imagine scenes from the move Ratatouille instead of your own basement, if you prefer, but the point of it being YOUR basement IS kind of important here.) Anyway, I can't help being somewhat disgusted by discovering how infested my house is when I see the rodents (can you say "understatement"?). But now I have a choice. 


Option number uno- I can turn the light back off, shut the door and move a bookshelf in front of it to hide the door....until the next time I need a can of peaches.


Option number dos- I can dash for the bathroom, wash my hands four times in a row as if I had touched one of the creatures and tear off in search of the phone and the number for the nearest exterminator.


OBVIOUSLY, the second ("dos", por ese puebas quien no tienes la ablilidad leer espanol) is the better of the two. I daresay embarrassing for about a week when all my friends might be saying "Soooo, I saw an exterminator pull into your driveway the other day and he was parked there for a looooong time...what was THAT about??", but in the long run, I will be rat-free and have learned a valuable lesson about keeping the depths and rarely viewed parts of my house in order. But if I went with the first, I would STILL have rats. I may not seeeeee them, but the problem is still there regardless. 


In the same way, things like tempers, prejudices, hate, profane language, and all those other negative things in our ever-so-human characters are like the rats in the cellar. We can hide them all we want, but sooner or later, those issues will be revealed. And when they are it reveals what is REALLY inside us, what is in our deep places. The "provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am", C.S. Lewis says. So then instead of putting a fake covering over our issues, how much better for us would it be (in the long run) to deal with, reject, train ourselves away from, confess, and learn from our "ill temper"edness, etc. 


I'm NOT saying that you need to perfect yourself. HA! What happens when imperfect things try to perfect things? There isn't much hope of perfection with that...Instead, invite the Perfect to help you! His grace is sufficient for the worst of tempers, the deepest of hate, and the most ugly of prejudices, so we have no excuse to keep them.


[Sort of a side note here- a point that says alot thanks to Rick Hein: Similarly(because of our reactions revealing what is in us) to what C.S. Lewis was saying,  when there are troubles in our lives, it tell us what we are about by however we react. Do we run to God and desire His glory above everything, or do we say "Oh GOD!  Just take it away!" ? If we respond by asking God to remove troubles from our lives, it reveals that we are really are about ourselves, our own comfort, or own agendas, etc. ]


To close, I heard an analogy one time of: If you step on a rose, a sweet aroma will fill the room. Likewise, if you step on a skunk...an aroma fills the room with that smell too. My hope is for you and for myself, that if I am stepped on, that good, pleasant things will come out, instead of ugly things.