Imperishable Inheritance

“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, The Weight of Glory (read online)