Master Mentor #30

Chapter 29 (Book 4, Chapter 7)
CS lays out a pretty good picture of the Christian life in this chapter. He begins to laying out two examples which make perfect sense by the time you finish reading this chapter. He lays out the story of Beauty and Beast in which after the girl finally kisses the Beast, she finds out that is indeed a very handsome man. The second story is one that I am not familiar with, but one in which a man wears a mask of a beautiful face, only to take the mask off and discover that his face has grown to match the mask and now he is beautiful as well.

In this chapter, CS lays out the idea that if we truly want to become all that God and Christ want us to be, we need to begin to pretend that we are and act that way. And the hope and plan is that as we do it, though hard at first, we will find becomes easier and easier as we go and we have become more and more like that which we are pretending to be.

It’s always amazing to me how my attitude affects the outcome in so many ways. There are many nights when I walk into church with a bad attitude or at least an attitude that is not looking forward to the night or is not excited by the night, only to walk out disappointed because the night wasn’t “effective” or “exciting.” But in reality, that’s exactly what I expected and that’s exactly what I got. But there have been times when walking in, I’ve thought to myself: “This is going to be incredible” and then it is. Not because of anything that I particularly did to help it. But because my outlook and attitude on the matter is different. It’s easy to be negative. Often what I find when I am negative is that other things around me seem such much more negative. But if with a positive outlook, I go in often things end up more positive.

Take for example… at the beginning of the year, I made it a goal for this year… 2008… to try to be less negative. I can just about at any time in my day find something to growl about. I tried to make an effort to not growl about those things, even if I felt negative about them or felt like growling about them. It was interesting to me that overall, as time when on, I felt less like growling about those things that we going “wrong” (in my opinion) in my life. That’s the power of having a positive outlook.

The same is true, I think, in my spiritual life. The more I “pretend” (CS’s language here) like I am a Son (again… CS’ language, not mine), the more like a Son I begin to act. That’s good advice. And I think that’s a good picture that we can all work towards.

Jim