Undulation

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks…this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are …merely a natural phenomenon… (CL Lewis in the Screwtape Letters)

I’ve been thinking about this for the better part of year now.  Wondering why it is that I can be in such a great scripture study place, and then wham!  Life happens (any part of it—illness, holidays, visitors, traveling) and I am off the scripture study wagon.  It’s not that I don’t know better, because I do.  I have a firm testimony that every part of my life goes better and that I have much more peace when I am appropriately spending time with my scriptures.  (“Appropriately” meaning that the time I have available now is much different than the time I had available when I had three babies, and I am certain that the Lord understands those distinctions.)  And yet time after time I loose track of that understanding and have a difficult time beginning to read my scriptures again.

 

I was sitting in Sunday School in Cindy Lynn’s ward last spring, and the teacher made an offhand comment about the pattern of behavior repeatedly described in the Book of Mormon that we call the “pride cycle.”  It’s always bothered me when people talk about the pride cycle in the Book of Mormon, because invariably they express a certain amount of disgust that the poor slobs being described couldn’t maintain their righteousness for a longer period of time.  After all, they became prideful and wicked after just 20 years, or 10 years, or even as fast as 2 years.

It’s so easy to sit in this kind of judgment, until I take a good look at my own life.  In twenty years the person I will be may bear NO resemblance whatsoever to the person I am now.  In two years I will probably be significantly different.  I can hardly keep myself righteous for two months at a time !

But that Sunday I had another thought as well.  It occurred to me that perhaps the pride cycle wasn’t the total fail we always assume it was/is.  If the people become righteous and successful and are able to maintain that state, that’s great.  But if they aren’t—if after they become righteous and successful they succumb to pride and worldliness, what does this mean?  I realized that day that all it means is that they have another chance to learn.  Another chance to see their dependence on God.  Another chance to make a decision to change their lives and to pray for Him to change their hearts. 

 

It used to make me crazy when I read about King Benjamin and his people.  How on earth did what he said change them so much that they no longer wanted to do any evil?  How on earth did they manage not only to feel the mighty change of heart, but to keep it for the rest of their lives??  After many years of wondering this I finally decided that, however it happened for those people, the mighty change of heart in my life is more a series of events (and feelings) rather than a one time occurrence. 

 

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy [Screwtape is speaking of God here] does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment.   Merely to over-ride a human will would be for Him useless. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.  He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.  Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

After all these years of wondering why it is so hard to keep doing these things that I know are so right, I believe I have figured out an answer.  Because that is the way it was meant to be.

If we could get into a good scripture study routine and ride off into the scripture study sunset, it would all be just a bit too easy.  (Or prayer routine.  Or spiritual routine of any kind.)  This way we are forced to make a choice to turn our hearts and lives towards the Lord.  And then to make that choice again a few weeks or months later.  And then again the next time.  And the next, and the next, and the next.  For most of us, the process of overcoming the natural man will be the process of a lifetime. The important thing is that we keep making that choice, every single time.