Have you every read something and the lightbulb in your head simply clicked on? Suddenly, you understand. I found this quote in a book I started reading yesterday by John Piper (for all you who asked, I like John Piper. Of course, I disagree in some points, but his books and sermons have helped to illuminate truth for my soul), When I Don't Desire God. The quote is actually by C.S. Lewis (an incredible man) and is originally found in his biography Surprised by Joy. When I Don't Desire God has moved me in a great way already, and am excited in anticipation of the impact it will have on my life. The subtitle of the book is How to Fight for Joy. Piper warns against pursuing joy, not Christ, and he places this quote by Lewis who wrote his whole biography around his mistakes. Here is the quote:"You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment;
for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to
speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. . . . The surest means
of disarming an anger or a lust was to turn your attention from the
girl or the insult and start examining the passion itself. The surest way of spoiling a pleasure was to start examining your satisfaction. . . . I perceived (and this was the wonder of wonders) that . . . I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself,
considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of
no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring.
And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or
body at all. . . . I asked if Joy itself was what I wanted; and, labeling
it “aesthetic experience,” had pretended I could answer Yes. But that
answer too had broken down. Inexorably Joy proclaimed, “You
want—I myself am your want of—something other, outside, not you
nor any state of you.”
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