The Complete Realist

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.

“A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means–the only complete realist.”

- C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

I love this quote very much, but what gets me thinking is the last line in it. Christ has been called many things, but this, 'complete realist' title is quite different and less popular. To me, there is much to contemplate in this idea and I am far from getting to the real chunk of the iceberg under the water. For now, the idea is straight from the dictionary: Jesus represents things how they really are. This is interesting to me. I have no idea what temptation means. First, we learn that we have no idea what suffering means compared to Christ. Now we learn that we have no idea what temptation means compared to Christ, not to mention what love means, or aligning our will and lives perfectly with Father....the list goes on. It also makes you wonder what other dimension is added to our quest toward Godhood: to know what temptation truly means.