Figuring it out on your own

I’m reading “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, and it’s honestly one of the coolest books I've ever read. Basically, Lewis writes a bunch of letters as if a demon were writing to his nephew, who’s also a demon. The demons are in hell, and they are each assigned one person to try and trip up. So C.S. Lewis gives up the picture on the other side. Being a Christian my whole life, I've found that everything comes at you from the same perspective with the same words, and that really makes important stuff hard to really understand. This book really puts into a different perspective and hits you with some things you've never really thought of before. It’s a great read for anybody really. I’m only on like the 6th letter, but this passage below really stood out to me. Remember, this is basically the devil talking, ‘The Enemy’ refers to God.

“The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants — ‘sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refused to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.”

So this is all obviously very Christian and religious, and I know most of my friends don’t really think about this stuff too often, and a lot of them don’t really care about it at all, but I think it’s interesting regardless of what you believe. Isn't it true for raising children too? Think about it. If your parents never let you figure anything out for yourself and struggle through things, how would you ever learn anything? If your parents held your hand every second of the day for the first 3 years of your life how would you ever learn to walk? Humans learn best when there’s some pressure on them to teach themselves or at least fall into the lesson at some point. Not only is there a sense of pride in figuring it out for yourself that strengthens the memory and adhesiveness of the lesson, you just see more of the whole picture that helps you keep going.

If God was just going to walk us through everything and make it all obvious and provable, what would it even mean that we do believe what He says? It would be meaningless. Following and believing firmly in God wouldn’t be worthwhile because it was too easy and too obvious. Nothing truly worthwhile is easy to get.