Fast 40: Practicing the Ancient Spiritual Discipline of LentSample

In C. S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce, there is a line that really defines the ultimate fate of man. Lewis says: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"

In that sense, eternal salvation boils down to the (quite binary) choice between self-will and God's will, or really, between idolatry and God.

You see, many of us think idolatry is a thing of the past, connected only to the ignorance of the ancient world, with images carved in stone and mythologies now forgotten. But what we may be shocked to discover is that idolatry is not an archaic thing at all, but rather a very modern thing.

Idolatry is simply the worship of the instrument. It's the love of anything more than God. Sports, money, art, sex, fame, politics—these can all be idols. They can all be adored more than Jesus; and in our godless culture, they are.

As John Calvin truly said, "The human heart is an idol factory." But the greatest form of idolatry is not the worship of creation—it's the self-worship of the creature. When men do not worship God, they eventually worship themselves as gods.

And in that sense, the thing that damns us—that condemns us to the eternal torment of darkness—is not sin, but self. No one is sent to hell for sin; they are sent to hell for refusing to repent from sin.

In other words, if you'd like to go to hell, don't do anything—just keep defiantly saying, "My will be done."