Man or Rabbit?

The part of this essay "Man or Rabbit?" that stuck out to me the most was the following: "But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day." This reminds me of the Weight of Glory were Lewis warns us that "it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours." This is actually something I have never thought about before reading these essays. Why should races and categorizations of people matter so much when they will only exist while we are here on earth, but we will continue to be around for eternity? It makes our divisions into "popular" vs. "unpopular" or "attractive" vs. "unattractive" seem so silly!

This works into our conclusions about "The Inner Ring" too. Why should it matter what rings we are a part of or what rings others are not a part of ? This is the wrong attitude. This is the attitude that says our lives are simply blips on a grand spectrum of history and time. The right attitude says that even civilization, history, and time are simply blips on the grand spectrum of eternity. This should make us take our actions much more seriously, and see the importance of our day-to-day interactions with other people.

When talking about the difference between rejecting God because of honest error or dishonest error, Lewis says this: "But to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven't noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street... this is a different matter." In light of how we ourselves are immortal, our decisions and actions are really eternal as well. It is so much more dangerous to reject God once we have heard His message and felt His pull on our hearts. This too reminds me of the letter from Screwtape Letters that tells us how the road to Hell is so often gradual. Our rejection of God can be gradual too- simply allowing ourselves to be distracted, to turn the other way, to disobey God’s instructions in our lives. Each little step that pulls us away from God is a gradual foot slide on the slippery slope down.