THE ACCEPTED MINIMUM
"For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself." - C.S. Lewis
I don’t know about other countries. In Australia, our financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June. At the end of it, the ATO (Australia Taxation office) works out our actual tax liability—what we should have paid in the total across the year. If our employer has withheld more than that, the ATO refunds the extra to us.
It is the time when the government expects us to declare all your income, including wages, any business earning, investment returns. Everyone making a living here faces this concern, though each of us responds to it differently.
But if I may say, most of us share a common attitude: we want to maximise our deductions for more tax refund, and at the same time reluctant to declare more income than necessary. In short, we look for the minimum, and we wish it to be accepted.
To be honest, I have never concealed the fact that I love Australia, and regard her as my home. But whenever tax time comes around, a voice inside me starts to speak. If the ATO works out my tax liability correctly, and looks closely at how much I try to keep back in my pocket, I know I will still deal with it honestly.
But I dread those moments when the amount to pay is more than I expect. I would still respond truthfully, but my inner voice says, “yes, I need to, but let’s not go too far. Let’s make sure that there is still some part that belongs to me.”
When I say I love God, I mean it as genuinely as when I love Australia.
But here I cringe—because the voice within me is familiar. When I make my genuine attempt to surrender God, I hesitate.
Precisely, very often I find myself content with a “minimum” Christian life— giving, serving, and loving only enough to meet the requirement, but nothing beyond.
Reading C.S. Lewis’s “A Slip of the Tongue”, I realise that he lived with a similar dilemma. He reveals a truth about his heart—his reluctance to go beyond his “ordinary life”. He describes very honestly,
“I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things, there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be careful, to keep my head, not to go too far, not to burn my boats. I come into the presence of God with a great fear lest anything should happen to me within that presence which will prove too intolerably inconvenient when I have come out again into my ordinary life.”
It is not easy to admit this. When I examine my own faith, I seldom find myself saying “I love you Lord, with all that I am.” More often, I realise I am drawn to loving the benefits of His presence rather than God Himself. In the same way, I love Australia—its lifestyle, splendid nature, opportunities. But when it comes to personal cost, I resist giving fully.
It is the temptation that creeps into my relationship with God: enjoy His gifts, but hold back from the surrender that love demands.
And notice there are more different kinds of these cautions that the Tempter wishers in our ears. They all seem plausible. They may be particular to me, but also to others. We attend church, but carefully avoid extra services, or any interruption that might cut short personal leisure time. We give when it’s convenient, but stop if it interferes with additional spendings on holidays or savings. We are normally kind to easy friends and family, but avoid the challenge of loving difficult people, or reconciling with someone that causes hurt. We ask God to bless our plans and seek His guidance, but deep down still hope to remain our way unchanged. We speak boldly of truth at church, but remain silent about the unethical or unjust at workplace to avoid conflict. We pray, “Your will be done,” but secretly hope God’s will will look like our own.
These temptations are so real to me, and also find themselves so echoed in Lewis’s genuine confession,
“This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal.”
Indeed, If God is the sea, then we must be feared by His unfathomed depth, awed by His vast beauty, and amazed by His shocking wonder. We love the sea, and endlessly appreciate it from the shore. But we hesitate to enter in, but only keep being at the edge of the vast sea, unwilling to let the whole self dive in. Instead, we merely want to dip our toes into it and splash it for our own delight.
This is not written for those who are still outside the faith, nor for those who are just at the beginning of faith life
It is written for those, including myself who have long decided to submit to God, but not fully. We have walked with Him for years, yet still hold on to the temporal things and keep safe areas of “ordinary life.”
God can surely bless, provide and protect; He is mighty to do all for His creation. But the ultimate way God can do for us is by giving Himself to us. As Lewis says, “He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself.”
He can only give Himself if we make the whole room for Him to have us fully.
Our relationship with Him cannot grow deeper if we cling to keep private corners of our own.
There is always a cost.
To leave those temporal and cling to the eternal may feel the throb of pain, like the pain from a wisdom tooth being pulled, which is miserable for a short moment but leads to health and relief at last. But there is also another cost: to lose our grip on the eternal and keep within us the temporal. This cost is like chronic toothache, like tooth decay that never really stops and slowly worsens.
Surrender hursts in the moment, but holding onto the wrong thing hurts endlessly.
What does God really want from us? Neither do I think our time, nor our space. God doesn’t need what He creates in order to live on.
I think He wants merely what is the best for us. The best is our next step—out of our own plan, out of our own control, out of our own time and space, out of our effort and affection, out of anything that is apart from Himself. The best is found only in Him.