A Christian – a somewhat too vocally Christian – circle or family, having grasped this principle [of charity], can make a show, in their overt behaviour and especially in their words, of having achieved the thing itself – an elaborate, fussy, embarrassing and intolerable show. Such people make every trifle a matter of explicitly spiritual importance – out loud and to one another (to God, on their knees, behind a closed door, it would be another matter). They are always unnecessarily asking, or insufferably offering, forgiveness. Who would not rather live with those ordinary people who get over their tantrums (and ours) unemphatically, letting a meal, a night’s sleep, or a joke mend all? The real work must be, of all our works, the most secret. Even as far as possible secret from ourselves. Our right hand must not know what our left is doing. We have not got far enough if we play a game of cards with the children ‘merely’ to amuse them or to show that they are forgiven. If this is the best we can do we are right to do it. But it would be better if a deeper, less conscious, Charity threw us into a frame of mind in which a little fun with the children was the thing we should at that moment like best.
Lewis, C. S.. The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (pp. 607-608). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
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