’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good

-C.S.Lewis

This quote has perplexed me for years. How can someone be unsafe, and yet, still be good? Aren’t they mutually exclusive?

I have begun to learn to embrace the unknown but have a partial answer to these questions. I am still working out some of the details.

A surgery is not safe, but it is good. When you are getting the unhealthy taken out of you, this can cause many complications, but the benefit outweighs the risks. Jim Elliot, who is not an inkling, said “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Thus, the reward is the Kingdom, which is already given. What do we risk: Pain… God is taking everything that is not lovely and creating more beauty, but this is not safe. It hurts to be made pure. Like a surgery taking away the cancer within, God’s refining fire will leave us sore and in pain; but that is only short term because our healed bodies will be capable of joy and true freedom.

But God, who is love, will not force his will upon us. He is quietly bidding us to risk a little bit of pain and risk trusting in him that things will be better. The choice is yours. He already loves you. Do you want to stay where you are or risk trusting that on the other side of your pain is something far better?  He says the good is out there, the question is: Do you trust him enough to head out into the pain and darkness of the unknown? If the answer is yes, offer up that prayer.

Search me and know me, Lord Jesus, and burn away all that is not of love’s kind. Take it, take it all, Lord Jesus. The greed, the lust, the selfishness, take even those things that are good but which draw me away from you. Take everything that is not of love’s kind, and destroy it. (paraphrasing of George Macdonald “The Consuming Fire” (also not an inkling (but a huge contributor of inkling theology)))