I hate bugs.
Not bugs in general (well, maybe bugs in general). Of course I strongly dislike wasps and bees, spiders and scorpions (which, although arachnids and not insects, might technically fall under the category of "bugs"). It's the little bitty gnats and mosquitoes and...whatever these things are that like to buzz around the screen of the computer and get in between the keys on the keyboard.
Yeah. Those bugs.
There are bugs and then there are trials. There are big, mean ones, of course, that sting like wasps. I'm very brave after I've been stung, and can bear it most stoically. Yet the gnats and little thingummies that buzz around and around, those are the ones that break my calm, make me lose my temper and fall into a bad mood. The little things, the distractions that cause me to sin, rather than the big things that should be more of a temptation.
As Hamlet said, such bugs and goblins in my life. But at least the goblins draw me closer to the One who shields me from them. Whereas the bugs just annoy me and distract me from Him.
Fortunately, I'm not alone. My favourite author and spiritual mentor (in my mind, at least) C.S. Lewis had something to say about these little things that surprise and distract us in "Mere Christianity".
“We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”
This is definitely the most convicting passage for me out of Mere. Well. At least one of the most convicting passages. After I read it, I started noticing how much more likely I was to snap or sneer or snub or storm because of an "unexpected provocation", a little mosquito that makes me start complaining (in the form, perhaps, of a harmonica played in close proximity, or someone whistling the same song over and over and over and over again).
C.S. Lewis called them rats. They remind me of bugs.
I think, though, that the importance of the "rats in the cellar" theory is that once we realize the problem, we're more likely to catch the rats/withhold from getting angry at the bugs (because, after all, it's not their fault they're alive). Of course, we can't be perfect by ourselves. It's a blessing to have prayer, because whenever that occasion pops up where the song is being whistled for the forty-ninth time and you just can't muster up the strength to stand it for the fiftieth, Jesus offers to meet you halfway.
After all, he conquered the rats.
And he created the bugs for a reason.
