Hot Wisdom for Desert Living, 4

Let’s be honest: we don’t want to go into the desert. We don’t want to confront our demons. In fact, we don’t want to grow, at least not at the price that the desert fathers required. But true spirituality calls us to die to self and give ourselves completely to God. But that seems a bridge too far and so we constantly put it off until tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. There’s a great scene in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce. A ghost (a person) has a lizard (his rabid sin nature) on his shoulder. The lizard is constantly spewing out lies and tempting the ghost who is more than willing to listen. An angel comes and offers to kill the lizard, but the ghost is unwilling to let him do so. He can’t imagine life without his sin. The angel asks, “Can I kill it?” To which the ghost