But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.
C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
It is no secret that I love Lewis as a Christian writer and especially love the fictional story, The Horse and His Boy. Among other reasons for appreciating the book, I found that it seems to use the themes in the message of Proverbs to illustrate the same truths about maturity and wisdom.
My conversation about the book with my friend Andrew Isker is embedded at the bottom of this post for you, if you haven’t watched it already.
But, as much as I loved the book, I want to disagree with the quotation above. Or at least nuance it.
I have been meaning to write about this for some time, but was recently reminded while I was trying to do “sprints” on a stationary recumbent bike. The program called for me to pedal as fast as I possibly could for 20 seconds every 100 seconds.
This was not just physically hard, it was emotionally stressful.
Why was it hard? I was only being asked to give 100% effort. By definition, I should be capable of that. No one was asking an impossible 101% effort.
But figuring out what is really ALL you can do, is difficult. On the one hand, I doubt anyone who really sprints as fast as he can is able to match that speed for a full twenty seconds. If they maintain speed, that proves they were holding back. On the other hand, the inevitable slowing is not the same as giving up and intentionally decreasing effort.
One of the readouts on my bike told me the revolutions per minute. Sometimes I fought every decrease in that number by trying afresh to increase it. Sometimes I did not. Often, I could not tell which I had done. Was I only slowing down due to fatiguing muscles or because I was also not trying as hard?
The truth is, the only way to really find out how hard I can sprint is to put me in a situation where I have to run from a threat. Then I won’t be trying to make sure I exert myself 100%; I will not be trying to raise a number. I won’t be worried about my performance, but I will just perform.
Bree the talking horse was trying to race an enemy army and warn a king that he was about to be attacked. In the story, he failed amid his exhaustion to keep the threat in mind. He allowed himself to be distracted by his own fatigue. His friend and human rider, Shasta, was also tired. But he wasn’t forced to expend as much effort as Bree. So, naturally, he was more focused on the reason they were hurrying. But because he and Bree regarded themselves as equals (though really Bree saw himself as superior), there was no way that Shasta would make Bree speed up.
Lewis as the narrator tells the reader that this is a problem with slavery. It makes a person incapable of motivating himself.
But Lewis also makes clear in the story, that when Bree was captured (and pretended to be a regular horse) he was trained to be a warhorse and succeed at forced marches, and other physical feats. Slavery wasn’t what had made Bree incapable, it had increased his capabilities.
I wrote in “If you don’t learn to obey orders you will never be free. Here’s why,”
Normally, if you haven’t been forced to get up in the morning, you aren’t going to be able to make yourself get up as an adult. If you haven’t been forcibly stopped from yelling, or shooting your mouth off, when you are angry as a child, it will be extremely difficult to stop yourself as an adult. It isn’t impossible, but it is going to be difficult. You will struggle to arrive where others already are…
…learning to force yourself to do things to avoid unpleasantness with an external authority can actually help you grow up and, when you have left that authority, take authority over yourself…
In the Bible slavery leads to dominion. The primary instance of this truth is growing up with parents and then leaving home or becoming master of the estate.
It is frankly much easier to learn to do hard things by actually doing them. And it is much “easier” to do hard things when you are forced to perform rather than by forcing yourself. There is a reason for drill sergeants.
What will help immeasurably, though, is if you trust God to be training you in these situations you don’t like. Have a horrible job and a horrible boss? If you can’t quit (1 Corinthians 7:21), then trust that God is making you into someone who can rule. Look for the lessons and remember them.
And thank him for the opportunity to train now so that you will be able to do better when you are elevated to authority.