Our Real Selves Are All Waiting For Us In Him

The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become . . . our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. . . . The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surrounding and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call “Myself” becomes merely the meeting-place for trains of events which I never started and I cannot stop. What I call “My wishes” become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts. . . . . It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I finally begin to have a real personality all of my own. . . . [Nevertheless], you must not go to Christ for the sake of [a new self]. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all.
–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity