Undulation

Recently on a rather lengthy train ride, I read The Screwtape Letters cover-to-cover.

CS Lewis was a brilliant observer of the human condition with excellent prose, which is why I believe so many LDS people flock to him. Many years ago, I started avoiding his work as a gut reaction to a few too many sacrament meeting talks which quoted heavily from him rather than scriptures.

Since I am blogging rather than speaking in church, I feel better about using his work.

Screwtape is a devil writing to his nephew Wormwood on the subject of capturing a human soul.

In one letter to Wormwood, Screwtape elaborates on the law of undulation. The devil claims that humans are always in a state of undulation, or "the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks."

He continues: "as long as [the human] lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty."

We are in a constant state of change. And so are our feelings. One day we feel we can take on the world; the next we feel as though the slightest breeze could knock us down. Newlyweds feel as though they will always be in love, until the toothpaste cap is never closed and in-laws begin to annoy. Would-be authors begin their magnum opus, which stalls after a few chapters when they realize how much effort is involved in editing and composing. Most PhD students enter with dreams of academic glory but end their studies before the degree is complete.

Thus, assuming Prof. Lewis is correct, and I think he is, we cannot always experience the same fervent commitment to anything - no matter how strongly we felt at first.

Not that I am saying all changes in prior commitment are bad. Many are good.

But undulation means that in order for fulfillment of any worthy commitment, the individual involved must experience the troughs as well as the peaks. The troughs must be endured.

In Gospel terms, this means that Job could not curse God when he lost everything and got boils. It meant that Nephi had to strive to obtain the brass plates more than once. It meant that Paul had to write many epistles from prison. And it meant that Moroni could not deny the Christ even thought the result was almost constant and complete solitude.

But undulation also has two positive aspects. First, because we are in a constant state of change, the troughs will not last forever. Some day the sun will shine again and the morning will be all the brighter for the darkness.
Second, our trough periods are those times when we can have our greatest spiritual victories. To paraphrase Prof. Lewis - It is during those moments when all hope seems lost and no morning will come and we feel forsaken that we can still choose to obey.

I recommend reading The Screwtape Letters. Especially chapter 8.