“I call this a Divine
Humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship
is going down under us; a poor thing to come to him as a last resort, to offer
up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would
hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He
will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to him,
and come to him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. The same
humility is shown by all those Divine appeals to our fears which trouble
high-minded readers of Scripture. It is hardly complimentary to God that we
should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts. The
creatures illusion to self-sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be
shattered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on earth, by crude fear of eternal
flames, God shatters it 'unmindful of his glory's diminution'. Those who would
like the God of Scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they
ask.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
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