I’ve been re-reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity this week. I was in my 20’s and missed most of its message last time. Here’s an excerpt relevant to what I’ve been wondering about the violent writings of Flannery O’Connor.

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your whole life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself…

“That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure — or enjoy — forever.