Category: 31 Days

Mere Christianity, Day 17: The Great Sin

1/17/2015

This chapter introduces what is possibly the most problematic area for the human machine: Pride. Lewis says Pride is the thing that "leads to every other vice, [and it is] the complete anti-God state of mind." Pride is essentially self-conceit, the inward part of a man that sustains itself through comparison and competitiveness. Pride is fed by being better, stronger, smarter, richer, etc. than someone else and is starved by taking away the competition. The ultimate goal of Pride is power, and the opposite of Pride is Humility.

Pride is the one sin that will always bring divisions and create opposition and hostility, not only with other people but also with God. Pride pushes us to want more and to be better than everyone else, and as long as there is someone we have not beaten, our Pride will compare and compete until it has the pleasure of being above all the rest. But in God, we find a fundamental problem for our Pride. God is the one Being who will always be superior to us in every way. Even if a man surpassed every human on Earth in every way imaginable, he would still come up short when he compares himself to the Divine Creator. Since Pride would never allow us to acknowledge our inferiority or admit that we cannot be the winner and that something or someone cannot be beaten, we find that Pride actually prevents us from knowing God at all. There are really only two solutions that will protect our Pride:

We deny that this God even exists and convince ourselves it is all nonsense and fairy tale, so there really is no threat to our Pride at all.
< OR >
We turn this God into something that can be beaten, something that is much more suitable to our Pride and much easier to compete against.

One might ask, at this point, how is it possible then that there are so many very religious people who say they know God but seem to be consumed with Pride? This is related to number 2 above, but Lewis also says this: "I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men."

Pride is so dangerous because we are usually unaware of its presence, and it is often used to cure our other evils; we overcome some vices by learning to see them as beneath our dignity. So we become self-controlled and wise and courageous, while all along we fan the flames of self-conceit. And Lewis says this is all perfectly fine and pleasing to the devil because he would much rather see us fall prey to the cancer of Pride than the ulcer of lust.

Before he closes the topic of Pride, Lewis wants to mention just a few things in order to prevent or clear up any potential misunderstandings:

"Pleasure in being praised is not Pride." Finding delight in the compliments or praises of others is a good thing so long as the delight comes not from what you are but from the fact that you were able to please another person (or even God). "The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.'"

Being 'proud of' something, like one's child or one's achievements, is not Pride so long as we are using the term to refer to a warm-hearted admiration or happiness we may feel. But it moves toward Pride when we allow those things to puff us up and make us think more of ourselves than we ought.

Pride is not forbidden by God because it offends Him but because it separates us from Him...

And finally, on the topic of humility, a humble person is not one who walks around with his head hung low, telling everyone what a nobody he is. When we really find ourselves in the presence of a humble person, we will probably find that "he will not be thinking about humility; he will not be thinking about himself at all."

*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!

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Mere Christianity, Day 14: Sexual Morality

1/14/2015

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Just a side note before I start the summary: It was interesting to me that this chapter and the next chapter on Christian marriage are actually two of the longest chapters in the whole book. It was difficult to pick out the highlights of this chapter, not only because of its length but also because of the richness of the content. The more of these posts I make, the more I hope that anyone following along is actually reading the book for themselves as well because you are really missing out if you only get the small sampling of C.S. Lewis' great mind that I am able to provide here.

To begin the section on sexual morality, Lewis wants to clarify that there is a difference between chastity and modesty/decency/propriety, and the two ideas should not be confused with one another.

Propriety, or modesty, deals with how an individual should dress, how much of the body should be seen, what topics are appropriate to discuss, and what words should be used in discussing them. So Chastity, to the Christian, is the same at all times, but Propriety is more related to the social customs and cultures of a specific time period and society, like etiquette.

For example, a woman who lives in the Hawaiian islands in the 21st century and a woman who lived in Victorian England would have much different understandings of propriety, yet the island woman wearing hardly any clothes and the Victorian woman showing hardly any skin could be considered equally modest and proper, according to the standards of their different societies, and we really would not be able to tell just from external appearances whether the women were chaste or not.

Lewis then gives three reasons that people might break the rule of propriety:

To excite or encourage lust (either in themselves or in others) - This is also related to the area of chastity and would be an offense against it.
Out of ignorance or carelessness - This would merely mean they are guilty of bad manners.
Out of defiance, to shock or embarrass (the most common reason) - This simply reveals that they are being uncharitable toward their fellow man "for it is uncharitable to take pleasure in making other people uncomfortable."

It's also important to note that a strict rule of propriety does not prove or even help individuals to be chaste, so relaxing the rule is sometimes a good thing. Lewis' society had begun to do this, as has our modern society, and while it can be a positive change, he notes this:

After explaining what propriety is and how it is a completely different concept from chastity, Lewis goes on to discuss chastity. He defines it in the Christian sense as, "Marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else, total abstinence," and says it is probably the least popular of all the virtues. It is so unpopular because it is not only extremely difficult but also not at all compatible with the instincts we feel. This begs the question, Is Christianity wrong, or have our instincts gone wrong? Of course, Lewis says it is our instincts that have gone wrong, but he goes on to give practical explanations of why this seems to be the case.

Some may suggest that a place where people were so obsessed with food would indicate that the people were starved and experiencing famine. Lewis says that this is a valid suggestion, but we would then want to test that hypothesis and find out whether or not the people are, in fact, starving. Similarly, our culture has led us to believe that our obsessions with sex are because we have been sexually starved. We are constantly being told that sexual desire is just as normal and natural as any of our other biological drives and that the problem is that we have been trying to stifle that desire too long. If this were the problem, however, the ventilation of those desires that we have seen over the past 40 to 50 years ought to have set the problem straight. But in fact, sexual appetites, obsessions, and perversions only seem to have increased. "Starving men may think much about food, but so do the gluttons."

Christianity, on the other hand, promotes and celebrates sex and holds it as something very wonderful when experienced and expressed in its proper context. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure," but there is much to be ashamed of at the way we have distorted and misused and even indulged the sexual instinct. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips."

So the human sexual instinct has become diseased and needs to be cured. But the problem is that "before we can be cured, we must want to be cured." And there are at least three things that make it difficult for us to desire (much less achieve) chastity:

Our corrupted natures, the tempters, and all the advertisements and selling of lust "make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural,' so 'healthy,' and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them."
Response: The idea that sexual indulgence is healthy, natural, youthful, and normal is a lie based on the truth that sex was created to be all those good things, but it has been perverted and distorted and taken out of its proper context. The lie is that any sexual urge you feel at any given moment is perfectly fine, and you can act on those urges as long as they are mutually agreed upon and no one is injured or harmed. "Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense. Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humor, and frankness."
We often assume, without even attempting it, that chastity is impossible.
Response: It is certainly no easy task, but when we begin to view something as a requirement and not an option, we may be surprised at what we can achieve. But also, we ought to understand (as the Christian does) that we really cannot achieve it on our own steam, by our own willpower. We are given power and strength by the Divine Creator, who is the very author of our sexuality.
We have misunderstood what psychology means by 'repression'.
Response: There is a difference between suppressing a desire and the technical psychological act of repression, which is a defense mechanism of the mind to protect itself from harmful, damaged material.

One final point he makes after remaining so long on the topic of sexuality is this:

"I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the center of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."

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Mere Christianity, Day 11: The Cardinal Virtues

1/11/2015

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In chapter two, Lewis sets out to expand the discussion of morality because the simplified three-part division he references in the first chapter was intentionally brief for the sake of his on-air talks. Here in the book, however, he wants to include a longer scheme or framework for how we think of morality, which includes seven different virtues.

Prudence - Fortitude - Temperance - Justice - Faith - Hope - Love

Lewis says the seven virtues (which he did not make up himself but which originated from the "old writers") can be divided into four Cardinal virtues (or virtues that all civilized people recognize and know about) and three Theological virtues (those that are only understood properly by Christians).

Cardinal Virtues
Prudence
Temperance
Justice
Fortitude

Theological Virtues
Faith
Hope
Love

Lewis then spends some time defining and describing the Cardinal virtues:

PRUDENCE - This virtue is summarized as "practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it." It encourages individuals to use wisdom and pursue paths of intelligence; to be discontent with naive or babyish thinking. Even Jesus himself promoted prudence throughout the gospels; one particular reference is when he told his followers to be as "wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

TEMPERANCE - Temperance is often misunderstood because of how it has typically become most closely associated with alcohol, but it originally referred to all pleasures and did not mean completely abstaining from a certain pleasure but rather "going the right length and no further." Christianity does not say that things like meat or beer or movies or sex are bad in themselves, but rather what is bad is the improper use of or motivation toward those things.

JUSTICE - This virtue consists of various ideas like "fairness, honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises," etc. It is not limited only to the definition used in courts of law but encompasses many areas of life and particularly the way humans deal with other humans.

FORTITUDE - This is simply the kind of courage that enables a person not only to face danger but also to endure great pain.

Lewis then points out that there is a difference in practicing a particular virtuous action and being characterized by a virtue:

It is important to make this distinction between acts of virtue and a virtuous character for three reasons:

"Right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a 'virtue,'" and that internal quality/character are the thing that matters. Virtuous actions are good, but if they are not flowing out of a virtuous heart, then there is the danger of selfishness, pride, conceit, and deceit.
God does not merely want obedience to a set of rules. He wants a certain quality of person.
In light of eternity, if people do not have "at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible eternal conditions could make a 'Heaven' for them - that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us."

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Mere Christianity, Day 6: The Invasion

1/6/2015

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So, picking up where chapter one leaves off, Lewis begins chapter two saying that, yes, Atheism is too simple, but so is what he calls Christianity-and-water: the view that says "there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right - leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption." According to him, these are both children's philosophies. And yet, this childish version of Christianity is not only what many people hold but also what many of the opponents attack. When you try to explain the real doctrines of Christianity to these individuals, they "complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made 'religion' simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc."

But Reality is not simple. It is not neat, not obvious, and not what you expect. Reality is complicated and odd and surprising. In fact, this is one of the reasons Lewis says he believes Christianity because it actually is not neat and simple and not what you would expect or what anyone would have made up. When you really look at it and really examine what Christianity says about the world, about humanity, about the God over it all, "it has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

So he says to put away these children's philosophies and over-simplified answers to the questions we are asking. Neither the problem nor the answer are simple.

The Problem: We have a universe that "contains much that is obviously bad and apparently meaningless" but which also contains "creatures like ourselves who know that it is bad and meaningless."

Lewis says that there are only two possible views that face all the facts of the Problem and provide a consistent and rational answer:

Lewis says the Dualism view cannot actually be the answer to the problem because Good and Evil cannot be on equal footing. It cannot merely be a preference of one over the other because then we ought to "give up talking about good and evil at all. For good means what you ought to prefer quite regardless of what you happen to like at any given moment." If it is not simply a matter of preference or choosing which side you like at a particular moment, then it must mean that one of the powers is Right and the other is Wrong, which takes us back to the Moral Law, the standard by which the two powers are judged, and means that whoever created the Moral Law would actually be the ultimate authority over Good and Evil.

"The same point can be made in a different way. If Dualism is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons- either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it - money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. I do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled."

These are the reasons Dualism cannot provide the answer. Which leaves us with Christianity. And Lewis admits that Christianity comes very close to Dualism in that there is a battle between Good and Evil. It is just that Christianity is not a war between two independent powers, but rather a civil war, where Evil has rebelled against the Good and now occupies the territory that is the world we live in. Christianity is the story of how the Rightful King entered that Enemy-occupied territory and is calling us all to take part in the battle to restore the Good.

Why is Christianity-and-water such an appealing view?
How has that view helped the cause of Atheism and damaged the reputation of Christianity?

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Mere Christianity, Day 5: The Rival Conceptions of God

1/5/2015

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Yesterday's post concluded Book One - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, so today picks up with Book Two - What Christians Believe. While Lewis used the first five chapters to address the philosophical arguments for the existence of the Moral Law and the Mind/Power that created it, Lewis uses these next five chapters to specifically address and provide a defense for the Christian perspective on these subjects.

He begins chapter one of Book Two by pointing out an important difference between the Christian worldview and the Atheist/Materialist worldview. Christians are not required to believe that all other religions are completely invalid and wrong with absolutely no truth in them, but "if you are an atheist, you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake," which would mean that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question of our existence and the purpose for it. Even when Christianity claims to be the exclusively right answer, it can still acknowledge and find shreds of truth in even the strangest religions, but the Atheist who is consistent within his worldview must view them all (and view those who believe in them) as wrong, mistaken, and wholly false.

Lewis goes on to explain two main divisions that people generally fall under:

Part of his purpose in showing these divisions is to point out that the Materialist/Atheist is not standing in opposition merely to Christianity when he says there is no God, no Creator, no Intelligent Designer, but rather he is standing in opposition to all religions that have existed all over the world throughout all time, which is a much broader and bolder claim when understood properly. Now just because it is a minority view does not make it inherently wrong; however, if it is the view you choose to embrace, it does imply that you ought to have serious evidence or arguments to back up your perspective.

After describing some of the different perspectives of pantheism (many gods) and monotheism (one God), Lewis then goes on to give a basic summary of the Christian worldview of God:

A good God made the world and everything in it,
but many of those things have gone wrong,
and God wants them to be made right again.

He mentions here that this raises a big question and one that he clung to for many years as an atheist: Why have things gone wrong? This is a question we still hear today. If there is a God, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? Why do bad things happen even to very good people? But Lewis points out that these questions actually turn out to be more problematic for the atheist than for the Christian:

His sense of justice and feelings that the chaos of the world violated that justice failed to disprove God's existence and disrupted his idea that the whole of reality was senseless because it forced him to assume that there was at least one part of reality that was full of sense - the idea of justice. "If there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." But Justice, Right, and Wrong; these are words that have meaning to every human being, which in turn suggests that there may be something more than just this world we know and see.

Do you agree with the idea that Atheism is actually too simple?
Whatever your worldview is, can you really defend and explain why you believe it?
Do you think it's important to be able to do so?

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Mere Christianity, Day 4: We Have Cause to be Uneasy

1/4/2015

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Chapter four concludes with the idea that the Moral Law is evidence of a Power that created the universe, evidence of an intelligent mind that exists outside of creation. Lewis then begins chapter five with an acknowledgment of the frustration or irritation some may be experiencing at this point:

The three things he goes on to share in response to this annoyance or frustration are...

"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be." Looking at the present state of humanity, it seems pretty clear that we are on the wrong road, making a mistake. The best way to undo a mistake is to go back to the beginning and rework the problem. If you are taking a trip and find yourself on the wrong road, the most "progressive" solution is not to continue going in the wrong direction but rather to turn back and figure out where you went wrong so that you can get to your intended destination.
"We have not yet got as far as the God of any actual religion, still less the God of that particular religion called Christianity." We have only gone far enough to say that there is Someone or Something who created the Moral Law, and we only really have two clues as to what this Someone is like:
A. The universe he has created indicates he is a "great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place) but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place)."
B. The Moral Law he has put into our minds indicates that he is intensely interested in right conduct, but not in an indulgent or sympathetic way because there is nothing soft about the law of morality. "If it is pure impersonal mind, there may be no sense in asking it to make allowances for you or let you off, just as there is no sense in asking the multiplication table to let you off when you do your sums wrong."
"Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing." The Moral Law reveals the weakness of humanity and our tendency toward immorality, toward selfishness and deceit and manipulation and hatefulness and pride, breaking the very laws of morality we feel everyone else should be keeping. Christianity offers answers to the questions that arise from the dilemma of the Moral Law and the Power behind it, but the Moral Law also underscores our need for the answers that are offered by Christianity.

In the end, Lewis acknowledges that the potential reality of Christianity, or even of just a Divine Creator/Intelligence, may be discomforting for many, but he concludes that we could never gain comfort by looking for comfort. Instead, he says, look for Truth and you may also find comfort along with it. "If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair."

On what do you base your beliefs about the universe, about the meaning of life, or even about God? The things that make you feel comfortable? Or the truth?
How has our culture been seemingly successful at creating the illusion that Christianity and logical, rational, scientific Truth are at odds with one another?

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Mere Christianity, Day 3: What Lies Behind the Law

1/3/2015

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To summarize the first three chapters:

There is a Moral Law that governs humanity and that we all seem to abide by at the most basic level, even if we are not conscious of it.
This Moral Law was not made up by humans but seems to be a transcendent, unchanging rule, existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material world.

If you are in agreement with all that Lewis has said up to this point, then he takes you one step further with chapter four (if you aren't in agreement, I'd love for you to comment or contact me and let me know the weaknesses/problems you find in his arguments). So because we have this Rule of Right and Wrong that he discussed in chapter three, a rule that we did not invent and that we know we ought to obey, we must consider what this tells us about the universe.

Lewis says there are two general views* on what the universe is and how it came to be:

1. Materialist View

Matter and space just happen to exist and always have existed and no one knows why
The Laws of Matter, by a sort of fluke or random alignment, just happened to create everything in existence
Everything was due to chance

2. Religious View

There is something like an intelligent mind behind the universe, with a conscious purpose and preferences
This mind made the universe, partly for reasons we do not know and partly to create thinking creatures like itself

He points out that we should not make the mistake of thinking that one of these views existed for a long time until the other gradually took its place. Wherever we find evidence of thinking minds throughout history, both views seem to be in play. He also makes note of the fact that one is not the "scientific view" and the other "unscientific" because science cannot prove either view as the right one. Science is, at its essence, merely the observation of facts. It works by experiments and watches how things behave, but it does not explain why anything has come to be there in the first place or whether there is something behind the things it observes.

Now, back to the Moral Law. Lewis says the only way we know about the Moral Law is because we are human and experience it firsthand. Mere outside observation of humans would not show what we ought to do, only what we actually do. "In the same way, if there were anything above or behind the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside, could never hope to discover it."

Then he poses the question:

Does the universe simply happen to be what it is for no reason?
<or>
Does the universe have a power behind it that makes it what it is?

If there does exist some power behind the universe, it would have to be something beyond the observable facts that it created and could not be found by mere observation. "If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe - no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house." But we do have this Moral Law, something outside of ourselves that seems to have been put into each of us, and Lewis says this is evidence of that power behind the creation of the world, evidence of a Mind directing the universe and guiding Man's conscience.

Does one view of the universe require more "faith" than the other?
Is it fair to say that the Materialist view of the universe is the proven scientific view,
and the Religious view stands in opposition to science?

Footnote:
*Lewis notes at the end of the chapter that there is a third view that is kind of in between the Materialist and Religious Views, what he calls the Life-Force philosophy or Creative Evolution. He says,

"People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet 'evolved' from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the 'striving' or 'purposiveness' of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then 'a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection' is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind 'strives' or has 'purposes'? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children."

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Mere Christianity, Day 2: The Reality of the Law

1/2/2015

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C.S. Lewis begins chapter three by noting the differences between the laws of nature and the laws of human nature...
- Laws of Nature: Describe what nature does (not what it ought to do; only explains the observable facts)
- Law of Human Nature: Describes what men actually do (how they behave, the observable facts) as well as what men ought to do (moral expectations)

Take, for example, a tree. A tree functions as a tree because of the laws of nature. We may view it as a good or bad tree based on its usefulness or convenience to us, but we do not actually blame the tree if it does not shade us properly or if it does not produce healthy fruit after a drought. The tree is only obeying the laws of nature and could not have consciously chosen to do anything different.

On the other hand, a man behaves in a certain way, but that is not the whole story because over and above his behavior are the expectations the rest of us have for his behavior; a feeling that he ought to behave a certain way and that he makes the choice whether to obey or disobey the standard. A person's behavior is not good or bad because of its inconvenience or usefulness to others but because of some external framework, some other kind of reality; as Lewis puts it, "a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us."

Here you might disagree and say that good or bad behavior is only based on whether the majority finds it acceptable or agreeable. You may feel that behaviors are determined to be good or bad based on their convenience or usefulness to others. In other words, you are more inclined to Moral Relativism, the idea that what is right for one may not be right for another, and what is wrong for your neighbor may be acceptable for you because it is all based on the individual and his/her ideas of good and bad. Lewis gives an incredibly simple (but rational) example of why this is not likely:

"A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame the second man and do not blame the first. I am not angry - except perhaps for a moment before I come to my senses - with a man who trips me up by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed. Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not."

So Lewis concludes there is something in the universe that he refers to as the Rule of Right and Wrong. This rule is a real thing, not merely made up or decided on by man, but rather something that appears to be embedded in the minds of humans that we generally seem to operate by. It is not a "fact" in the ordinary sense though because it is not the same as our actual, observable behavior. It is something above and beyond the facts.

What do you think? Does our society seem to operate under moral absolutes?
Or does moral relativism make more logical sense?
Do we ever have the ability to say something is definitely right or wrong?

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Mere Christianity, Day 1: The Law of Human Nature (and) Some Objections

1/1/2015

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Book One (the first five chapters) of Mere Christianity starts at the literal beginning. Lewis does not operate under the assumption that his audience/readers all believe in the existence of God, so he uses the first section to sort of defend and explain how we can actually develop the rationale for a Divine Creator. The overarching theme of these chapters is "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe," and he starts chapter one with the Law of Human Nature*. So here we go...

Chapter One+
Humans impose standards of behavior on ourselves and on each other. Lewis uses examples like this:

That's my seat; I was there first.
Give me a bite; I gave you a bite of mine.
Come on, you promised.
How would you like it if anyone did the same to you?

Statements like these are things we all have, no doubt, said or heard at least once and probably on a regular basis. And if we make one of those statements and direct it in a negative way toward someone who has violated the standard of the statement, they will usually provide a defense for themselves or attempt to justify their actions to prove that they did not actually violate the standard. They argue their perspective. For example:

Person A: "That's my seat; I was there first."
Person B: "Well, you weren't sitting here, and you didn't have anything in the seat, so how could I have known it was yours. It was fair game."

Lewis says the very act of arguing one's point in a situation like this means that we are trying to differentiate between right and wrong. When we make statements like these, we are appealing to a standard of behavior that we expect our fellow man to know about, and very rarely does the other man say (as Lewis puts it), "To hell with your standard" because we all seem to operate on this idea of fair play / decent behavior. If we had no sort of basic agreement about Right and Wrong, there would be no point in defending oneself when we violate the standard. There would also be no point in accusing someone of violating the standard because how can you tell someone they have done "wrong" unless "right" is a real, objective thing.

So the purpose of chapter one is to point out that Right and Wrong are real concepts that we all believe in, even if we do not consciously do so. We are all operating under the Law of Morality, just as matter is subject to Gravitational Law and just as our bodies are governed by Biological Laws. The only difference is that the Moral Law is one we can choose to obey or disobey (which also distinguishes humans from all other matter because we are the only ones with the capacity for moral thought). In fact, we often fail at obeying the moral law on a daily basis. He says:

"None of us are really keeping the Law of [Morality]. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologize to them. They had much better read some other book, for nothing I am going to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left... I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people."

So he summarizes chapter one with the following two points:

1. Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.
2. They [often] do not in fact behave in that way.

Chapter Two
Having made his two points in chapter one, Lewis uses chapter two to address some objections that people often have about the Moral Law.

Objection One:
Moral Law is just a Herd Instinct that has been developed over time like all our other instincts.

Response to Objection One:
Moral law is not an instinct but rather the thing that judges between two instincts.

Lewis compares this distinction to the difference between piano music and piano keys. Just as the sheet music is needed to tell us which keys to play, the Moral Law is not one of our instincts but rather the thing that tells us which instincts to follow and which ones to suppress.
If the Moral Law was not present, our stronger impulses (such as self-preservation) would always win, yet we often choose the weaker impulse over the stronger one (for example: choosing our herd instinct to help someone in danger rather than following our self-preservation instinct to flee danger).
Also, no instinct we have is ever fully good at all times; all of them need to be encouraged or suppressed at different times, so it is a mistake to view our impulses as good and bad. A mother's love for her child (what we might say is a good instinct) can become overly indulgent and preferential toward the child. A man's fighting instinct (what we might say is a bad instinct) sometimes needs to be encouraged in order to protect others. The Moral Law is what encourages or suppresses those impulses to be used appropriately. Just like none of the keys on the piano is necessarily 'right' or 'wrong'. "Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another."

Objection Two:
Moral Law is just a social convention, put into us by education.

Response to Objection Two:
Just because we learn something from our parents/teachers/ancestors does not make that thing merely a human invention.

We all learned our multiplication tables at school. A person living alone on a deserted island would not have learned those multiplication tables, but that does not make the principle behind them any less real or factual, so it does not follow that the multiplication table is merely something humans made up for themselves.
The laws of morality belong to this same class as mathematics because
A. Though there are some differences in the moral ideas of one time period or country and another, the differences are not as great as one would expect if the moral laws were merely a social construct made to fit each group's likes or dislikes. Even with the differences that do exist, we can see the same moral thread running through each culture and generation.
B. The moment you say one set of moral ideas can be better than another (such as, the current American perspective on slavery versus that of the 1860s Civil War era), you are measuring them both by a standard and describing how closely they come to that standard. So saying that one generation's morals is better than the previous generation's implies that there is an overarching standard of morality, and a standard is something above and separate from the things it measures. (If I measure the length of a string incorrectly, that does not change the standard of measurement on the ruler I was using; it only means I used the ruler incorrectly.)
We should also be careful not to confuse advances in knowledge with advances in morality. There is a distinction between differences of morality and differences of beliefs about facts. Just as 2+2 always equals 4, even if we sometimes get the answer wrong as we are learning to add, so the Moral Law remains constant, even if we humans sometimes get it wrong. Lewis writes:

"One man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches [today] is that we do not believe there are such things... There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house."

So what do you think? Let's have a conversation...
What objections do you have to the idea of a standard of morality?
Can we say that there is objective Right and Wrong in the world?

*Lewis refers to the Moral Law in different ways, using the term "Law of Nature" most often but also interchanging it with law of morality, law of human nature, law of right and wrong, etc. I will generally refer to it as the Law of Morality in order to avoid confusing it with what our culture generally thinks when we hear the term "laws of nature" (gravity, biology, physics, etc.)

+This first post will be somewhat longer since I am combining chapters one and two in order to follow the 31-day framework for going through the book. The two chapters on Faith will also be combined into one post later on. Otherwise each post will cover only one chapter at a time from the book.

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Mere Christianity in 31 Days

12/31/2014

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Here is the layout of the entire 31 days and what each day's post covered. I have updated this section with all the links, so this post provides not only an introduction and background/context for the book (see section below this outline), but it is also a landing page for all of the content of the 31-day series.
Mere Christianity in 31 Days
Book One: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe
1. The Law of Human Nature (and) Some Objections
2. The Reality of the Law
3. What Lies Behind the Law
4. We have Cause to be Uneasy
Book Two: What Christians Believe
5. The Rival Conceptions of God
6. The Invasion
7. The Shocking Alternative
8. The Perfect Penitent
9. The Practical Conclusion
Book Three: Christian Behavior
10. The Three Parts of Morality
11. The 'Cardinal Virtues'
12. Social Morality
13. Morality and Psychoanalysis
14. Sexual Morality
15. Christian Marriage
16. Forgiveness
17. The Great Sin
18. Charity
19. Hope
20. Faith (part 1 and part 2)
Book Four: Beyond Personality; or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
21. Making and Begetting
22. The Three-Personal God
23. Time and Beyond Time
24. Good Infection
25. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers
26. Two Notes
27. Let's Pretend
28. Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
29. Counting the Cost
30. Nice People or New Men
31. The New Men

This past summer I picked up the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and decided I'd attempt it. If you've never read any of Lewis' nonfiction works, they are a little more challenging and mentally exhausting than his fiction writings. I have gone through the Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Space Trilogy, and now Mere Christianity, which is surprisingly only a small fraction of all of the books he has actually written, but I always feel like I'm doing something worthwhile when I read a book by C.S. Lewis, and it always makes me feel a little more intelligent when I actually understand what I'm reading. After reading Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage (which quotes Lewis all throughout), I knew I wanted to mark Mere Christianity off of my list.

The chapters are short, only 5-7 pages really. It's not an incredibly lengthy book, 227 pages in my edition. But he says plenty about each topic, and I think a lot of it flew right over my head the first time I read it. It was great though, and I decided to go through it again, but this time I thought I'd do a series on the blog that explores the book and breaks it down chapter by chapter. Since I recently completed a 31 day series of writing, I had it in mind to do something similar with this. There are 33 chapters in the book, so I'm going to combine the first two and the two separate chapters on Faith to make it 31 posts.

So here's a little intro and some information to help you decide if this is something you'd like to read for yourself, but if you're even remotely considering it, I say jump on board!

Context/Purpose of the book:
The foreword explains that the content of the book was actually a series of radio broadcasts that C.S. Lewis did in 1942 during World War II. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) invited Lewis to speak about the Christian faith to a war-torn country that was being bombarded by 400 planes every night and had lost an entire generation of men just 24 years earlier in World War I. So in an effort to provide some thread of hope and peace and even joy for the listening audience, he sets out to explain and defend the existence of God, the beliefs and behaviors of Christians, and some of the theological concepts of the Bible. Later he took the information from those talks and converted them into book format, and Mere Christianity was born.

He says that the purpose of his book is not to help someone decide between different Christian denominations. He doesn't make distinctions between Catholics or Protestants, Presbyterians or Methodists. Instead the purpose is to explain and defend the general Christian faith and doctrine, to explain 'mere Christianity'. As a former atheist, himself, he approaches the subject with a great deal of rational thought and philosophical reasoning, and he invites the listener/reader to start at the beginning and examine the evidence, to look at what is offered and make an informed decision.

Intended Audience:
Lewis had his own audience in mind when he shared these messages and wrote Mere Christianity, and I have an intended audience with this blog series on the book as well. These are some of the people I had in mind as I wrote these posts:

Agnostics (people on the fence or who just don't know if you can know, those not sure of or trying to decide what they believe)
Atheists (people who are opposed to the existence of God, whether in a militant or just an apathetic way)
Unbelievers (people who may believe in a God but not necessarily the Christian God)
Believers (people who believe in the Christian God and have trusted in his Son, Jesus, for salvation of their sins)
Everyone else: Anyone who wants to know more about Christianity and wants to learn how to defend their own beliefs better (whether Christian or not).

How to Use This Series:
These posts are kind of a Cliff's notes to Mere Christianity. Each post is rather brief since his chapters are already pretty short. My purpose was to kind of summarize and maybe explain in simpler terms what Lewis says about each topic. Ideally, I think these posts are best used to supplement your own reading of the book, but I tried to write them as though they are the primary material. (You can download a free pdf of the entire book by clicking this link if you're interested in having your own copy to read). Use the information to challenge your thinking, to beef up your own defense, to understand more about the Christian faith and know what we believe. Whether you are a believer or unbeliever, I recommend following along (and reading the book) because no matter your position, you ought to have a good explanation for why you believe what you believe.

If You Follow This Series:
Feel free to contact me through the contact form to the right if you have questions or comments you'd rather not make public, or comment at the bottom of the individual posts if you'd like. I welcome criticisms, doubts, questions, disagreements, and concerns. I only ask that we keep it civil and kind. I would also love to hear any insights or personal benefit you gain from reading through the summaries or the book. C.S. Lewis had a brilliant mind, and his skill for writing and teaching is fantastic. You won't regret reading this book, and if you are a believer, I almost would go so far as to say it needs to be on your required book list because it has been that helpful to my walk with Christ. At any rate, happy reading!

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Mere Christianity, Day 17: The Great Sin

Mere Christianity, Day 14: Sexual Morality

Mere Christianity, Day 11: The Cardinal Virtues

Mere Christianity, Day 6: The Invasion

Mere Christianity, Day 5: The Rival Conceptions of God

Mere Christianity, Day 4: We Have Cause to be Uneasy

Mere Christianity, Day 3: What Lies Behind the Law

Mere Christianity, Day 2: The Reality of the Law

Mere Christianity, Day 1: The Law of Human Nature (and) Some Objections

Mere Christianity in 31 Days

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