Forgiveness

When you start Mathematics, you do not begin with Calculus; you begin with simple addition.  In the same way, if we really want..to learn to forgive, we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.  One might start with forgiving one's husband, or wife, or parents, or children, or the nearest N.C. O., for something they had done or said last week.   That will probably keep us busy for the moment. (Lewis p.104)

One might start with the colleague who carelessly said something cruel.
One might start with one's doctor, who no longer makes one feel like a person being treated, but like chattel  being herded.
One might start with the clerk who was rude.
One might start with the driver who cuts people off.

“When
there is peace in the self, there is peace in the home. When there is peace in
the homes, there is peace in the community. When there is peace in the
communities there is peace in the nations. When there is peace in the nations,
there is peace in the world."  I don't know who said this.  Google won't divulge that information to me.


Lewis points out to me that what is true for peace is also true for forgiveness.  Maybe that's because you can't have one without the other.

More posts on Lewis's chapter on Forgiveness can be found on my friend Sarah's blog.

Marriage

Today we are discussing the chapter Christian Marriage from C. S. Lewis's book Mere Christianity.


 Lewis  said a lot of things I agree with whole heartedly, such as the importance of the promise made in marriage, and the explosion of being "in love" being replaced by the kind of love that is more like an engine keeping everything running ( I don't know much about engines, but I do know that the "in love" feelings return when they aren't desperately grasped at like the most important thing in the world, which is not something Lewis mentions, but then since he wasn't married when he wrote this, he can't be expected to get every aspect right.)  But he also left me something to ponder.

....I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused.  The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is a quite different question-how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws.  A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for everyone.   I do not think that.  At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.  My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives.  There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage:  one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens , the other governed by Church with rules enforced by her own members.  The distinction ought to be sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.


Now, substitute the words American for British,  legislators for Members of Parliament, and Gay Marriage for divorce laws, and you see my dilemma.     Should Gay Marriage be allowed in America?  Should a Christian (one who believes homosexual behavior is both a choice and a sin) attend such a ceremony / celebration?  Isn't a boycott unloving?  Aren't we supposed to love the sinner?  Can we say "best wishes" and give a gift, hoping for their happiness even if we ultimately don't believe they'll be happy with their choice?

I'm thinking Clive would say if they aren't Christian, to go and try to wish them well.  I don't know what I think, except in my heart, I truly want to show love, and wish people well, even when the picture I see ahead isn't rosy.

Thoughts?   Feel free to disagree with me.  I'm between many people in my corporal life who feel differently from me and each other on this issue.

Please join the discussion over at Connecting to Impact, where the discussion in the various links will be marriage in general, and not necessarily the paragraph I chose to ponder.

Trying Again

I don't need a snazzy cover today.
The topic is snazzy enough!

...many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible.  But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility.  Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not:  faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can.  You certainly get none for leaving the question alone.  Not only in examinations, but in war, mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, or even fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it.  It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.  (Lewis, p.93)


I agree with Lewis's point.  I have heard lots of people comment on how it is "impossible" to expect people "nowadays" to refrain from sexual activity until they are married.    Sometimes it makes me fume, because it assumes our ancestors who claimed they did are liars.  (It assumes me to be a liar as well.   Call me a slut, and I'll be surprised, but I'll let you live, but don't any person dare call me a liar!)

I actually feel more charitable, though, when reading Lewis's words, because I, too, have my own "impossibility".   Sure, it's possible for most people, just not me.  What is this unworkability?   Well, if you can excuse the use of a four letter word in this post, it is staying on a d-i-e-t.    Once I fail in some small way, I tend to give up, because I wasn't perfect.  Sure, many people stay on Atkins™ until they are their desired weight, but it was "impossible" for me to do that.

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity- like perfect charity- will not be attained by any merely human efforts.  You must ask for God's help.  Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.  Never mind.  After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.  Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself, but just this power of always trying again.  For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in the habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.  We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair of even our worst, for our failures are forgiven.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.


So.... I suppose now is a good time to mention that I've been using Slimfast™ for the last two and a half weeks.   And I've been praying for me. (Lewis, p. 94)

For more discussion on this week's chapter of Mere Christianity, check out Sarah Salter's blog.

Surprised by Our Choices

Today we are discussing the Chapter Morality and Psychoanalysis in Mere Christianity.  The gist of it is that people with psychological issues will not be held by God to be responsible for acts committed which they did not have the ability to control.

Last night when I went to bed, I was thinking about my aunt.  My Aunt June* died about twenty years ago. Actually, she was murdered.  She was leaving Church after lighting a candle and was on her way to do some Christmas shopping when someone tried to snatch her purse.   Auntie June fought back.  The snatcher became her attacker.  He banged her head against the sidewalk repeatedly and took the purse.  She went to the Emergency Room and had Christmas with the family a few days later.   The next week she had a brain hemorrhage and died the week after that.

We have always believed that the attack and her sudden illness were related.  Over and over we in the family have said to one another that she shouldn't have fought back.   She should have let him have her purse.   She couldn't have possibly had so much money in her purse for it to be worth the risk.  I said to myself that I'd learn from this, and if caught in the same situation, I'd give up the purse.

Guess what.  I lied to me.  Two years later I was on my way home from a job interview in a neighborhood my daddy TOLD me he didn't want me to work in when a woman grabbed my purse while I was crossing the street to catch a bus.   I yanked my purse back and looked at her.   She kept walking like nothing happened.   How much was in that purse?   Five whole dollars and a bus pass.  I didn't even have a credit card.  One could say that I needed the bus pass to get home, but honestly, I could have gone into a store, called the police, asked them to call my daddy, who would have picked me up without even an "I told you so."  (My daddy didn't say "I told you so."  He gave a look which said volumes, but those four words never passed his lips.)  But my  instinct was to fight for what I thought was mine, not to remember what happened to Aunt June, and submit my purse.

I was young, though, right?   With age and experience, I'd be able to learn from what happened to my aunt.  Sure.  But not yet.  Two years ago while Christmas shopping two young men tried to grab my purse outside of Borders.  I fought back, and they quickly moved on.  They were gone before I could dial my cell phone on the other side of the door.  (Yes.  I did get to keep my purse.)

I didn't understand my Aunt's state of mind twenty years ago when she chose to fight back.    I judged her to be in the wrong, but I didn't understand that in that flash of a moment, there was no thinking, only reflex.  One could reflexively let go of the purse, or fight back, but there is no time to think or to choose. Honestly, I don't even know what I was thinking.   I first remember thinking when I was dialing the phone.  (And that thought was "What the french toast did you just do?   Didn't you learn anything from what happened to Aunt June?")

I never judged Aunt June's reaction to be sinful, just unwise.  Yet I was unwise twice, even after promising myself I'd react differently if I ever found myself in similar circumstances.  I can see how sin could be similar, even if time isn't a factor.  One may not have the presence of mind to be mindful of their actions.  Sin is not just a bad action, but the choice to do something bad.

We see only the result which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of a man's psychological make up is probably due to his body: when his body dies all this will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was.   There will be surprises.

Yes.  There will be surprises,  I'm sure.

More discussions about this Chapter can be found on Connecting to Impact.

*Auntie June's real name wasn't June.  I don't know that her children would be okay with me telling her story, so I changed her name.

How Would a Christian Society Look?

Today we are discussing Chapter three of Book Three of Mere Christianity, which is titled Social Morality.  In it, Lewis describes what the New Testament says a fully Christian society would look like.  He describes a society where everyone works, people don’t fixate on luxuries or posturing, authority is obeyed, and people are courteous and cheerful.

“If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression.  We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, “advanced,” but its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned- perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic.  Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing.  That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine.  We have all departed from that total plan in different way, and each of us wants to make out that his own modifications of the original plan is the plan itself.  You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian:  every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.  That is why we do not get much further:  and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say that they are fighting for Christianity.”

The first part of the paragraph reminds me of something my father said when I was growing up.   He came to the United States of America during the Hungarian Revolution.  I vaguely remember asking him how a system he felt compelled to stand against and eventually leave (which meant leaving family and friends) came into existence.  He said to me “Honeygirl, if Christians behaved like Christians, Karl Marx could have taken his manifesto and stuck it up his @$$. ”

Here I think comes into play the idea that people want to take bits and pieces of it.  First of all, you can’t remove God from it.  Second of all, Christianity is a choice, and Communism as a political and economic system was not.

Am I guilty of “taking bits and pieces of it”.  I’m sure I do.  I know that when I see the words “Communism” and “Socialism”, my hackles are raised.  My daddy had to leave home and family because he stood against those things.  Sure, and argument could be made that if he hadn’t I’d never have been born, since he met my mother here in Chicago.   But I still feel badly for him, since I know it would have broken my heart to leave my mother and father and never see them again.  

I do not, however, think that Lewis was making a case for Communism.  He was pointing out that such a society would not resemble our own.  I’m sure if he had been communicating with a Communist audience in mind, he would have emphasized other points, such as family life.

More thoughts on this Chapter can be found on my friend Sarah's blog.

So Long as No One Gets Hurt

In Book Three, Chapter One of Mere Christianity, Lewis proposes that there are three parts to morality.  The first part is universal:  don't do things that hurt other people.  The second has to do with one's own inner moral condition, and the third with one's relationship with God.

It's so much easier to live in the first part of morality.   Who wants to hurt people?     I doubt there is anyone who wakes up in the morning and says to himself (or herself) "Oh wow!   Look at how the sun shines so bright and the weather is just right!   Perfect for carrying out my diabolical plan to hurt as many people as I can today!  MWAHAHAHA!"

But we manage to hurt people any way.   I imagine that most of the time, it is because of selfishness and a lesser developed inner moral condition.   But sometimes we hurt people because we can't agree with their choices.   We can't agree to "live and let live" (though I do think we can agree to "live in love") because the choices being discussed are so clearly against what God has said in His Word that we can not in good conscience condone it.  I suppose on some level we risk causing them more hurt my condoning things that must not be condoned, but the person involved may not ever see it that way.

I guess the point of my little tangent, which lost Lewis somewhere along the line, is that morality is tough on any level.   I am so thankful for forgiveness.

Please visit my friend Sarah Salter if you'd like to read a more in depth discussion of this Chapter of Mere Christianity.

Children of God

This week's book discussion focuses on Chapter 5, Book Two of Mere Christianity.

The passage which hit me right away, and my mind kept drifting back to while reading the rest, is this:

"In Christ, a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.

How is this to be done?  Now, please remember how we acquired the old, ordinary kind of life.  We derived it from others, from our father and mother and all our ancestors, without our consent- and by a very curious process involving pleasure, pain and danger.  A process you would never have guessed.  ... Now the God who arranged that process is the same God who arranged how the new kind of life- the Christ life- is to be spread.  We must be prepared for it being odd too.  He did not consult us when He invented sex: He has not consulted us when He invented this." (Mere Christianity, p.62)

 I must admit to being amused by how Lewis points out that God didn't ask our opinion on sex (which a majority of us seem to like just fine, I gather), which really is an odd process when you think about it, so the concept of new life in Christ really was no odder than that, and at least as beautiful.

But what I really love is how this paragraph points me back to my favorite verse in the whole Bible.  (I know it's supposed to be John 3:16, but I can't help it, this one makes my heart go pitter patter.)

John 1:12-13 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God.

I just love how Jesus didn't just stop at saving me from destruction, but chose to make me a child of God.  How awesome is that?  That's what I call a new life!

I suppose there is a lot more "meat" to discuss in this chapter, but I can't think anymore.  I keep coming back to being a child of God, and just feel thankful and elated.  If you would like to read a deeper discussion of this Chapter, please click here. You will be transported to my friend Jason's blog, where you will find links to others posting on the same chapter.

Accepting the Mystery

Such is my own way of looking at what  Christians call the Atonement.  But remember this is only one more picture.  Do not mistake it for the thing itself:  and if it does not help you, drop it.  (Mere Christianity, p. 61)

As I read the last paragraph of Chapter 4 Book Two of Mere Christianity, I was reminded of what Jesus said about one needing to be like a child to enter the kingdom of Heaven.   


 I have had the privilege of teaching the faith to children for seventeen years.  While it didn't start out so in the beginning, my favorite part of the whole year is that day when some brave child asks about the great mysteries of the faith.

How can God have no beginning?   Everything has a beginning!

How can God be three individual persons in one God?   Yes, we know about the shamrock and St. Pat, but aren't those leaves really just part of the shamrock?   So aren't Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just parts of God?

How can one man, no matter how good, pay for the sins of everyone in the whole world?

I can't pretend that any of those questions are easy.   Each time the questions are asked, I have to ask the Holy Spirit to help me.  Each time I have to ask the Holy Spirit to help my students accept.  You know what?  The Holy Spirit has not let me down ever!  

My favorite part is when I look at their faces after doing my best to answer them, and then admitting that these things are a mystery to me, too.  Indeed, great theologians have contemplated just such questions their whole lives long and come up with the answer "It really is a mystery."   Many times I have seen the faces of the children who ask the question relax when they get that answer.   They can accept a mystery.   Some ask "Will we know when we get to Heaven?"  My answer?  "We will see God in Heaven face to face, so we just might.  And if not, we can at least ask Him?"


Children are able to get the concept that if it doesn't help, they can drop it.   My students have taught me well.     


For more discussions about this Chapter of Mere Christianity, check out my friend Sarah's blog.

Lewis's Trilemma : I Choose to Believe Jesus is God

"The better stuff a creature is made of-  the cleverer, stronger and freer it is- then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong."


That is Clive's explanation as to why free will requires that evil be possible.  For us to enjoy being with God forever in Heaven, there had to be another choice.   He wants us to want Him, but to build us so that we had no choice would make us His slaves instead of His children.  He created us to be His children.  (And my heart soars and I praise Him in my heart for this.)

Chapter three, book two of Mere Christianity ends with a quote I have often read in other Christian books.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."


The women's prayer group I attend every other Monday has been reading a discussing the Gospel of John. Jesus actually refers to Himself as "I Am" (the Jewish name for God) in this Gospel.  So yes, Lewis is right.   One can believe that Jesus is either really really good, because He is God, or really really bad (or at least messed up) because He claims to be God and isn't,  but "Great Moral Teacher" is an impossibility.  If He is God, and I believe He is, then He is better than that, and if He isn't, well, how can He be moral while claiming to be one with the almighty if He isn't.


On a personal note:  Why I believe Jesus is God, and not a madman.


Because He rose from the dead.   I'm sure that until He rose from the dead, the best I could have believed is that He was mad and should be prevented from speaking publicly for His own sake.  Sorry.   (I know that sounds blasphemous, but He knows my heart, so hiding this thought is pretty silly.)   Perhaps when He raised Lazarus, had I been around, I'd have allowed my heart to open a bit and allow for another possibility, as others did.  But today, now, I believe Jesus is God because He rose from the dead, and there were witnesses.   These witnesses did not live lives of comfort and luxury due to their testimony, but were beaten, burned, flayed, boiled and killed because of it.   And still, they didn't retract because they knew the truth.   There was no reward for them if they were lying, only pain and suffering.  What made the pain and suffering worthwhile to them?   The hope and belief in their own future resurrection.   Had they been lying, they wouldn't have had such hope, and would have had no reason to claim Jesus rose.
I thank God for providing faithful witnesses to His Son's  Resurrection so that I could and would believe.


May I be so bold as to ask you why you believe as you do?

My Strength is My Weakness

While this is not what the cover of my
copy looks like, I think it is prettier, and
that my blog deserves the prettier picture.

Today we are discussing Chapter two of Book Two in Mere Christianity.  I know that I missed last week's discussion.   My husband was on vacation and we spent so much time holding hands, that I wasn't able to type.   I need both hands to type.   That's just the way my mind works.  I learned using all my fingers (but not my thumbs, except on the space bar) to type, so now more than twenty years later, I must use all my fingers to type a blog post.   I imagine this generation feels that way about their thumbs for texting, but I digress.   We are supposed to be discussing Mere Christianity, not our thumbs, so quit distracting me and let's get down to discussing!

Clive explains in the chapter why Dualism proves false.   The gist of it is that evil is a perversion of what is good.   Evil can not exist without the good, so therefore the good not only had to have come first, and foremost, and evil has to be rebellion to that good.   It makes sense to me.

Years ago I remember reading a series in a Chicago paper about how to conduct oneself in a job interview.   I didn't like everything I read.   Come to think of it, all these years later, I don't even remember everything I read, but what I do remember quite well is the suggestion by the author that when the interviewer asks what our greatest weakness is, we should play it off of whatever our greatest strength is.   For example, my greatest strength is that if I really want to fix something, I will stay with it until it is fixed.   The weakness is that this determination can turn to a sort of stubbornness where I stay with something that can not be fixed and waste time and energy.   I have since worked on this weakness by giving myself time limits and learning to put a thing aside for a bit and reassess later.   Often after putting it aside, a solution will come to my mind.   Other times, whatever I distracted myself with will loom more important at that point, and I will decide to let it go.   My point is that I can see how something good can be turned into something bad.   I'm sure mine isn't the only strength which can be turned into a weakness.  My guess would be that the only strength that can't be twisted like that is love for the Lord.

While my example is merely small potatoes, Clive manages to describe how Christianity's position on the devil being an entity created by God for something good who then went into rebellion makes more logical sense than a belief that evil and good are equal and opposite forces, with evil being entirely independent of the good (Dualism).  

Please visit my friend Sarah, where you will find her take on Chapters 1 and 2 from Book Two of Mere Christianity, and links to more discussions of Chapter 2.

What do you think?  Are our weaknesses related to our strengths?

Progressive Retreat

Still not bedazzled.

This week's discussion of Mere Christianity is on Chapter 5: We Have Cause to be Uneasy.


We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. (Mere Christianity, p.36)

God bless Clive, he expressed my problem with stubbornness to the letter.   He even goes on to describe a math problem.   That was always my problem in math:  admitting that the time I spent on a problem was wasted and I needed to start over.  


I never could grasp the notion "You learn from your mistakes."   My daddy always said "SMART people learn from other people's mistakes."   I seem to have interpreted that to mean that I can only learn from my mistakes if I'm dumb enough to admit them.  I know my daddy meant well by not leaving an excuse hanging there, but looking back, I don't think it kept me from making mistakes, just admitting them and turning around.


Changing my mind was also seen as a weakness.   Any decision, even the buying of curtains that turn out not to match the kitchen, has to be lived with until said curtains wear out, or it's time to repaint the kitchen.  (The colors in the kitchen also have to be lived with until paint chips.  Then it will be hard for me to decide on a color because I know I'll have to live with it forever an a day.  I have, however, shaken things up by moving the kitchen curtains in the bedroom and the bedroom curtains in the kitchen, which is working out rather nicely for us.)

Not THE floor lamp, but similar to it.

How does my husband feel about this?  I think he'd rather be married to a woman who considers it her prerogative to change her mind than to a woman who argued with him for purchasing the wrong lamp and then argued that I didn't want him to take it back.   I didn't want the Customer Service department at Value City to think of us as weak, even though this kind of thing is actually in their job description. Funny thing is, he won that argument, and I enjoy that floor lamp!  I can be so indecisive sometimes because I know I can't turn back that I make him twitchy.    I can also cause tension by insisting that retreat equal defeat.


There is no denying, though, that Clive makes a good point that I need to take to heart and ponder.  It may lead to the solution of more problems than of which I am aware.   After all, he was talking about spiritual and intellectual stuff, not about decorating my kitchen.  Though I'm sure he would have been most happy to help with it.   Then my husband could have handed him a paint brush when he okayed painting the kitchen lilac, with white trim.  


What progress awaits me?  I don't know yet.  I suppose I have to turn back and find out.


Does Homedepot™ sell drop cloths?


This week, my friend Sarah at "Living Between the Lines" is hosting the book discussion on Chapter 5 of Mere Christianity. Click here to join her.

A Book and It's Cover

I know we are not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but seriously, I am tired of having to use this boring picture for my posts on Mere Christianity.   There are pictures of that book with snazzier covers (which my blog deserves), but wouldn't it be lying if I were to use those pictures instead of the picture of the cover I have?   I'm beginning to regret telling Sarah and Jason to remove me from the book giveaway drawing because I already had the book.  I should have stayed in the contest, then passed my copy on to Duane or Dusty after I won.  But did I think of that in time? No.  Now my snazzy blog is marred by that boring cover, sitting there off to the side, mocking me for being such a dope.  With the word "Christianity" in it's title, you'd think it would be above mocking me, but it's not.   It had better be careful, or I'll take out my glitter and sequins, glue it to my copy, and upload the picture here!  That out to teach it not to taunt me!

Speaking of disturbing, I just looked up my reading history on my local library's website.    Apparently I read over 200 library books in the last  three years.  That means that the amount of money I would have spent would have been between $667 (paperback) and $2,000 (hardcover) yearly.   BTW, I still buy some books, and get some as gifts.  My point?  I am grateful for libraries, because $2000 would blow quite a huge hole in my budget.  My husband has never complained that I don't have a job, and we do just fine, but that is a lot of money!  (Which, writer's, publisher's, book binders, printers, etc. all deserve btw!)

Now that the weather is getting nicer, I'm going to spend more time outdoors, reading and gardening and walking.  I'll need more bug spray.  I LOVE the smell of OFF!™ bug spray.   I have ever since I was a little kid.  I'd wear it as perfume, but Bob discourages that, especially in the winter.  Oh well.  Nobody is perfect.

Here is a taste of the disturbing future:  next Tuesday you will have the opportunity to read a post where I mention rideable ducks.   Enjoy the picture I'm leaving in your head.


For more disturbing thoughts, please check out Duane Scott's Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday Blog Carnival

Unobservable, But Real Nonetheless

I'm starting to regret not buying a new book.
My blog deserves a snazzier cover!

In Chapter 4, Lewis makes the point that science is all about observable fact.   But God cannot be known fully by mere observable fact any more than man can.   If one were to observe Man as a whole, one would not be able to determine any such thing as a natural moral law.   But because we are men (in the non gender specific meaning of the term), we know what Man is like far better than we would from mere observation.  If man is unknowable by mere observation, how much more so God.
He then uses the example of a mail carrier to explain.

Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, ‘Because when ever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter.’ And if he then objected—’But you’ve never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting,’ I should say, ‘Of course not, and I shouldn’t expect to, because they’re not addressed to me. I’m explaining the packets I’m not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open.’ It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way. I do not, of course, think that if I could get inside a stone or a tree I should find exactly the same thing, just as I do not think all the other people in the street get the same letters as I do. I should expect, for instance, to find that the stone had to obey the law of gravity—that whereas the sender of the letters merely tells me to obey the law of my human nature, he compels the stone to obey the laws of its stony nature. But I should expect to find that there was, so to speak, a sender of letters in both cases, a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide. (Mere Christianity, p.34)

Yes, belief in God is "unscientific" but that is only because science is too small, not because it is more real.

Last week, I wasn't very patient reviewing Chapter 3.   That was mainly because I felt that people who deny the existence of a moral law do so because of twistedness.  I suppose that isn't fair.  It's like someone judging me for not being able to wrap my poor little brain around Calculus, accept that this is more important.  (Really.  We all need God.  We don't all need Calculus).   But if I did need to learn Calculus, I would need someone to take me into it with small little baby steps, starting with what I already knew, and then helping me understand one bit at a time.   That's exactly what Lewis is doing here.  In other words, sorry about last week.  :-)


Click here for more brilliant discussions of Chapter 4 in Mere Christianity

The Reality of the Law: Explaining the Obvious

It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real- a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.  (Mere Christianity, p. 30)

What I really like about Clive Staples Lewis is how he can state these philosophical ideas so simply, even I can understand him.  :-)   Okay, I'm not exactly dumb... when I was in college, I was actually considered to be intelligent.   However, I got tired of the mind ______ (insert word which a lady ought not to say, write, or think).   It seems that people will argue things they don't even believe in philosophy, just to prove themselves to have more supple minds than their opponents.   I don't want a twisted mind, thank you very much!  I'd rather look dumb than become twisted!

That is not to say that all philosophers are twisted.  I have a friend who is trying to convince someone on her blog that people have souls.   I find it difficult to participate because the person she is discussing this with is playing the mind game thing.. He can contradict himself right and left so long as he doesn't give in to what she is saying an inch!   I can't deal with that poop.   Not anymore!

What does this have to do with Clive?   It seems to me he is stating the obvious, yet I know it isn't "obvious " to everyone, or at least that not everyone wants to understand this.  He writes in Chapter 3 about how their are laws of Nature such as how a rock must fall or a tree must grow under certain conditions, but there is no such law for people.   People aren't even governed by the rule of convenience, since we might despise and distrust someone who would be a traitor to their country for their own convenience, even if they were the enemy and their treachery made it easier for us.  People are moved by something deeper, something that is at the core of our nature.  

We don't always follow it, but when we don't, we feel shame.  We know we are wrong.  God put this law in each of our hearts.  I believe sometimes we bury it, and maybe even convince ourselves that it isn't there, but is just a manmade idea that we have been shamed and guilted into believing.  But that doesn't explain how even then, we know when someone has wronged us.

There are some things that shouldn't have to be explained, but I have to admit, Clive Staples Lewis does a great job explaining them with patience.

If you would like to read more discussions on what Clive has to say in Chapter 3, please check out my friend Sarah's blog, and the posts linked in her discussion. I can almost guarantee that no one else is using the term "mind ____"

Lewis on Standards

When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better.If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality....The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other.....Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.....if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply ‘whatever each nation happens to approve’, there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or morally worse. (Mere Christianity, p. 25)


I'm sorry if I put too large of a passage up to quote, but it seems to me that so much of what Lewis (Clive.  Do you think he'd be okay with me calling him "Clive"?  "C.S."?   Okay, I'll stick with "Lewis") says requires his further explanation.   Even within the context of the above quote, Lewis gives an excellent example of how one can have the wrong or right idea of New York, only because it is a real place.  If it only existed in our own heads, it would be a matter of maybe that's true for you but not me, but since it is real, one's idea of it can be complete or incomplete.


I like that he says we can only judge the Nazis as wrong because there is a standard of moral conduct from which they fall short.  (Very, very, very short.)   Today we like to be understanding and tolerant of other nations (with such humility that it seems to me we barely tolerate ourselves, but I digress) but the atrocities committed by the Nazis were so monstrous, so far from the Rule of Decent Behavior, that even with the distance of seventy years, there is no way to see their actions from a point of view other than horror.  But if we simply went by the definition "whatever each nation happens to approve", why is their behavior considered by us to be so shocking, atrocious, repugnant, savage, ruthless... wrong even?  (I mean, really, could you think of any other example were the word "sinful" just didn't seem strong enough?)


There is a standard, and it is born in every one of us.  This means that it is impossible for us to be "tolerant" all the time, or else we fall into the trap of tolerating what is immoral, and thus becoming immoral ourselves. 


My friend Jason is hosting the book discussion on Mere Christianity, Chapter Two today. Click here to read his thoughts on progress, and the links to other discussions of this chapter.

Right and Wrong

Remember last week I posted that I was joining a book discussion on C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity?   Today we discuss the first chapter, "The Law of Human Nature".  My friend Sarah is hosting the discussion today, where you can find several links to other blogs discussing this chapter.

I'm glad I don't have to give a synopsis of the whole chapter (all FOUR pages), because every paragraph he writes says a mouthful! (though so far, not difficult at all to understand).   Take parts of these two paragraphs.

" I know that some  people  say the idea of a Law  of  Nature or decent

behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different  civilisations  and

different ages have had quite different moralities."

"But this  is  not  true.........for  our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different

morality  would  mean. Think of  a country  where  people were admired  for

running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the

people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a

country  where  two  and  two made five. Men have differed  as regards what

people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own  family, or

your  fellow  countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you

ought  not to  put yourself  first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men

have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have

always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked."

All people will agree  "What is mine is mine."   We all feel entitled to our property.  The question is whether what is yours is negotiable...   I suppose Lewis would say the answer to that is dependent on whom "you" are in various cultures.   Are you my family or friend?   My neighbor?  My protector?   Different cultures may differ as to who gets treated with unselfishness, but not about what constitutes the rights of the chosen. 

I find his take refreshing compared to the “truth is relative” nonsense we hear so much in our own culture.