Welcome to the discussion

This blog is going to be an on-going discussion of the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Each chapter will have it’s own post, and comments relating to that chapter should be posted there. Any general comments can go on this post.

There are rules about commenting, though. Please stick to the subject of the chapter, do not attack anyone’s beliefs, and do not attack anyone personally. Discussion blogs have a tendency to become heated, and the comments here are not going to be moderated unless there is reason to do so, so please remember, whatever your personal beliefs, this is MY blog, and I am asking everyone to please be considerate.

If you would like to view a specific chapter or subject, just go through the categories or archives. This blog is a work in progress, and I will be slowly getting a discussion post up for each chapter, so please keep checking back if you don’t see what you’re looking for.

*This post is stuck to the main page.

Some Objections

In the second chapter, Lewis talks about the “herd instinct” in contrast to the “self-preservation instinct.” He explains that between these two things, there is a third thing that judges which of them you should follow, and that it cannot be one thing or the other. He points out that the Moral Law judges that when we must choose between the two instincts, and that it often tells us to choose the “weaker” instinct, that is, the instinct to help when we don’t want to. The Moral Law will at times tell us to suppress one behavior in favor of another, even if both are “good.”

When we are talking about our instincts, we must remember that just because we love one thing more than another, sometimes the thing we love more has to take second place to the greater cause of humanity. The Moral Law helps us distinguish times that this will have to happen. Lewis states: ” There are … occasions on which a mother’s love for her own children or a man’s love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people’s children or countries.”

He makes it clear that there is no impulse that we must follow every time in every circumstance, because there are times when that impulse must be the wrong thing to do.

The second objection is that Moral Law is simply a social convention. He uses the example of the multiplication table. The fact that it is not something everyone has the opportunity to learn does not make it less true. The fact that we learn the Moral Law from our elders does not mean that it is a human invention. Lewis states that Moral Law is a real truth, just like the multiplication tables. He argues that as soon as we say one morality is better than another, we are in fact judging that that there is a standard by which we judge, that is, the Moral Law, which is neither set of morals, but a third, higher standard.

If morality were relative, then there would be no way of saying that we are more right than any other place, but because we have a sense of morality based on some kind of standard, we can say that one set of morals is better and one is worse.

I personally feel that, in light of recent wars, there is a very clear standard by which we judge morality. Sure, our own morality is based on our culture, but I think that even so, our sense of justice is tied up in the same standard. If we did not find fault with terrorism morally, or we chalked it up to “well, they have a different moral standard, so we can’t really say anything,” then we would not be at war. But we are, because we know that taking innocent life is immoral. The atheist would argue that we should all just be nicer to one another, but this “niceness” has to come from somewhere.

I have a friend who is an atheist, who has a strong sense of justice, particularly for women. While I find her sense of justice to be a good thing, I can’t help but wonder where she thinks that comes from? Why, if there is no higher standard, would we want one set of moral standards to be followed over a lesser standard? Why does this woman feel that the way women in Islam are treated is wrong, if there were no standard? She may have an internal standard, but what is that based on? Her upbringing is Christian, but she has rejected “Christian morality,” in favor of secular humanism.

The Law of Human Nature

In the first chapter, Lewis jumps right in to the argument not by trying to prove there is a God or Force behind the universe, but by appealing to our humanity, our sense of Right and Wrong. He doesn’t shy away from coming right at the heart of the matter, at least when it comes down to the fact that we all believe in something, whether or not we want to admit it, and there is some sense in each person that there is a standard that we ought to be living by.

Basically, the argument goes like this: We all believe there is a moral standard whether we want to say we do or not. We all believe that there is Right and Wrong, and we all have a standard of moral behavior, at least some sense of it, that we believe people ought to follow. There are some who say that there is no true Right and Wrong, but will turn back on their statement when you “wrong” them. They know there is a standard, at least, they have a standard, and they cannot say that they don’t without giving themselves away as a hypocrite. We all have some sense of fairness and justice, and what Lewis is saying is that it is critically important to understand this. More on that later.

One thing he says about Human Nature is that the Law of Human Nature is the only Law we are able to break consistently. For example, we cannot break the Laws of Nature, such as gravity, death, physics, etc. We CAN, however, break the laws that govern only mankind, that of Right and Wrong. He points out that when we argue, we are essentially trying to show someone else that they are wrong. When animals fight, they do not have a sense of morality, and if we did not have a sense of Right and Wrong, I believe mankind would have killed each other off a long time ago. But we know that there is some standard that governs us, not from without, but from within, and most everyone knows that arguing is not a precursor to a fight to the death. We are much more civilized than the animals.

Why is this important? Why does it matter if we can obey or break a law, and how does this have anything to do with us, anyway?

Morality is something that is inherent in mankind. Not that we follow some moral law,  but that we know that we know we ought to. He says “I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilsations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference…I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean.”

Of course it is entirely absurd that a civilization should exist in which the opposite of moral behavior is considered moral behavior. That kind of thing only happens in fantasy opposite worlds, and even then “Wrong” is right, which means that there IS always a standard, even in our imaginary worlds. All civilizations on earth have a similar moral code, not exactly the same, but similar, and even secular humanism agrees with this assessment.

The final word in the first chapter is this: That we know there is a law governing us, but we break it. Lewis calls it the foundation of our thinking, and there is something much greater coming.