Transcending morality
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Back when I was reading “Diary of a Russian Priest,” I happened on a thought by Fr. Elchaninov that one of the signs that a Christian society had become too nominal was a tendency to exaggerate the importance of morality.
It surprised me when I read it, because I had been mulling over some terrible news events and considering the need for increased morality. But over time, I saw the point. There’s a lot more to being good, after all, than merely being correct or pious.
And the tricky thing is that we’re certainly called as Christians to be moral people, but not just moral. We’re not just expected to be like boy scouts — trustworthy, loyal, cheerful, thrifty, etc. — though I would hope we would at least try to be that. But we’re called to go beyond that, to have hearts for God, to be “after God’s own heart.”
Kind of hard for me to get a handle on, so it’s just as well that reading an essay by C. S. Lewis today called “Man or Rabbit?”, the distinction became more clear.
In the essay, Lewis takes on the idea of well-intentioned people that society needs Christianity in a sort of over-the-counter medicinal capacity, something a person might take a sip of to see if it would improve their symptoms. He takes the line of inquiry from there to a very important point, and, as always, no one does a better job of using the language of reason and metaphor than C. S. Lewis. (But out of consideration to ‘skimmers,’ I’ll mention that the two last paragraphs pack the biggest punch.)
The question before each of us is not ‘Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?’ The question is ‘Can I?’ … The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by no means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, ‘Need I bother about it? Mayn’t I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being ‘good’? Aren’t good intentions enough to keep me safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isn’t someone inside?’
To such a man it might be enough to reply that he is really asking to be allowed to get on with being ‘good’ before he has done his best to discover what good means. But that is not the whole story. We need not inquire whether God will punish him for his cowardice and laziness; they will punish themselves. The man is shirking. He is deliberately trying not to know whether Christianity is true or false, because he foresees endless trouble if it should turn out to be true. He is like the man who deliberately ‘forgets’ to look at the notice board because, if he did, he might find his name down for some unpleasant duty. …
The man who remains an unbeliever for such reasons is not in a state of honest error. He is in a state of dishonest error, and that dishonesty will spread through all his thoughts and action: a certain shiftiness, a vague worry in the background, a blunting of his whole mental edge, will result. He has lost his intellectual virginity. Honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be forgiven and healed — ‘Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him.’ But to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven’t noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street — this is a different matter. You may not be certain yet whether you ought to be a Christian, but you do know you ought to be a Man, not an ostrich, hiding its head in the sand.
But still — for intellectual honor has sunk very low in our age — I hear someone whimpering on with his question, ‘Will it help me? Will it make me happy?’ … Well, if you must have it, my answer is ‘Yes.” But I don’t like giving an answer at all at this stage. Here is a door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is waiting for you. Either that’s true, or it isn’t. … Faced with such an issue, can you really remain wholly absorbed in your own blessed ‘moral development’?
All right, Christianity will do you good — a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected. and the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won’t enjoy that!) the fact that what you have hitherto called ‘good’ — all that about ‘leading a decent life’ and ‘being kind’ — isn’t quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed. It will teach you that in fact you can’t be ‘good’ (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts. And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created. Mere morality is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different from that. .. The people who go on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that ‘a decent life’ is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable; but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made.
… Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are ‘done away’ and the rest is a matter of flying.
Related posts:
- Real and artificial morality
- Conservatism and morality
- C. S. Lewis on the love of God
- Three quotes about the Prodigal Son
- The pervasiveness of the Christian idea
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With cheeks full of air, I let out a huge sigh. Once again, Lewis finds a way to tear through the cobwebs in my brain and throw truth in my face. And my friend, Grace, partners with Lewis to remind me once again to seek that which is Divine. Well done! Gotta go pray the Jesus Prayer now. G’night.
Well, any day when I get put into the company of C. S. Lewis is a good day, if a scary one. I’m just the person that reads these good things and has enough sense to start typing them in somewhere before my sieve-like mind loses the gist of them. But yes, I thought this was some really powerful stuff.
Thanks for sharing that, Grace. It is clear why so many refer to C.S. Lewis as “Saint Clive”.
Definitely! I had heard from a speaker that C. S. Lewis’ writings and reputation aren’t as highly regarded in Great Britain right now as they are here — the consequences of Europe’s current “post-Christian” culture, I suppose. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, it’s a great pity, because he’s one of their real treasures, as far as I’m concerned.