Wise Words on Wednesday: Withdrawing to the quiet
At times like these, we need to withdraw to the quiet, cling to the lamp of wisdom, and remember silence can nourish and repair the soul
– Edith Prendergast
Mere Christianity – Book III – Chapter 9 (“Charity”)
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
Notes & Quotes
1. “Charity” has a broader meaning than its current usage.
“‘Charity’ now means simply what used to be called ‘alms’ – that is, giving to the poor. Originally it had a much wider meaning… Charity means “Love, in the Christian sense.” But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people”
2. Charity is distinct from affection
“I pointed out in the chapter on Forgiveness that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same way Christian Love (or Charity) for our neighbours is quite a different thing from liking or affection”
(a) Affection can aid charity
“Natural liking or affection for people makes it easier to be “charitable” towards them. It is, therefore, normally a duty to encourage our affections – to “like” people as much as we can (just as it is often our duty to encourage our liking for exercise or wholesome food) – not because this liking is itself the virtue of charity, but because it is a help to it”
(b) However, affection can be an obstacle to charity
“…it is also necessary to keep a very sharp look-out for fear our liking for some one person makes us uncharitable, or even unfair, to someone else. There are even cases where our liking conflicts with our charity towards the person we like. For example, a doting mother may be tempted by natural affection to ‘spoil’ her child; that is, to gratify her own affectionate impulses at the expense of the child’s real happiness later on”
3. Feelings and actions are separate, but related
(a) Acts of charity nurture affection
“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did… When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him”
Our motivation will affect the result:
(i) Expecting Gratitude
“If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude,’ you will probably be disappointed….”
(ii) Loving another “self”
“But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less”
(b) Acts of hate nurture hate
“This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them. The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become-and so on in a vicious circle for ever”
3. Acts of love and hate have compound interest
“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible”
4. What should we do if we don’t love God?
(a) Do it anyway
“[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it”
(b) God does not mainly care about feelings, but our will
“Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him”
Discussion Questions
1. What is “charity”?
2. How is charity related to and distinct from affection?
3. Why does Jack say that love and hate have “compound interest”?
4. What should we do if we don’t have feelings of love towards God? Why?
C.S. Lewis Doodle
No doodle!
Mere Christianity – Book III – Chapter 8 (“The Great Sin”)
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
Notes & Quotes
1. We no consider the vice of Pride
“…[the] vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves”
2. This is the centre of Christian morality
“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride… it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind”
3. Pride is inherently competitive
“…each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise… Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone”
4. The vice of Pride is often mistaken for another vice
(a) Greed
“Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with $10,000 a year anxious to get $20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. $10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride-the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power”
(b) Lust
“What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again”
5. Other vices can bring people together. Pride cannot.
“Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity-it is enmity”
6. Pride automatically places us in competition with God.
“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison- you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you”
7. How then, is that the prideful can describe themselves as “very religious”?
(a) They are worshipping 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…”
(b) There is a test we can apply to ourselves
“The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether”
(c) It is worse than vices from our animal nature
“It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly”
(d) It can even be used to beat down the simpler vices
“Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity-that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-con trolled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride – just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense”
8. There are several possible misunderstandings related to Pride
(a) Pleasure in being praised is not Pride
“The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says “Well done,” are pleased and ought to be”
(i) This is because of where the pleasure lies
“For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please”
(ii) It is only problematic when you delight more in yourself
“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.” The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming”
(A) This is why vanity is the least bad
“It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration”
(B) The real problem is when you don’t care at all
“The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you… He says ‘Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything?’ In this way real thoroughgoing Pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, the devil loves “curing” a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our Pride to cure our vanity; better the frying-pan than the fire”
(b) It is not necessarily bad to be “proud of” a son, father, school etc.
(i) It very often simply means admiration
“Very often, in such sentences, the phrase ‘is proud of’ means ‘has a warm-hearted admiration for.’ Such an admiration is, of course, very far from being a sin”
(ii) However, it may mean that a person gives himself airs
“But it might, perhaps, mean that the person in question gives himself airs on the ground of his distinguished father, or because he belongs to a famous regiment. This would, clearly, be a fault; but even then, it would be better than being proud simply of himself. To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God”
(c) Pride isn’t forbidden for the principal reason that God is worried about His own dignity, but because Pride prevents us from knowing God
“He wants you to know Him; wants to give you Himself… He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are”
(d) Don’t imagine that a humble man will be what most people call “humble” nowadays
“…he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all”
9. In order to begin to become humble, we must realize that we are pride.
“The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed”
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Jack regard Pride as the centre of Christian morality?
2. In what way is Pride inherently competitive?
3. What kind of vices actually have their roots in Pride?
4. Why is it that the prideful can think of themselves as very religious? What makes pride so dangerous?
5. Is it prideful to take pleasure in praise?
6. Is it sinful to be proud of things such as your family or school?
7. Why does pride prevent us from coming close to God?
8. What might a humble man look like?
9. What does Jack think is the first step in becoming humble?
C.S. Lewis Doodle
No doodle!
Music Monday: Make Me Okay
When I was in England I participated in a workshop with Tre Shepherd, the lead singer of the band “One Hundred Hours”. One of the band’s songs popped into my head last week, “Make Me Okay”:
When I’m with You, I can’t pretend
If this is the valley, then where is the end?
Is there still a chance that I have a prayer?
Something inside me knows You’re there
What will You do, what will You say?
How will You make me okay?
I just don’t know, I cannot see
Help me trust in Your great love for me
If You’re at my door, and You hold the key
Please put back together these pieces of me
For I am so blind, but I want to see
My faith is so tired, but I want to believe
What will You do, what will You say?
How will You make me okay?
I just don’t know, I cannot see
Help me trust in Your great love for me
Help me trust in Your great love for me…
Mere Christianity – Book III – Chapter 7 (“Forgiveness”)
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
Notes & Quotes
1. Maybe it is forgiveness, rather than chastity, is the most unpopular thing in Christianity
(a) Because Christian forgiveness involves forgiving our enemies
…we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies. Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive… And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger”
(b) People sometimes complain not that it’s not too hard, but just that it’s simply unfair!
“It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick,” they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?'”
2. But this is Christianity!
“I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.” There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?”
3. In order to develop our ability to forgive, start small…
“When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps 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 NCO*, for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment”
* Non-Commissioned Officer in the army
3. There are misconceptions as to what it means to “love your neighbour as yourself”
“…how exactly do I love myself?”… I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society…. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do… but that is not why I love myself. In fact it, is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself…. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing”
4. There is a distinction between the person and his/her actions
“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
…how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-namely myself… In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them… But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again”
5. Loving my neighbour does not mean refusing to punish him
“No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment-even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy”
(a) This does not contradict “Thy shalt not kill”?
“There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one… And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major-what they called a centurion”
4. If people What then, is the difference?
I imagine somebody will say, “Well, if one is allowed to condemn the enemy’s acts, and punish him, and kill him, what difference is left between Christian morality and the ordinary view?” All the difference in the world. Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one’s own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible. Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves- to wish that he were not bad. to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.
5. What’s the bottom line?
“I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them. But then, has oneself anything lovable about it? You love it simply because it is yourself, God intends us to love all selves in the same way and for the same reason: but He has given us the sum ready worked out on our own case to show us how it works. We have then to go on and apply the rule to all the other selves. Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco. …”
Discussion Questions
1. Why is the Christian doctrine of forgiveness so unpopular?
2. How does Jack suggest we start?
3. What does it mean to forgive your enemies and what does it not mean?
4. Does this mean we should be against capital punishment?
5. Why should we forgive others?
C.S. Lewis Doodle
No doodle!
Mere Christianity – Book III – Chapter 6 (“Christian Marriage”)
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
Notes & Quotes
1. Jack doesn’t want to talk about marriage
(a) Christian doctrines surrounding marriage are very unpopular
(b) He (at the time) hadn’t been married
…but he can’t ignore it when he is speaking on the subject of morality!
2. The idea of Christian marriage is based on Christ’s words
(a) Husband and wife are “one flesh”
“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism… He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact – just as… when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument”
(b) …and therefore what makes fornication wrong is that it tries to separate the different intended unions, isolating the pleasures
“…those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again”
3. Marriage is permanent
(a) There are some differences on this subject between different Churches
(i) They different on when, if ever, there can be divorce (or, more strictly remarriage)
“…some do not admit divorce at all; some allow it reluctantly in very special cases. It is a great pity that Christians should disagree about such a question…”
(ii) …but they agree with each other much more than they agree with the world
“…they all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership…they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners…”
(b) Its permanence isn’t just rooted in the virtue of chastity, but in justice because just involves keeping promises
“…everyone who has been married in a church has made a public, solemn promise to stick to his (or her) partner till death. The duty of keeping that promise has no special connection with sexual morality: it is in the same position as any other promise.
If, as modern people are always telling us, the sexual impulse is just like all our other impulses, then it ought to be treated like all our other impulses; and as their indulgence is controlled by our promises, so should its be. If, as I think, it is not like all our other impulses, but is morbidly inflamed, then we should be especially careful not to let it lead us into dishonesty”
(c) Some might respond saying that the promise was a mere formality which they never intended to keep
“Whom, then, was he trying to deceive when he made it? God? That was really very unwise. Himself? That was not very much wiser. The bride, or bridegroom, or the “in-laws”? That was treacherous. Most often, I think, the couple (or one of them) hoped to deceive the public. They wanted the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending to pay the price… If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep. It is true that by living together without marriage they will be guilty (in Christian eyes) of fornication. But one fault is not mended by adding another: unchastity is not improved by adding perjury”
(d) Some might respond saying that the whole point of marriage is “being in love”
(i) In which case, there’s no point of making a promise!
“…[but this] leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made…
(ii) But, this is what lovers naturally do!
As Chesterton* pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do…
* G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic writer and apologist
(iii) A promise is about action, not feelings
A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.
(iv) There are sound, social reasons why two people should remain together, even if they are no longer “in love”
“…to provide a home for their children, to protect the woman (who has probably sacrificed or damaged her own career by getting married) from being dropped whenever the man is tired of her. “
(A) “Being in love” is a good thing, but not the best thing.
“[People] like thinking in terms of good and bad, not of good, better, and best, or bad, worse and worst… “What we call ‘being in love’ is a glorious state… It helps to make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, and it subordinates (especially at first) our merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust. No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or cold self-centredness… Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.
(B) Feelings fade
It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.
(C) Feelings fade
“…ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love… It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else… It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it”
(d) If you disagree with me, are you doing this based on real experience?
(i) Books and movies often distort the truth
“If you disagree with me, of course, you will say, ‘He knows nothing about it, he is not married.’ You may quite possibly be right. But before you say that, make quite sure that you are judging me by what you really know from your own experience and from watching the lives of your friends, and not by ideas you have derived from novels and films… Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves“
(ii) They tell us that you can be “in love” always and forever
People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change – not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one.
In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest… it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
(iii) They tell us that falling in love is irresistible
“Another notion we get from novels and plays is that ‘falling in love’ is something quite irresistible; something that just happens to one, like measles. And because they believe this, some married people throw up the sponge and give in when they find themselves attracted by a new acquaintance. But I am inclined to think that these irresistible passions are much rarer in real life than in books, at any rate when one is grown up. When we meet someone beautiful and clever and sympathetic, of course we ought, in one sense, to admire and love these good qualities. But is it not very largely in our own choice whether this love shall, or shall not, turn into what we call “being in love”? No doubt, if our minds are full of novels and plays and sentimental songs, and our bodies full of alcohol, we shall turn any love we feel into that kind of love: just as if you have a rut in your path all the rainwater will run into that rut, and if you wear blue spectacles everything you see will turn blue. But that will be our own fault”
(e) Should Christian matrimony and marriage be distinguished?
“…if [Christians] are voters or Members of Parliament, ought [they] 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 every one. 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 the 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 the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not”
4. Headship
“Christian wives promise to obey their husbands. In Christian marriage the man is said to be the ‘head'”
(a) Why should there be a head at all – why not equality?
“The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent. Of course, as long as the husband and wife are agreed, no question of a head need arise; and we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage. But when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming they have done that and still failed to reach agreement What do they do next? They cannot decide by a majority vote, for in a council of two there can be no majority. Surely, only one or other of two things can happen: either they must separate and go their own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote. If marriage is permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of deciding the family policy. You cannot have a permanent association without a constitution”
(b) Why should it be the man?
(i) Is there any very serious wish that it should be the woman?
“… as far as I can see, even a woman who wants to be the head of her own house does not usually admire the same state of things when she finds it going on next door…. I do not think she is even very flattered if anyone mentions the fact of her own “headship.” There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it and despise the husbands whom they rule.
(ii) Foreign policy
“The relations of the family to the outer world-what might be called its foreign policy – must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, almost, in a sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife.
(A) Who would you prefer to deal with?
“If your dog has bitten the child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress?
(B) If you are a married woman…
“Much as you admire your husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick up for his rights and yours against the neighbours as vigorously as you would like? A bit of an Appeaser?”
Discussion Questions
1. On what is Christian marriage based?
2. How does Jack defend the idea that Christian marriage is permanent? What are the main objections presented?
3. How does Jack defend the idea of headship in marriage? How does he respond to the different objections to this? Do you think there are other arguments which can be marshaled?
C.S. Lewis Doodle
Friday Frivolity: Unto ages of ages…
