MereChristianity: Book III. Christian Behaviour 3. Social Morality -C.S.Lewis

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3. Social Morality

 

 

 

     The first  thing to get clear about Christian morality  between man and

man is that in this department Christ did  not come to preach  any brand new

morality.  The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by)

is  a summing  up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.

Really great moral teachers  never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks

and  cranks  who do that. As  Dr. Johnson  said, "People need to be reminded

more often  than they  need  to be  instructed." The real job of every moral

teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after  time,  to the old simple

principles  which we  are all so anxious not to see; like bringing  a  horse

back and back to the fence it has refused to jump  or bringing a  child back

and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.


     The second thing  to get clear is that  Christianity has not, and  does

not profess to have, a detailed political programme  for applying "Do as you

would be done by" to  a particular society at a particular moment. It  could

not have. It is meant for all  men at all times and the particular programme

which suited one place or time would not suit another. And,  anyhow, that is

not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry it does not

give  you lessons in cookery. When it  tells you  to  read the Scriptures it

does  not give you lessons  in Hebrew and Greek, or even in English grammar.

It was never  intended to replace or supersede the  ordinary human  arts and

sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs,

and a source of energy which will give them all  new life, if only they will

put themselves at its disposal.


     People say, "The Church ought to give us a  lead." That is true if they

mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the

Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And  when

they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some

Christians- those who happen to have the right talents- should be economists

and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should  be  Christians,

and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to

putting "Do as  you would be done by" into action. If  that happened, and if

we  others were really ready to take it, then  we should  find the Christian

solution for our own social problems pretty quickly.  But,  of  course, when

they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to

put  out  a  political  programme.  That  is  silly.  The clergy  are  those

particular people within the whole Church  who have  been  specially trained

and set aside to look after what concerns us as  creatures who  are going to

live for ever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for  which

they  have not been trained. The job  is  really on us, on the  laymen.  The

application of Christian  principles,  say, to  trade unionism or education,

must come from Christian trade unionists  and Christian schoolmasters:  just

as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and  dramatists  -not

from  the bench of bishops  getting together  and trying  to write plays and

novels in their spare time.


     All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a

pretty clear  hint of what a  fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps

it gives  us  more than we  can  take. It tells us  that there  are to be no

passengers  or parasites: if  man does not work, he ought not to  eat. Every

one is to work with his own hands, and what  is more, every one's work is to

produce something good: there will be no manufacture  of silly  luxuries and

then  of sillier advertisements  to persuade us to buy them. And there is to

be no "swank" or "side," no putting  on  airs. To that  extent  a  Christian

society would  be what  we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always

insisting on obedience-obedience (and outward marks  of respect) from all of

us  to properly appointed magistrates, from  children to parents, and  (I am

afraid this is going  to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly,

it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding

worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the

New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."


     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 that

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 ways, and each  of us

wants to make out that his own modification 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 they are

fighting for Christianity.


     Now another  point.  There is one  bit of  advice given to  us  by  the

ancient heathen Greeks,  and  by the Jews in  the Old Testament, and  by the

great Christian  teachers of  the  Middle  Ages, which  the  modern economic

system has  completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money

at  interest: and lending money at  interest-what we call  investment-is the

basis of  our  whole system. Now it may  not  absolutely  follow that we are

wrong.  Some  people say that  when  Moses and Aristotle and the  Christians

agreed in forbidding interest (or "usury" as they called it), they could not

foresee the  joint  stock  company,  and were  only dunking of  the  private

moneylender,  and that, therefore,  we need not bother about what they said.

That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do

not know whether the investment system is  responsible for the state  we are

in  or  not This is where we  want the Christian economist But I should  not

have been honest if I  had not  told you that three  great civilisations had

agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which

we have based our whole life.


     One more  point and I am done.  In the passage where the  New Testament

says  that every one must work, it gives  as  a reason "in order that he may

have something to give to those in need." Charity-giving  to the poor-is  an

essential part  of Christian morality: in the  frightening  parable  of  the

sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some

people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of

giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no

poor to  give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce

that kind of society. But if anyone  thinks that, as a consequence,  you can

stop  giving in the meantime, then he has  parted company with all Christian

morality.  I do not believe one can  settle how much we ought to  give. I am

afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words,

if our expenditure  on comforts, luxuries, amusements,  etc,  is  up to  the

standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably

giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I

should say they are too small There ought  to be things we should like to do

and  cannot  do  because  our charitable  expenditure  excludes them.  I  am

speaking now of "charities" in the common  way. Particular cases of distress

among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it

were, forces upon your notice, may demand  much more: even to the  crippling

and endangering of  your  own position. For many of us the great obstacle to

charity lies not in  our luxurious living  or desire for more money, but  in

our fear-fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a  temptation.

Sometimes our  pride also hinders our charity; we are  tempted to spend more

than we ought  on the showy forms  of generosity (tipping, hospitality)  and

less than we ought on those who really need our help.


     And now, before  I end, I am going to venture on a guess as to how this

section  has  affected any who have  read it My guess is that there are some

Leftist people among them who are very angry that it has not gone further in

that direction, and some people of an opposite sort who  are  angry  because

they think  it has gone much too far. If so, that brings us right up against

the  real snag in all this drawing up of blueprints for a Christian society.

Most of us are not really approaching  the subject in order to find out what

Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from

Christianity  for  the  views of our own  party. We are looking for  an ally

where we are offered either a Master  or-a Judge. I am just the same.  There

are bits in this section that I wanted to leave out. And that is why nothing

whatever  is  going  to come of such talks unless we  go a  much longer  way

round.  A Christian  society  is not going to arrive until most of us really

want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian.  I

may repeat "Do as you would be done by"  till I am black in the  face, but I

cannot really carry it out till I love  my neighbour as myself: and I cannot

learn to love my  neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot

learn to love God except by learning  to obey Him. And so,  as I warned you,

we are driven on to  something more inward -driven on from social matters to

religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home.