"Mere Christianity"

This reading includes the first four chapters of Lewis's book "Mere Christianity" where he establishes the fact that there is moral standard, a Law of Human Nature. He not only proves that there is, but he goes on to show why this is true using many examples that are easy to understand. At one point he talks about deciphering between two different instincts that we have in many situations. He believes "you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys". This is just one of the great examples he uses to illustrate what he is proving. It is with the use of intelligent analogies, such is this one that Lewis builds from the ground up, the fundamentals of the Law of Nature in a way that is seemingly impossible to argue against.

Since everything that Lewis writes in these first chapters is so hard to disagree with, I just want to discuss something I noticed as I was reading. I noticed that because of our sinful nature it is often our desire to reject that there is a Moral Law - simply because we do not want to believe that a specific thing about it wrong. What I mean is that even if we know within our conscience that there is a Moral Law, if there arises something that we do not want to believe, we cannot make an exception for the laws, because if one law is wrong, they all must be wrong. So, our only option left is to deny altogether that there is a Moral Law. It is true that "Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson". This is an example proving that some people deny a real Right and Wrong, even though they know in their hearts that there is, because they know when something is 'not fair' - or in other words 'wrong'. Instead of admitting that there is absolute truth, we tend to reject it and believe only what we want to believe because of our selfish nature. It's almost like saying 'I don't believe that I have to get out of bed tomorrow' when the truth is that you do have to get out of bed whether you believe it or not.

This reminds me once again of 'Meditation in a Toolshed'. It is so important to look at everything as well as look along everything. This is how the ultimate truth is determined after all. For instance, some people believe that there is no hell, and some believe that there is. Either there is a hell or there isn't - and one of the 'beliefs' is wrong. So, instead of fighting over who's belief is right, it is essential to look at and along and at the issue in order to determine what the real Right and Wrong are, and where the ultimate truth lies.