A Mind That Grasped Both Heaven and Hell

"If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next," he wrote in "Mere Christianity," one of his best-known works. "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."

Other works of Lewis suggest he believed (as I do) that the Christians who did the "most" (that is, who obeyed most perfectly the will of God) are unlikely to find their works chronicled in the annals of human-written history. As celebrated as Mother Teresa is, Lewis would, I think, be willing to grant the existence of tens of thousands if not millions of everyday Christians known only to God who accomplished as much if not more. Worldly celebrity is not always a good barometer of relative worth or accomplishment in spiritual matters. In the parable of the feast, the man invited to take a seat closer to the head of the table is just as shocked as the man whose place he is invited to take.

The distinction is important because Christians who take to heart too readily the suggestion that those who do the visible and celebrated most to feed the poor, lift the weak, visit the sick etc are soon and strongly tempted to view confiscatory government as the prime engine for getting this done. So deceived, they end up creating more misery than they relieve.

As wonderful as Lewis's wisdom is, he did not well address the effect that government has on the calculus of righteousness. Perhaps that wasn't his job. Unfortunately, liberals and progressives are only too willing and able to construe his works as justifying if not requiring a smothering nanny government of enforced "good works."

"..Lewis writes: "What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument." The Christians, Lewis argued, were right: the mystery of evil was rooted in the tragedy of human nature. Pride, and the poisoned conscience it created, functioned as the engine of the world's woes. Unchallenged, it led to a "ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the mark of Hell."

Many modern liberals dismiss Lewis's concept of the diabolical as a "medieval" superstition. Yet many religious conservatives seem to make evil the brainchild of God himself. For them, all individual and social sin — including the terror of Sept. 11 — is the perfect will of a Divine Judge (as the Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed at the time). Lewis disagreed: Evil is always man's doing, yet it is never his destiny. The power of choice makes evil possible, but it's also "the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."
..."

There's a problem here. The writer seems to imply that Lewis did not believe in the Devil. My reading of the Perlandra is that Ransom was possessed by the Devil. He stood as the Temptor in the playing out of the story of temptation in the Garden on the planet of Perelandra. The 'corruption itself' was the Devil.

The Screwtape Letters are certainly about the devil and demons.

I suspect the writer is showing his own theological bias in this regard.

-- Joe

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.