Now we have come to the close of the section on Christian behavior.  In the final two chapters of this section, Lewis treats the virtue of faith on two different levels.  The first is simply belief in a set of statements about the world, specifically those statements which Christianity makes about the world.

At first blush, this does not appear to be much of a virtue at all.  The assumption is that people are rational beings who will go on believing something until they find some compelling reason to not believe it anymore and to believe something else in its place.  But the truth is that we are not creatures ruled by reason; this is seen in the patient who knows the power of anesthetics but fears that the doctors will cut him up before he is properly under, or the woman who is afraid to drive on a high bridge over a river even though she knows it to be perfectly safe.  Thus the virtue of faith at this level lies not so much in accepting a certain set of propositions, but in holding on to what reason has accepted in spite of the moods and feelings that rise up against it.

In this chapter Lewis talks about the virtue of hope.  This is chiefly a continual looking forward to the next world.  Lewis sums it up with another of the most well-known quotes from this book:  “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”:  aim at earth and you will get neither.”

Much of the good that has been done in this world has been done by Christians who had the hope of heaven as the primary focus of their lives.

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.  The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Earlier Lewis talked about the cardinal virtues:  prudence, temperance, justice, and courage.  Now Lewis turns to the theological virtues:  faith, hope, and charity.  In this chapter Lewis talks about charity.

One of the greatest misconceptions which most people have about charity is that is simply giving to the poor–that is, what most would call “charitable giving” or “almsgiving”.  While this is one of the most obvious manifestations of charity, it is not charity and not to be confused with charity.

Another misconception is that charity consists of the natural liking or affection which we feel toward certain people in our lives.  This is not charity, though it is a help toward charity.  After all, it is a whole lot easier to be charitable toward people we like than toward people we don’t like.  The only time this gets to be a problem is if our natural liking for one person causes us to be uncharitable toward another, or if it causes us to indulge that person in ways that are not good for him or her in the long run (such as the mother who spoils her child rotten, or the wife who enables her husband’s alcoholic behavior).

Though natural liking is a help to charity, it is not necessary.  If you do not like a person, don’t sit around trying to make yourself like him or her.  Just act as if you did.  Eventually your feelings will catch up with your actions; if you are charitable toward people you do not like, eventually you will find yourself liking them a little more.

Some Christian writers use the term charity to refer to God’s love for us or our love for God.  But what if you don’t love God?  Same as before–act as if you did.

Lewis closes out this chapter with a beautiful description of how God’s love for us is a much safer thing to talk about than our love for Him.

On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.  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.

 

In the chapter on sexual morality, Lewis came to the end and warned that as much as Christians may talk about sexual morality and as important as it may seem to them, that is really not the center of Christian morality.  Well, in this chapter we come to the center.

There is one vice which only Christians recognize as a vice.  Hardly anyone outside of Christianity recognizes this vice in themselves, yet hardly anyone fails to recognize this vice in other people and hardly anyone outside of Christianity is willing to tolerate it in other people.  This would be the vice of pride or self-conceit.

This was the hardest chapter of the entire book for me the first time I read it, because at that time I did not think myself particularly proud, and yet at the end I was forced to admit that I was probably very proud indeed.  Not an admission that I wanted to make at all.  This is probably still true of me to a certain extent; those of you who know me well can feel free to draw your own conclusions about that.

In an earlier chapter Lewis said that chastity was the most unpopular of all the Christian virtues.  In this chapter he pulls a big fat “PSYCHE!!!!!” and says that the most unpopular virtue is actually the virtue of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is something which sounds like a lovely idea to a great many of us–that is, until we actually have something to forgive.  Because to forgive someone who has done us wrong, it seems as if we are actually letting them off for nothing.  And that goes squarely against everything we know (or think we know) about justice.  Yet there it is, right smack in the middle of everything we know and believe as Christians:  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us”.  And there is nothing in all of Christian teaching or belief to indicate that forgiveness is offered to us on any other terms.

So what do we do with this?

Our very own Steve Fee has cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Christian chart.  His song “All Because of Jesus” is at No. 8 this week after peaking at No. 7 last week.  Check it out for yourself.

Steve, if you should ever venture into this neck of the blogosphere, congratulations and keep up the good work.

Normally I wait until July or August to come out with my Georgia football predictions for the coming season.  But this year, ever since the end of the 2007 season, all the talk around here has been about Georgia winning the national championship this year.  As the price of gas has escalated over the last few months, so has the intensity and fervor of the talk coming from Georgia fans who are fully expectant of a national championship this year.  And this is only expected to continue through the remaining months between now and the start of football season.  So I feel that now is just as good a time as any to bust out the old bulldog tooth and see what it has to say about Georgia’s upcoming season.

Now before we begin, let me say this:  Georgia’s football team this year is certainly good enough to contend for a national championship.  But until the powers-that-be in the world of college football decide to scrap this BCS monstrosity that we are currently forced to live with and replace it with a playoff or my contract bridge-style bidding system, being good enough to contend for a national championship doesn’t count for jack s–t.

It also takes luck.

Lots of luck.

Just ask LSU.

You see, last year LSU had what was arguably the best team in the country, and the preseason No. 1 ranking to back up that assessment.  But if not for a whole lot of luck, they would never have had the opportunity to show it in the BCS championship game.  Key injuries hurt them down the stretch, and they suffered two debilitating losses as a result.  After the loss to Arkansas, which took place in LSU’s final regular season game, LSU went so far down in the polls that no one gave them a snowball’s chance in hell of playing for the national championship.  But with a whole lot of luck–and a whole lot of love from ESPN–LSU leapfrogged about half of Division 1-A after winning the SEC championship and wound up playing Ohio State for the national championship, a game which they went on to win easily after having a whole month to get everyone healthy again.

So we know that Georgia is good enough to contend for the national championship.

That leads us to the first–and only–burning question:  Will Georgia win the national championship in 2008?

I would love to see some police officer actually enforce this.  I can just see it now:

“But officer, I was only–”

“Dude, you were doing 16 in a 14 mph zone.  Now put your hands up and get out of the car, cause we’re going down to the police station.”

In the previous chapter Lewis talked about the negative side of human sexuality and what is wrong with our sexual appetite.  In this chapter Lewis looks at the positive expression of human sexuality, which is a fully committed marriage relationship between a man and a woman.  This relationship, in which one man is joined to one woman on all levels, not just the sexual level but totally combined, is the proper expression of human sexuality.  It is not the sexual act itself which is sinful when one engages in sex outside of marriage, rather it is the fact that it takes one kind of union (sexual) and attempts to wrench it completely apart from all the other kinds of union which are supposed to be a part of any marriage relationship.

Lewis notes the role of chastity in Christian marriage, and then noting that it is also about justice.  Keeping one’s promises is a huge part of justice, and it is an integral part of any Christian marriage because the marriage is built upon the promise by both spouses to be faithful to each other until death.  Here Lewis expresses the rather controversial view that if people do not believe in marriage we should just allow them to live together unmarried:

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.

Lewis goes on to draw the distinction between love and “being in love”.  So much of our culture is saturated with propaganda from TV, movies, and music which sends the message that this state of “being in love” is the ideal state for any relationship or marriage, and that if you don’t have it in your marriage then you should get out and find another relationship where you do have this feeling.

Here Lewis gets into the virtue of chastity, which he calls the most unpopular of all the Christian virtues.  He begins by making the statement that chastity is not to be confused with propriety.  Chastity is always a constant, but social standards of propriety are always subject to change and indeed they do vary depending on place and time.  For example, note that the standards of propriety held in sub-Saharan Africa and Victorian England are wildly different, as are the standards held in Buckhead and Afghanistan.  With that, note that a breach of social standards of propriety is an offense against chastity only if it is deliberately calculated to evoke lust.  Otherwise, it is merely bad manners.

Lewis offers the opinion that strict social standards of propriety are no real help to chastity, and that the relaxing of standards which was happening in his day, and in ours as well, is a good thing.  The problem is that because of this there are two competing standards held by older people and younger people.  Older people denounce younger people who do not accept their standard as lewd and immodest, while younger people denounce older people who do not accept their standard as prudes and Puritans.  A real desire to believe the best about everyone else and to make others as comfortable as possible will go a long way toward solving these problems.

There are two big ideas from this chapter:  Christians are not against sex, but must proclaim that the human appetite for sex has gone wrong.  The other is that perfect Christian chastity is an impossible goal, and those who try and fail at it must be forgiven and restored.