Social Morality by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 12, Mere Christianity, Bk 3, Chapter 3)
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- C.S. Lewis here addresses all the subjects you shouldn’t discuss in polite conversation, if you want to remain friends - Christianity, politics & money! Study notes in the video description below...
You can find the book here: www.amazon.com/Mere-Christiani...
(0:49) Nietzscheism is essentially self-worship or the worship of strength, talent & ambition. In the Bible, while we “reap what you sow” in terms of hard work, we have got to sow in the right field and build on the right foundation (God's will). We can't do anything of real consequence without God. Mere strength or mental determination is not nearly enough. “Again I saw that under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but proper time and events happen to them all” (Ecc. 9.11). No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength (Psalm 33:16). “You (God) rescue the poor from those too strong for them” (Ps. 35.10) and only “the name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale [but it is not unscalable]” (Ps. 18.10-11). " 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these, I delight' says the LORD" (biblehub.com/jeremiah/9-23.htm).
(4:37) Two scriptures to keep in mind regarding work: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest - and your poverty will come upon you, like a thief or vagabond" ( biblehub.com/proverbs/24-33.htm ). And there is also a spiritual kind of laziness (not spending time in God's company) that can destroy all. But see also the Parable of the Labourers where willing workers were ready, but no paid work was available to them ( biblehub.com/matthew/20-7.htm ).
(4:52) Lewis talks about "the production of objects [or services] which are rotten in quality and which, even if they were good in quality, would not be worth producing” in his essay 'Good Work and Good Works'.
(5:03) “side” (informal British) - a boastful/proud attitude, or display intended to impress others.
(5:27) biblehub.com/ephesians/5-33.htm The word “love” or "cherish" here is the greek word agape. The word for prize means to “honour” or “value, reverence, revere, or fear”, even to “be amazed” (i.e. be amazed at the things he does, which you can’t or don’t want to do).
(7:14) Martin Luther interpreted Bible passages about usury, especially those that condemned charging interest to the poor, as calls to act generously. Usurers commit a sin, Luther wrote, only when their actions violate the do-unto-others principle - that is, only if ‘they do not want to be treated this way in return by others’. This reciprocity meant merchants & wealthy families were allowed to charge each other interest. Luther asked Christians to offer the needy charity rather than loans - but he still accepted interest rates under 5%.
One interesting little story out of history is John Calvin, the reformer. The Catholic Church had said on the basis of biblical teachings, that you can't lend money to someone charging interest - that was called “usury”, because the poor would borrow money & be charged high interest & would end up as slaves as happens today throughout Africa & Asia still. So the Catholic Church said no interest should be charged on money to anyone Christian rich or poor. John Calvin the Reformer, reasoned that if I owned a piece of land worth this many dollars, I can rent it out - so why can't I take this same amount of money & rent the money out? Perhaps, if it's to a poor person for food, money should be lent at no interest, but if it's to someone who wants to start a business, why can't I rent money out like I can rent out land?
The problem was how do you define how much interest you would charge? And this is the point that Plato was making, the system’s not going to work because of human selfishness. Like Luther, Calvin, said, "I've got an answer". He said that you define the amount of interest charged by the Golden Rule that we all know at heart - 'Do to others as you would have them do to you' - & this idea released the lending of money & actually enabled a whole lot of capitalistic investment, which has produced wealth for individuals and a better standard of living for the poor throughout society.
(10:17) See the movie 'Shadowlands' by the BBC available on UA-cam.
The original broadcast had the following words italicised which add to understanding (shown in CAPS): “The real job of every teacher is to keep on bringing us BACK...to the same old principles.
Never stop making these, man! They breathe life into well worn texts.
As a Christian, I can honestly say that I think you are doing God's work with these videos, which is just about the highest praise a Christian can give.
The charity part is really challenging... To give so much, that you sometimes have to abstain from things you wanted for yourself, that is very unfamiliar to say the least... But... most likely not wrong.
“The longest way around is the shortest way home.”
Glad to see you are doing more of these again. C.S.L. had a very unique way of both making you uncomfortable and encouraging you at the same time.
More from C.S. Lewis on Collectivism vs Individualism:
“The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to *facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude* . To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit. Collective activities are, of course, necessary; but this is the end to which they are necessary.
"Great sacrifices of this private happiness by those who have it may be necessary in order that it may be more widely distributed. [As in WWII] All may have to be a little hungry in order that none may starve. But do not let us mistake necessary evils for good. The mistake is easily made. Fruit has to be tinned if it is to be transported, and has to lose thereby some of its good qualities. But one meets people who have learned actually to prefer the tinned fruit to the fresh. A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion: to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind - if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else - then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease. There is, in fact, a fatal tendency in all human activities for the means to encroach upon the very ends which they were intended to serve...It does not, unfortunately, always follow that the encroaching means can be dispensed with. I think it probable that the collectivism of our life is necessary and will increase; and I think that our only safeguard against its deathly properties is in a Christian life; for we were promised that we could handle serpents and drink deadly things and yet live" ('Membership').
"To the Materialist [atheist] things like nations, classes, civilisations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day. The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can't both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn't fit the real universe. Consequently, with the best will in the world, he will be helping his fellow creatures to their destruction" ('Man or Rabbit').
“Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body-different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else's troubles because they are "no business of yours," remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself, you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist." ('Mere Christianity', Two notes).
“Where the tide flows towards increasing State control, Christianity, with its claims in one way personal and in the other way ecumenical [non-denominational] and both ways antithetical [opposite] to omnicompetent government, must always in fact (though not for a long time yet in words) be treated as an enemy. Like learning, like the family, like any ancient and liberal profession, like the common law, it gives the individual a standing ground against the State. Hence Rousseau, the father of the totalitarians [collectivists], said wisely enough, from his own point of view, of Christianity, ‘Je ne connais rien de plus contraire à l'esprit social’ ( I know nothing more opposed to the social[ist] spirit).” ('On the Transmission of Christianity', 1946).
A political “party must either confine itself to stating what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, or else it must go further and select from among the lawful means those which it deems possible and efficacious and give to these its practical support. If it chooses the first alternative, it will not be a political party. Nearly all parties agree in professing ends which we admit to be desirable - security, a living wage, and the best adjustment between the claims of order and freedom. What distinguishes one party from another is the championship of means. We do not dispute whether the citizens are to be made happy, but whether an egalitarian or a hierarchical State, whether capitalism or socialism, whether despotism or democracy, is most likely to make them so...” ('Meditation On The Third Commandment - You shall not take the Lord your God’s name in vain')
“A great many popular blue-prints for a Christian society are merely what the Elizabethans called "eggs in moonshine" because they assume that the whole society is Christian or that the Christians are in control. This is not so in most contemporary States. Even if it were, our rulers would still be fallen men, and, therefore, neither very wise nor very good. As it is, they usually are unbelievers. And since wisdom and virtue are not the only or the commonest qualifications for a place in the government, they will not often be even the best unbelievers. The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish” ('The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment').
More notes in the video description above.
Oh very interesting...
Thanks for adding this 👍
I love that essay. It's like soothing aloe on mental sunburn.
"only quacks"
*Looks over at Nietzsche*
Simply perfect. This has arrived right on time to answer a prayer request. What a blessing!
To suggest the beginning of an answer to the question Lewis didn't try to, I think the key point in terms of lending for interest is to lend only to people and at amounts such that being able to pay it back is feasible. It is difficult for me to see anything wrong with a bank providing a loan to someone with a steady and sizable income so that they may purchase a home, even at some reasonable level of interest. One might argue that one of the key differences between our modern world and the ancient cultures who reviled loans is the fact that the Western world is so pervasively wealthy that we barely understand what real poverty is like. It is, however, wrong to deny the borrower leniency if they fall upon difficult times through no fault of their own, and that is an area at which our economic system (with its gargantuan, impersonal businesses) fails.
As a real world example of the principle in our modern world, we can blame the 2008 financial crisis directly on violating the principle of usury: loans were given for amounts and at rates that the banks _knew_ the borrowers could not afford. However, we can and should note that they did not do so alone: activists pressured them to do so with threats of lawsuits accusing them of racism, and government enabled them by buying up many of the loans through its programs. That does not mean we should ignore the contribution of personal greed to the problem, but neither should we ignore the external forces that drove them toward it as well.
Amazing how quickly usury (government-sponsored enterprises lending large amounts of money to low-income homebuyers at a floating rate) could undermine the whole world's financial system! Check out the video description notes above for more of the positive side of the issue.
The reference to his marriage to Joy Gresham (nee Davidman) around 10:20 was a nice touch.
These are simply amazing! I absolutely can not get enough of C.S. Lewis, and the way these videos are put together makes them not only insightful but yet very entertaining as well. I hope you continue to make many more!
My son has started sending me these...
I love them!
Thank you for your labor of love in producing these.
Im a new subscriber.
Thank you for yet another wonderful, inspiring exposé of CS Lewis work..
Absolutely excited to watch this
Best channel on UA-cam by far.
Wow. Thank you for this animation of articulation. 💕
I love that C.S. Lewis quoted the great Samuel Johnson, another great moral intellectual.
Your work is a real blessing. Thank you so much 🥰
Thank you for uploading. Always a pleasure and good food for thought!
Best channel on UA-cam
So grateful for these. Thank you🙏🏾
What an exceptional work!! THANK YOU!!! May.God bless you 🙏🏻
brilliant stuff honestly and yet so simple to comprehend
I really enjoy these thank you
Beautiful, simply and absolutely beautiful.
I hope you draw these until you are black in the face :)
Haha. Black or blue? I checked a first edition copy of the broadcast talks to double-check that phrase, and it did not say "blue in the face". I will have to check Lewis' broadcast notes at the BBC archives to be sure. I suspect it might be a copyist error that carried through.
(3:26) "Our business [as Pastors] is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow Hebrews - 13.8) in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Thus, for example, he may think about the Beveridge Report (The 1942 'Beveridge Report' was the plan for the present Social Security system in Britain) and talk about 'the coming of the Kingdom (of God)'. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.
This raises the question of Theology and Politics. The nearest I can get to a settlement of the frontier problem between them is this: - that Theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while Politics teaches what means are effective. Thus Theology tells us that every man ought to have a decent wage. Politics tells by what means this is likely to be attained. Theology tells us which of these means are consistent with justice and charity. On the political question guidance comes not from Revelation but from natural prudence, knowledge of complicated facts and ripe experience. If we have these qualifications we may, of course, state our political opinions: but then we must make it quite clear that we are giving our personal judgement and have no command from the Lord. Not many priests have these qualifications. Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory [pastor's residence]" (Christian Apologetics).
Really pulled the punches when it came to usury. Greed is so normalized even cs lewis has to defer to an economist
Notes on this in the video description above. There is an interpretational difference here - most readings claim the biblical prohibition was about lending money at interest *to the poor* , not any lending at interest.