Temptation

"We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it..."
- C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity

A few thoughts

I have once again begun receiving pressure from "The PW" to add a new post. It's not that I feel it necessary to wait for a request for a new post every time, it's just that I choose to spend my time doing so many other things instead of writing new blog entries. But anyway, here's your new post, Michelle. =)

I don't know if I really have a "typical" form that I follow in my postings, but if there were such a thing, I am going to depart from it for a moment of reflection. I've been reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis lately, and I want to share a passage from this book that relates to some thoughts I've been having for a while now regarding the state of our country, and politics and Christianity in general. I don't know if I'll be able to share my own thoughts, but for now I think the thoughts of Mr. Lewis will suffice. I'd be interested to know what you all out there in blogosphere think about this topic of the relationship between Christianity and the advancement of a political system or party. My own opinions are not well formed, but there is one thing that consistently makes me uncomfortable and sick to my stomach, and that is the division that arises among self-proclaimed Christians because of their differing political opinions. I think Mr. Lewis nails this one on the head.

Mere Christianity: Book 3: Christian Behavior; Chapter 3: Social Morality

Speaking of a "fully Christian society"...

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....
And now, before I end, I am going to venture on a guess as to how this section (of the book) 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.

*note: C.S. Lewis was British and he wrote these words in 1943.