Insufficient Christianity: 5:2

Lewis continues chapter five of Mere Christianity…

And we have not yet got as far as a personal God–only as far as a power, behind the Moral Law, and more like a mind than it is like anything else.

To sum up Lewis’ points thus far.

1.    god made the universe happen
2.    god gave us morals
3.    god is actually really scary and not nice to people

Lewis goes on to assume that the thing that produced 1, 2 and 3 is a “mind” or sorts. Why? Why not “minds”? There is no reason to assume that 1, 2 and 3 come from a single mind – this could have all come about as a result of the meddling of ten eternal beings working at an eternal shop of infinity. They could be a group of new hires proving their worth during their probationary period by creating a prototype universe. There is no reason to assume, even if you accept that the universe and moral laws came from somewhere outside the universe, that we know anything at all about the thing(s) that are outside the universe. It is a wholly unjustified premise that only comes about because Lewis is not engaging in skepticism in which he lets logic and reasoning lead where it may. His logic and reasoning clearly has a goal and thus falls squarely in the category of “rationalization” – and you know that one can rationalize anything one wants if one tries hard enough. Let’s move on…

But it may still be very unlike a Person.. If it is pure impersonal mind, there may be no sense in asking it to make allowances for you or let you off, just as there is no sense in asking the multiplication table to let you off when you do your sums wrong. You are bound to get the wrong answer. And it is no use either saying that if there is a God of that sort–an impersonal absolute goodness–then you do not like Him and are not going to bother about Him. For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with his disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation.

What Lewis is saying here is that since humans ask god for things, claim that we don’t like god, that god must be a personal god. He is right – it doesn’t make sense for people to ask an impersonal god for things, much like it doesn’t make sense to ask a doorknob to save your marriage. I think that Lewis intends for the reader of this paragraph to think, “Oh! I ask god to forgive me, so he clearly must not be an impersonal force, because otherwise my asking makes no sense. So god must be a personal god”. Of course, you could also use the same reasoning to conclude that the doorknob is not an inanimate object, but a personal force.

You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behaviour, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do.

A lot of people wonder how a being composed of absolute good can create beings that are so imperfect it hates most of what they do.

This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless.

Why? I hear this all the time from people and do not understand how they can come to the conclusion that unless there is an absolute good, all the good we do is pointless. It just does not follow. It seems to assume, perhaps, that our eventual goal is to get as close to absolute goodness as possible. If we build a sandcastle, is our goal to build a cool sandcastle or to get closer and closer to the ultimate absolute sandcastle?

I think that this is a fundamental flaw in thinking – assuming there is a “perfect” or “absolute” version of abstract concepts like “goodness” or “love”. This is another kind of reification – assuming that an abstract concept (goodness) must possess a certain abstract property (perfection). This is essentially a version of Plato’s Theory of Forms.

But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we must need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger -according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

This is definitely a “religious jaw”.