TOM MAY: What happens when morals and values are absent? – Evening News and Tribune

C.S. Lewis wrote several fiction and non-fiction books that are still enjoyed by readers today, almost 50 years since his passing. His books serve as a commentary with insight into culture, humanity and the place of faith. His writings continue to deserve our attention as society continues to shift direction, struggling for meaning and fulfillment.

His book, The Abolition of Man, continues to be one of his most challenging works. Many literary and theological scholars consider it his most difficult book. The book isnt lengthy, but its argument is profound. Lewis perceived that our institutions of education and the influences of culture walked arm-in-arm with policies that were removing our ability to make moral judgments and hold to virtue.

Breakpoint.org, the website for the Colson Center promoting a Christian worldview, has focused several articles on the book during this past month. John Stonestreet, president of the Center, says the book is a must-read especially in our cultural moment. Lewis concern for the shifts in culture grew from his observation that without morality, humans would become less human.

Abolition was written by Lewis in 1943. The book carries the subtitle, Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools. The book started as a series of lectures that Lewis delivered in England.

The foundation of the concerns of Lewis centered upon how truth is taught in culture. Ultimately a shift in understanding began with the questioning of absolute truth to truth that is appropriate and relevant for the individual. The unspoken premise of no absolute truth is then reinforced through the teaching of subjective truth as opposed to objective truth. Subjective truth depends upon the individuals perspective and their emotional reaction to it.

Shifting away from objective truth carries important implications. Lets think about a headline this past week that was actually developing during Lewis time, but started even 50 years prior.

On Oct. 20, the NPR website announced that scientists had attached a pigs kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work. The procedure was only a temporary solution, but it was a step in a process that had taken several decades to achieve. Surgeons in New York performed the operation in which the organ functioned normally for 54 hours. Speculation rises that the accomplishment may open a door to a new supply of needed organs.

There was a time when such a headline would have stirred debate and discussion about the dangers involved in genetic engineering. Who will regulate the decisions involved in such a life-changing technology? Are there psychological issues involved in combining organs from two different beings a human and an animal? Are there spiritual or religious issues that are involved in such science? Several years ago, we would have discussed such a transplant.

But it wasnt too long ago that such a headline would have appalled its readers. Books like H.G. Wells The Island of Doctor Moreau and George Orwells 1984 and Animal Farm shocked people with tales of genetic engineering, human cloning and manipulation of behavior. A hundred years ago, we would not have even discussed this issue because it belonged to the realm of science fiction, not the world that we live in.

Today, the headline spurs a different type of debate. Less than a day later, PETA issued a statement urging humans to fix the organ shortage and not use pigs. Pigs arent spare parts and should never be used as such just because humans are too self-centered to donate their bodies to patients desperate for organ transplants. Today, our concern is for the pigs.

A similar pattern could be traced around dozens of topics. What was morally appalling decades ago doesnt even register a blip on the radar of ethics today.

Lewis was almost prophetic with his arguments. He believed that relativism teaching that there are no absolute, objective truths would lead to moral decay and the absence of virtue in culture. With no universal moral code, we become less than human. We are intelligent men who behave like animals. Lewis uses the phrase we are men without chests.

Lewis borrows the symbolism from the philosopher Plato. The Greeks saw the head as the home of the intellect. Meanwhile, the belly housed the raw passions and appetite. The chest formed virtue, a trained blend between the reason of the mind and the emotion of the heart. According to Plato, the head rules the belly through the chest.

Modern education, according to Lewis, produced men without chests demanding correct behavior from people who lacked values and virtue.

Lewis warns of the dangers of a culture that educates people with no standard for morals and values. We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

Lewis concludes in this manner: It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal A persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honor, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment.

Andrew Wilson put it like this: Without sentiment we may appear intellectual, but it will be a mirage; our heads will look larger, but only because our chests are so small.

The Christians answer to a culture with no virtue? Speak the truth with love.

The C.S. Lewis Institute website reflects: The apostle Paul writes The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5 ESV). If followers of Christ live as people with chests strong hearts filled with Gods truth the world will take notice.

Tom May is a freelance writer who has held paid and volunteer ministry positions at several churches in the tri-state area. Reach him at tgmay001@gmail.com.

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TOM MAY: What happens when morals and values are absent? - Evening News and Tribune