UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 2)

Question:
Christians are taught to love their neighbours. How, there- lore, can they justify their attitude of supporting the war?

Lewis:
You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself. In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don’t cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to he hanged. You may even think that you ought to go to the Police and own up and be hanged. Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. It seems to me, therefore, that when the worst comes to the worst, if you cannot restrain a man by any method except by trying to kill him, then a Christian must do that. That is my answer. But I may be wrong. It is very difficult to answer, of course.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 48.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 1)

[C.S. Lewis attended a special event on April 18, 1944 at Electric and Musical Industries Ltd., in Hayes, Middlesex in order to answer questions from the factor workers. EMI (as it is known today) also ran the legendary recording studios at Abbey Road, London. Here's the introduction C.S. Lewis gave before answering questions from the factory workers.]

Lewis: 
I have been asked to open with a few words on Christianity and Modern Industry. Now Modern Industry is a subject of which I know nothing at all. But for that very reason it may illustrate what Christianity, in my opinion, does and does not do. Christianity does not replace the technical. When it tells you to feed the hungry it doesn’t give you lessons in cookery. If you want to learn that, you must go to a cook rather than a Christian. If you are not a professional Economist and have no experience of Industry, simply being a Christian won’t give you the answer to industrial problems. My own idea is that modern industry is a radically hopeless system. You can improve wages, hours, conditions, etc., but all that doesn’t cure the deepest trouble: i.e., that numbers of people are kept all their lives doing dull repetition work which gives no full play to their faculties. How that is to be overcome, I do not know. If a single country abandoned the system it would merely fall a prey to the other countries which hadn’t abandoned it. I don’t know the solution: that is not the kind of thing Christianity teaches a person like me. Let’s now carry on with the questions.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 48.

Tyrannous lust

Shakespeare has described the satisfaction of a tyrannous lust as something

Past reason hunted
and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960; Harper Collins: 2002) 16

Jacob loved, Esau "hated"

Consider again, “I loved Jacob and I hated Esau” (Malachi 1:2-3). How is the thing called God’s “hatred” of Esau displayed in the actual story? Not at all as we might expect. There is of course no ground for assuming that Esau made a bad end and was a lost soul; the Old Testament, here as elsewhere, has nothing to say about such matters. And, from all we are told, Esau’s earthly life was, in every ordinary sense, a good deal more blessed than Jacob’s. It is Jacob who has all the disappointments, humiliations, terrors, and bereavements. But he has something which Esau has not. He is a patriarch. He hands on the Hebraic tradition, transmits the vocation and the blessing, becomes an ancestor of Our Lord. The “loving” of Jacob seems to mean the acceptance of Jacob for a high (and painful) vocation; the “hating” of Esau, his rejection. He is “turned down,” fails to “make the grade,” is found useless for the purpose. So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God. Heaven knows, it will seem to them sufficiently like hatred. We must not act on the pity we feel; we must be blind to tears and deaf to pleadings.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960; Harcourt Brace: 1991) 129.

About political sermons...

Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory.


C.S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics" (1945) included in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1970) 94.

Priests crossing the line

And here at the outset I must deal with an unpleasant business. It seems to the layman that in the Church of England we often hear from our priests doctrine which is not Anglican Christianity. It may depart from Anglican Christianity in either of two ways: (1) It may be so ‘broad’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘modern’ that it in fact excludes any real Supernaturalism and thus ceases to be Christian at all. (2) It may, on the other hand, be Roman. It is not, of course, for me to define to you what Anglican Christianity is—I am your pupil, not your teacher. But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease either to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priests think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men.

C.S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics" (1945) included in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1970) 89-90. This paper was read to an assembly of Anglican priests and youth leaders at the ‘Carmarthen Conference for Youth Leaders and Junior ‘clergy’ of the Church in Wales at Carmarthen.

The virtue (or vice) of friendship

Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse. 
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960; Harcourt Brace: 1991) 80.