S1E20 – MC B3C7 – “Forgiveness”

Lewis had previously said that he thought chastity was the most unpopular thing in Christianity. In today’s episode, he changes his mind, suggesting that it is, in fact, forgiveness.

S1E20: Mere Christianity: “Forgiveness” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

–

Toast

• The Drink-of-the-week was another scotch. Today Matt and David were drinking Ron Swanson‘s favourite, Lagavulin 16.

Quote-of-the-Week

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Discussion

01. “Is Forgiveness Popular?”

• In a previous episode, we said that Lewis thought the most unpopular aspect of Christianity was chastity. In this episode, he amends his answer. He thinks the most unpopular element is forgiveness.
• Forgiveness is inextricably linked to the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by.

I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• David quoted Chesterton’s comment about loving our neighbours and enemies:

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News (July 16th, 1910)

• David mentioned the 37th Annual Chesterton Conference in Orlando Florida. At this conference, actors Kevin O’Brien and Dave Treadway will portray J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis discussing Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, the book that influenced them both.
• Jack explains that people don’t always think forgiveness a good thing, particularly when they have to practise it themselves…

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it is hateful and contemptible.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• Although this teaching on forgiveness is uncomfortable, Lewis explains that he is presenting what Christianity teaches, not how well he lives up to it, or how he would behave under extreme pressure.

Half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. i am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do – I can do precious little – I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• We considered the words of Jesus concerning the need to forgive others:

“But it you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Matthew 6:15

There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• David told the story of his experience in prayer, where he realised the impact of his unforgiveness on his relationship with God.
• Matt told a story about two veterans at the Vietnam War Memorial.
• David quoted Matthew Kelly’s saying about unforgiveness:

Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Unforgiveness enslaves the human spirit. Unforgiveness is the thief from our past that robs us of our future.

Matthew Kelly, The Seven Levels of Intimacy

• Matt told about a book he’s reading, “As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda” by Catherine Larson.

02. “Learning to Forgive”

• What advice does Lewis have concerning the forgiving of enemies? He has two suggestions:

1. Start by forgiving small offences

When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

2. Truly understand what it really means to love yourself. But as Jack says, “How exactly do I love myself?”

03. “Wishing Black be Blacker”

• Does forgiving someone mean that we have to like them? Jack appears to think not. He considers the case of himself.

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently ‘Love your neighbour’ does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’ … Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• Lewis thinks it quite a relief that we don’t have to like others in order to forgive them.

That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are … In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• As a child, Lewis had heard the saying “Hate the sin, not the sinner”. He thought it was silly, but later realised something:

I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction … But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• Matt quoted Chesterton:

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough o change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

• We should still hate sin:

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them … But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• Matt and David applied this principle to thinking the worst of people, wanting grey to be a little blacker.

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

04. “Capital Punishment”

• Does loving my enemy mean that he should never be punished? Jack says no.

If you have committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• The section of the Catholic Catechism on Capital Punishment is found here:

Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 2267

• To understand the arguments in favour of capital punishment, David recommended the book “By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed” by Edward Feser.

05. “Thou Shalt Not Murder”

• But don’t these statements contradict “thou shalt not kill?”
• There are two different Greek (and Hebrew) words for “kill” and “murder”. Not all killing is murder.

It is no good quoting ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke … All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• The central difference between Christian morality and the regular view is that Christian morality concerns itself with what goes on in the heart and soul. Lewis gives an example from St. John the Baptist.

When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major – what they called a centurion.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

06. “Where is Your Heart At?”

• What then is the difference between Christian teaching on this subject and the world? Quite a bit! Here is what Lewis says.

I imagine somebody will say, ‘Well, if one is allowed to condemn the enemy’s acts, and punish him, and kill him, what difference is left between Christian morality and the ordinary view?’ All the difference in the world.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• There are two reasons Lewis gives for believing this. First and foremost is that man has an eternal soul. And because of that, it is the attitudes that we have about our actions that really matters.

Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or hellish creature. We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one’s own back, must be simply killed.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• Learning how to forgive is a lifelong process, and our resolve won’t last long if we don’t think we need to put in effort.

I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

07. “Repeat Offences”

• We may have to forgive an act against us multiple times, as the feelings of bitterness rise again.
• David spoke about an experience he had with an FSSP Priest. The Priest told him to write a short prayer, which he was to pray each time he thought of a particular person who had hurt him deeply:

Lord, please less [name] with every grace and blessing. Bring them happiness, holiness and Heaven.

Prayer from David’s Journal

• We are trying to work towards…

We must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves – to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Forgiveness

• The definition of “love” used by St. Thomas Aquinas is to “seek the good of the other as other”.

08. “Asking God for Graces”

• The central point of this chapter is to consider what it means to “love others as myself”. We should love ourselves because we are selves. Remember, God does not love us because of what we have achieved. He loves us because we are His children, and we are made in His image and likeness. And that is how we should love other people.
• Matt offered a third way of growing in forgiveness: prayer. Each week, spend an hour in Adoration of the Eucharist, go to Mass during the week, spend time reading Scripture…

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

• The outline for today’s chapter is available here.

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