By Bernard James Mauser, Ph.D.
Humanity is inundated with a flood of fads and fascinations.
At our fingertips in seconds we can find the latest movie clips, how to survive
the zombie apocalypse, along with a host of other obsessions both good and
evil. In this melee of entertainment one can find serious news stories as well.
One that has recently gained popularity concerns the state of Indiana’s new law
promoting religious tolerance. We should recognize the overlap between the
serious and the entertaining. C.S. Lewis can be a guide to help to this end.
Now one may have only known Lewis from his Chronicles of Narnia. He also has a more
serious work that is about the role of education in shaping morality. This book
is called The Abolition of Man. In it
he takes to task English teachers who, in the guise of teaching English,
actually teach moral lessons. How can The
Abolition throw some light on the overlap between the serious and
less-than-serious?
Lewis points out and defends the truth that Paul expresses
in Romans 2. What is known to everyone is that there is a moral law written on
the heart by which people recognize good and evil. This view is opposed in our
society by those identifying as relativists. The creed of the relativist is
that there is no right or wrong. This allegedly frees them to pursue any
pleasure they choose without a guilty conscience. However, this relativistic
credo betrays them. No person is a
full-blown relativist. While they may say there is no right or wrong, the relativist
thinks when you do something to hurt them in any way it is wrong.
This moral law is the basis for virtue and for judging
anything to be good or evil. This is why we can judge any law to be good or
bad. The moral law, sometimes referred to as the natural law, stands over all
laws mankind makes. This is why all people can chime in about the morality of
certain laws like those allowing religious freedom.
People always talk about the goodness or badness of movies,
laws, and the like. When they do so they are saying that people can recognize
these qualities. If morality is nothing more than preference, like tastes, then
all these statements are meaningless. However, we recognize by our reactions to
clear examples of immorality that there is a reality to the moral realm. Our
moral judgments about right and wrong actually refer to reality and we all know
it.
Those that deny this truth will have to bite the bullet.
Lewis posits an argument that shows the implication of rejecting the universal
moral law. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the
function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate
and bid the geldings be fruitful.”[i]
The denial of natural law leads to immorality, irrationality, and true
intolerance as all these concepts are meaningless without it. Embracing the
truth of the existence of this universal moral law frees us to be coherent when
we judge between virtue and vice, good and evil.
