No right or wrong?

The majority of people grow up comprehending their actions have consequences. They realize without any parent or authority figure whatsoever, that when they push another child and that child begins to cry that it isn't a very good thing to do- they in fact know that crying is something done out of distress because they've cried themselves from infancy on up when things have been distressing to them.  That action of causing distress generally will ignite distress in the one bringing on the initial distress. There is a sense of confusion as they try to make sense of why and how their action caused the undesirable response. I've witnessed it for myself. One child ripping the toy from another's hands and that child crying when the toy is removed. The toy ripping child pauses as the other child begins to cry, the wheels are turning and then a moment later the toy ripper joins in on the crying even as they clutch the toy. They are in fact distressed by causing distress.  Now don't get me wrong, this isn't the only scenario to such a situation- there is age to consider. They aren't so young they have no ability to conceptualize cause and effect, which, if the case they could just take the toy and be nonplus by and resulting tears from another. Or they could be older and wise to this business, and purposefully choose not to care that their actions caused distressed.  But there is that tender age, that moment of figuring things out and they don't like that their actions distressed another.  Further on they learn that they don't like it when another steals their toys and why don't they like this? Because they desired to possess what was given to them, it was in fact theirs, not the toy stealer's.  Not liking having their own toys stolen they learn it is wrong to steal that it just isn't right to take what isn't yours. They continue to grow up and learn various truths about life and how it is supposed to be lived.  A lot of truths will be taught to them by their parents, other truths will be garnered through their peers, through teachers in schools, through other various means.  Ultimately as a grown person they will either be considered well-behaved and in league with our societal norms or ill-behaved and acting outside of the acceptable behaviors we expect from people. Everyone knows what we mean by saying someone is a criminal. We even know what we mean when we say there is a very troubled adult.  There is something about them not fitting in with expected, desired behavior. It doesn't matter what society we live in- even in criminal organizations there are acceptable and unacceptable set behaviors. 

To be able to say there is a right and wrong we truly need to determine WHO deemed what is right and what is wrong, don't we?  If there is NO right and wrong what's left? Something beyond our comprehension really- because we've never lived without a right and wrong, never.  We can speculated on societies that have okayed murdered, stealing, lying and whatnot in that speculation can we truly imagine what it would be like to be living in that society? At any time you could be murdered and it'd be fine? Can you imagine that? At any time you could have all your belongings taken away and it's all well and good? No one anywhere would think it wrong. Can you imagine that? There is no such thing as retribution because to have retribution you would need to be wronged and if murder and stealing aren't wrong then you couldn't even desire something called justice because it wouldn't be considered justice. You have to have been wronged by someone to want justice to take place.  But if there were no wrongs in this strange society where all is good even the most vile of acts, then even acts considered vile could no longer be considered such. Something can't be vile and be considered fine.  You can't have the two go hand in hand. If something is vile it must be considered wrong and if it's considered wrong then there has to be a reason for that designation. As soon as you have a single act considered wrong then you comprehend there is a distinction between right and wrong.  Can we honestly say that murder only became wrong when it was decided it was wrong and before then people considered murder acceptable?

What am I getting at here? Well, I read the next bit in C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity' and it got me to thinking.  Please, go ahead and read what he had to say which set me off on such a subject, he will explain it a lot better than I ever could.

May God help us all as we seek to comprehend the true reality of God's moral law.

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4. What Lies Behind The Law

Let us sum up what we have reached so far. In the case of stones and trees and things of that sort, what we call the Laws of Nature may not be anything except a way of speaking. When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a certain way. The socalled laws may not be anything real—anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of Man, we saw that this will not do.

The Law of Human Nature, or of Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond the actual facts of human behaviour. In this case, besides the actual facts, you have something else—a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.

I now want to consider what this tells us about the universe we live in. Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view.

People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.

The other view is the religious view. (*) According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know.

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[*] See Note at the end of this chapter.

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That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself—I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave.

Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw soand-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did soand-so." Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science— and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question. If there is "Something Behind," then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.

The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?" "Has it any meaning?" would remain just as they were?

Now the position would be quite hopeless but for this. There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men.

In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know. And because of that, we know that men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey.

Notice the following point. Anyone studying Man from the outside as we study electricity or cabbages, not knowing our language and consequently not able to get any inside knowledge from us, but merely observing what we did, would never get the slightest evidence that we had this moral law. How could he? for his observations would only show what we did, and the moral law is about what we ought to do.

In the same way, if there were anything above or behind the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside, could never hope to discover it.

The position of the question, then, is like this. We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it.

There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe— no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.

The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?

In the only case where you can expect to get an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes; and in the other cases, where you do not get an answer, you see why you do not. Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, "Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter." And if he then objected, "But you've never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting," I should say, "Of course not, and I shouldn't expect to, because they're not addressed to me.

I'm explaining the packets I'm not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open." It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way. I do not, of course, think that if I could get inside a stone or a tree I should find exactly the same thing, just as I do not think all the other people in the street get the same letters as I do.

I should expect, for instance, to find that the stone had to obey the law of gravity—that whereas the sender of the letters merely tells me to obey the law of my human nature, He compels the stone to obey the laws of its stony nature. But I should expect to find that there was, so to speak, a sender of letters in both cases, a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide.

Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.

I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions. But, of course, it need not be very like a mind, still less like a person. In the next chapter we shall see if we can find out anything more about it. But one word of warning. There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God for the last hundred years. That is not what I am offering. You can cut all that out.

Note —In order to keep this section short enough when it was given on the air, I mentioned only the Materialist view and the Religious view. But to be complete I ought to mention the In between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution. The wittiest expositions of it come in the works of Bernard Shaw, but the most profound ones in those of Bergson. People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet "evolved" from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the "striving" or "purposiveness" of a Life-Force.

When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then "a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection" is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind "strives" or has "purposes"? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences.

When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?

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It is this bit-- 

'Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.'

Something direction the universe.

A law within us.

This law within us urging us to do right.

This law making us free responsible and uncomfortable doing wrong.

Not everyone has this FEELING of right and wrong and when it is missing from a person we considered them abnormal- we do NOT have a society which accepts some people murdering others because they do not feel/comprehend the wrongness of their actions. We try to teach those who are born/or grow to become those who have no sense of right and wrong- we try to teach them that even if they don't have that 'feeling' or uncomfortableness and responsibility they need to behave appropriately through the sheer knowledge of right and wrong. 

This is truth. And while C.S. Lewis hasn't come 'within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology', he will get there as we continue to study.  He will get there in a VERY logical manner and he's doing so in order to reveal to those who are confounded by the fact there is a God, that God exists beyond any doubt.

Remember yesterday's closing verse? 

Psa 53:1 ' … The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'

We live in a world of fools and we can only praise and thank God if we are not among them! It is by the grace of God alone that we are allowed to comprehend His truth.

Please Father God in heaven, please, we would know You! We would have You in our hearts! We believe Lord, we believe- help our unbelief!  All through Jesus Christ our Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer now and forever! Amen!