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Book 3, Chapter 6: Christian Marriage

This chapter is full of marriage (or premarital or pre-engagement) counseling and ought to be required reading for all married people, for all who think they may one day marry and for anyone will ever know someone who is married. Consider how profound this one statement is: “Let the thrill go—let it die away.” I consider this an important statement on several levels. I’ll list three of them for you and see how you respond.

First, by this statement Lewis combats “shacking up” and other forms of intentionally arousing sexual passion in someone to whom you are not married. People who believe they are “in love” may set aside responsibility because the feelings of being in love are so intense. People who love their boyfriend or girlfriend rather than being in love with them know that stirring passions that cannot be satisfied righteously is unloving. They should “let the thrill go” because they are dooming the future of something God created to be enjoyed in its proper context to a guilty pleasure. Lewis effectively illustrates with food. When we want the thrill without the responsibility, we are like bulimics who binge and purge to avoid the natural consequences of overeating. Sexual experimentation outside marriage is relational bulemia. It makes the “feast” of marriage a guilty pleasure instead of a motivation to bless the Lord who gave it to us.

Next, by this statement Lewis combats the divorce problem. The biblical teaching on marriage is not first and foremost good because it helps marriage. It is good because it is marriage that helps us see the relationship God has with his people. God is not “in love” with us. He loves us. And it is not being in love with someone that prepares you for the commitment required for a 50-year (lifetime) marriage. It is loving someone even when the original feeling has waned. Loving someone makes you to keep the contract and, yes, even savor the sweetness of the contract. People who love each other can have productive disagreements because they quarrel with a resolution in mind rather the end of the relationship. The idea of going their separate ways is off the table because they honor the contract more than they honor the thrill. People who are merely in love quarrel selfishly, fearing the loss of the feeling and the person who brings it.

Finally, by this statement Lewis combats the controversy over biblical marital roles. It is not the thrill of being in love that makes a man love and lead his wife or moves a wife to joyfully follow her husband. Loving headship and joyful submission are not for the benefit of the male sex but for the stability of the world that is founded on the family order. The thrill that Lewis says needs to die rarely produces situations that require loving leadership or joyful submission (please read that twice). For example, that young man who is such a good leader in deciding which movie to attend on Friday night should also be evaluated by the way he acts when he is required to inconvenience himself to serve others. That picture of feminine charm may look good on your arm at the movie theater or at a concert but what is her attitude when it is her turn to deal with screaming babies in the church nursery? This is why I urge young believers to identify potential mates by observing them in situations that require unselfish service and even stressful problem-solving. He needs to show his love by humbly accepting the responsibility that comes with leadership. She needs to love by joyfully serving under the authority of another. Some couples get along great so long as there are dating diversions to keep them from addressing real life. Long-term relationships run in orderly ways that transcend difficult relational trials because more is at stake than the thrill.

What did you harvest from this chapter?

Book 3, Chapter 5: Sexual Morality

Don't you love the way this guy puts words together? An example to summarize the chapter:

For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church maybe far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.

I would expect this chapter and my comments on it will be read by more of you than normal. I'm not offended. Few biblical subjects grab our attention more than this one. I'll let you ruminate on why that is.

The statements of the Bible regarding where "the fence" has been place are very clear. The boundary surrounds a man and a woman married until death. Maybe most of us have been able to stay physically inside the fence (If you have not, aren't you glad for a Rescuer with whom is forgiveness and the power to change?). I think Lewis is making a very important observation about human nature here. The question may be more than, "Are you staying inside the fence?" Maybe in the center of our being we are not satisfied with where God has placed the fence and we find ourselves constantly standing at the edge of the boundary rattling the fence and looking into the neighbor's yard (perhaps looking at a mutton chop).

The real issue, of course, is not sex but desire. What do you really want? Like the older brother of the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, some of us in our "animal self" would never cross the lines outwardly, but our "diabolical self" wishes desperately that God had drawn the lines elsewhere. If your heart is saying, "If only I could go outside the fence and get away with it, I would satisfy an important need," you are the illustration Lewis is talking about in this chapter. When we think this way we are saying that God does not know what we really need. We are listening to the serpent's lie to Eve: "God knows that in the day you eat of it..."

This shows up in a lot of ways in our lives, not the least of which involves spending time and money on things that bring us to desire what is outside the fence ("want to watch a movie tonight?"). As Lewis says, “There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance."

Young, unmarried disciple of Christ, please listen: the only way to keep your vessel sanctified (see 1 Thessalonians 4) is to conform the desires of your heart to those of God's heart. Translation: learn to like what God likes. As David said in Psalm 16:6: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

What are your words of counsel for others reading this chapter and joining our discussion?

Book 3, Chapter 4: Morality and Psychoanalysis

Don’t be too hard on Lewis’s favorable assessment of Jung and psychology. We have been given 65 years more than Lewis had to evaluate the offspring conceived in the illicit affair between the Church and psychology. The real point, anyway, is that there is something fundamentally wrong in us that needs changing. Even secularists agree on that point. The difference is not in diagnosing a problem but finding a cure. Lewis is, I think, doing the same thing in this chapter that Paul did in Romans 1-3. He is classifying the covetous Sunday Schoolers with the pagan thieves; the lustful preachers with the premeditated rapists. Some of us have our fundamental wrong-ness coming out in socially destructive ways. That segment of society may end up in prison or dying prematurely. Others of us contain the ticking time bomb of pride or anger or lust that permits us to kill and commit adultery in our hearts innumerable times and never be “caught.” Where does that leave you and me? Can you see why this brings us to a “Cross-Centered Life”?

Book 3, Chapter 3: Social Morality

Which presidential candidate do you support? Would you consider it morally wrong to support certain candidates from either major party? With those thoughts in mind, consider the two things Lewis says we need to get clear about “Christian morality.”

1. Christ did not come to preach any brand-new morality.
2. Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detailed political program.

Rather than staking out his political positions (I have my guess as to how C. S. Lewis would vote these days), Lewis reminds us that our Savior did not die to set up a kingdom that is “of this world.”

Okay. Most of us conservative evangelicals vote the same way these days. But the way conservative evangelicals apply obedience to the gospel in this decade is very different than the way our parents applied it or how our children (if by God’s grace they still care) will apply it. I think Lewis is trying to say that Christianity is timeless. Rather than trying to find the Christian party or the Christian candidate we should first be living as Christian people.

The party that appears very compassionate today may have policies that will one day encourage sloth and dependency. The party today that calls people to take personal responsibility may have policies that will one day victimize middle-class working people. But Jesus never changes. The first and second great commandments transcend political systems.

The challenge here is not to become apathetic toward public affairs. It is to shun the idea that you are pleasing God when you step over the top of the homeless guy in the street to get into the polling place to vote for Righteous Ralph.

What do you think?

Corner Blitzer Wannabee

Book 3, Chapter 2: The “Cardinal Virtues"

Do you have to be a great defensive player to steal the football from Brett Favre's hand? During an unsuccessful Packer attempt to defeat Cincinnati on October 30, 2005, the Bengals defense picked off Brett five times. In the Packers’ final drive a fan rushed the field, prompting officials’ whistles and the unwitting number four to hand the ball over to a crazed Bengals fan (Brett thinking he was a referee). The guy danced toward the endzone with the ball and a confidence that would make Al Harris envious.

The difference between this athlete wannabee and a real football player illustrates the difference between someone who can act virtuous and a virtuous person. I think this is what C. S. Lewis is saying in this chapter. The question at hand is: are you virtuous or merely offering a cheap, public imitation of virtue? Take a look at the four virtues:

· Prudence tells even the mass murderer to take his finger off the trigger and run for cover. It is not morally neutral. You need not have advanced intelligence in order to be prudent, but you cannot be prudent without thinking good thoughts.
· Temperance calls the drunk to be "responsible," step away from the bar and call for a designated driver. Even pagans recognize the need to say no to yourself. Lewis's comments may disturb you if you are a "teetotaler," but you cannot argue with him as he compares intemperance with alcohol to intemperance with golf or your dog (or Halo or the next episode of 24).
· Justice moves crackheads and other criminals to take to the streets and riot when a jury fails to condemn an officer accused of racial profiling and using excessive force.
· Fortitude allows a basketball star who cannot control his gambling habit to lead his team to victory, scoring 38 points even though he is terribly sick with the flu.

Maybe the real issue in all of this is that recognizing the virtues and having the capacity to display them are two different things. Our sinfulness moves us to muster enough flesh to display one or two of the virtues so we can condemn others who haven't arrived. Condemnation serves as camouflage for the lack of virtue in other areas.

What do you think? How does a person know whether he or she is in the “game” and not just putting on a show?