CharlieDean

“I don’t drink, smoke, chew, or go with girls who do.”

Man do I hate that saying!  It smacks of self righteousness and spiritual pride and seems miles away from the way Jesus lived his life, as a friend of “sinners.”

But, on the other hand, as a follower of Jesus, how are we to live?  In C.S. Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms, he addresses this issue by framing it this way, “How ought we to behave in the presence of very bad people? I will limit this by changing ‘very bad people’ to ‘very bad people who are powerful, prosperous and impenitent.”

I think the distinction between types of bad people is important.  Seriously, I’m a bad person.  I think horrible things about people sometimes, I find myself too-often telling half or exaggerated “truths” – that aren’t really truths at all.  I could keep listing my sins, but that’s enough for now.  So, I’m not talking about us “normal” bad people, I’m talking about people who are impenitent, and who profit in some way by sticking it to other people.  (Like, for example, our infamous ex-governor… how should I act toward him, if given the opportunity?)

Lewis argues that it’s a lose-lose situation.  If you befriend the “very bad people,” you find yourself in a position where you constantly must speak up for justice, and you become the worst kind of Christian, wagging your finger in someone’s face all the time.  He goes on to say, “I am inclined to think a Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful and so forth.  Not because we are ‘too good’ for them.  In a sense because we are not good enough.  We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces.  The temptation is to condone, to connive at; by our words, looks and laughter, to ‘consent.’”

I understand what he’s saying, but it’s a dangerous ledge that Lewis walks.  I can imagine some fundamentalist-types who read in this a justification to stay away from all “sinners,” when Lewis isn’t talking about us normal sinners, but only those those “very bad people” we defined above.

In the end here’s what Lewis suggests: “Silence is a good refuge.  People will not notice it nearly so easily as we tend to suppose.  And (better still) few of us enjoy it as we might be in danger of enjoying more forcible methods.  Disagreement can, I think, sometimes be expressed without the appearance of priggery, if it is done argumentatively not dictatorially; support will often come from some most unlikely member of the party, or from more than one, till we discover that those who were silently dissentient were actually a majority”

I’m not sure why, but this whole discussion is causing all kinds of dissonance in my head… any thoughts?

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