Thought for the Day

I love C.S. Lewis. I love that he can say in 20 words what it can take me 2 days to think about and understand. Perhaps it's the scientist in me, but I truly and totally appreciate the ability to take complex thoughts and put them in simple english using well thought out words and logic. I also love that when you read his books you never feel like he is trying to make you believe something, you feel like he is trying to make you think about something, and in thinking make your own decision about what you think about his thoughts and the many other thoughts you may have previously heard on that topic. It's really quite an incredible gift that I don't believe many writers posess.

Due to my love of him my mom got me a morning devotional that has a portion of one of his writings each day. Every day I find them extremely thought provoking and insightful, but today's seemed especially timely to the situation our country finds itself in, and I believe crosses beyond thoughts on Christianity, to thoughts on morality as a whole. So I thought I would throw it out there for my fellow readers:

Taken from Mere Christianity (which just so happens to be my favorite book of all time)

"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet out to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants to play...

Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on to the second thing - the tidying up inside each human being - we are only deceiving ourselves...

What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behavior, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all the thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

I'll leave it at that, because I doubt I can add much to his thought other than to throw it out there for others to think on.