Our Conscience or the Rule of Right and Wrong

Our Conscience or the Rule of Right and Wrong

 

We are covering some of the high points in the book, “Mere Christianity”, written by C. S. Lewis, which has continued to be a best seller for over sixty years in the Christian community.   Professor Lewis starts his book, “Mere Christianity” by talking about the idea of the “Law of Right and Wrong” that we humans seem to know - or the human conscience. 

 

The two points he wants to make are (1) Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way.  and (2) Humans do not in fact behave in that way.  Humans have a conscience and they know the Law of Right and Wrong: but they break it.  Where did this Law come from? And why is it important? 

 

Professor Lewis states that our ideas of right and wrong, or our God given conscience, is not mere fancy, for most of us cannot easily get rid of it. However, Scripture mentions that some people rebel against goodness and fairness and have “seared” their consciences. (1 Timothy 4:2) This rule of right and wrong has been called the “Laws of Nature” because people believed that the knowledge of right and wrong just came naturally.  

 

It seems that there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of human behavior which none of us humans made but which we find pressing in on us! Scripture speaks of a “conscience” that God gives to us humans. (Romans 1:19-21) Could this be why most of us seem to have an idea of how we ought to behave?  Professor Lewis thinks that this conscience that humans have may be a clue that there is Someone behind the universe we live in.

 

Down through the ages people have been wondering what our universe really is and how it came to be.  Professor Lewis states that there are mainly two views on how our world came to be.  These two main views have been held by people down through the centuries.

 

 First there is the materialist view.  People who believe this view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, and always will exist and no one knows why. And they believe that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, just happened, perhaps by a big bang, or a mechanical dance of atoms, or by some sort of a fluke, and this matter somehow produced creatures like ourselves who are able to think and care and love!

By one chance in a million the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, and many other intricate details just happened to occur on our earth so that some of the matter on the earth came alive.  And then, by a long series of chances, the living creatures on this prehistoric earth over billions of years gradually developed and evolved into things like us.  Our ancestors were amoebas and then evolved to pre-historic fish, and then evolved legs and crawled up out of the water onto land and over billions more years these walking fish evolved into apes that walked on all fours.

 

And then over more billions of years our ape ancestors lost their fur and straightened up and got smarter and evolved into the two-legged people that we are today.  Artists have drawn pictures of fish walking up on land and apes gradually evolving into modern people. Although we have never seen any of these half ape/people evolving today! We are told that this materialist view is scientific and all thinking intelligent people must believe this view!

 

And then the second view, according to Professor Lewis is the religious view.  People who believe this view are considered backward. This view states that what is behind the universe is more like a Mind or a Conscience. And the Mind has a purpose and prefers one thing to another.  And this Mind or God created the universe, partly for purposes we do not know.  But partly to produce creatures like himself.  Perhaps people who could love Him and He them.

 

C.S. Lewis emphasized that down through the ages wherever there have been thinking persons, both views – the materialist and the religious views – have been around as explanations for how our universe came into existence.  The materialist view did not show up in modern times  and it cannot be proven scientifically.    

 

Lewis insists that one cannot find out which view is the right one by science. Science works by experiments.  Science watches how things behave and records results.  Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really is describing what it sees happening in a given time frame.  This is the job of science.

 

The “theory of evolution” or the theory that humans evolved over billions of years from fish and then apes and finally humans – is just someone’s “theory” or idea of what might have happened, not a scientific fact.  No one has ever found the “missing link” between apes and humans!  So, none of the materialist view is scientific, even though we are told that it is.

 

So, which of these two ideas of how our world came about could possibly be true?  Did our universe simply happen for no reason, or is there a Mind or is God behind the universe with His creative work making it what it is?  If it was God, what clues did He leave to show Himself to us?  C.S. Lewis believes that He might show Himself as an influence inside ourselves or a command inside our souls trying to get us to behave in certain ways.  And that is what we do find inside ourselves – an idea of right and wrong!  Lewis believes that this ought to arouse our suspicions! 

 

We find that we do not exist on our own, that we are under a law: that Somebody or something wants us to behave in a certain way.  Our conscience – that still small Voice, is the clue that Lewis thinks God left behind.  He suggests that in the Moral Law Somebody or something from beyond the material universe is actually getting at us!

 

So, without taking anything from the Bible or Church doctrine, we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own.  We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody.  One is the universe He made.  The universe is a beautiful place, so He must be a great artist.  But the universe can also be a dangerous and terrifying place. 

 

 And the other bit of evidence is the moral law which humans, unless they rebel against it, have in their minds.  There is nothing indulgent or soft about the Moral Law.  We have not gotten as far as believing in a personal God yet.  So, if this Mind responsible for our earth is impersonal towards us, there may be no sense in asking Him to let us off the hook when we don’t live up to the Rule of Right and Wrong He seems to have given us.We can try harder, but it seems we keep on missing the mark over and over again.  It seems our case is hopeless.  If God holds our sins against us, we are lost.  We are in a dilemma. God is the only comfort, and He is also the supreme terror. 

 

Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness.  It has nothing to say to people who do not believe they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel they need forgiveness.  It is after we realize that there is a real Moral Law and a Power behind that Law and that we have broken that Law - it is after all this, that Christianity begins to talk. It tells us how the demands of this Law, which we cannot meet, have been met on our behalf.  And how God Himself becomes a man to save humans from the disapproval of God. 

 

In his book, Lewis goes on to explain what Christians believe.  And to ask people to face the facts and understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer.  And they are very terrifying facts!