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Forgiveness | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is our deep dive where we
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take just one challenging text and really try to open it up to
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see how its ideas shape our faith in our lives.
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And today we are definitely taking on a challenge.
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We're looking at what might be the most uncomfortable
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requirement in the whole Christian moral framework, the
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forgiveness of our enemies. Our source for this is CS
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Lewis's discussion on the topic, which you'll find in Mere
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Christianity, specifically in the section where he's dealing
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with the virtue of charity. And it's a fascinating passage
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because Lewis doesn't just say this is a hard thing to do.
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He kicks it off by calling it, well, almost repulsive to the
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modern mind. Right.
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He says that he used to think chastity was the most unpopular
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Christian virtue, but he came to believe that the rule to love
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your neighbor and the absolute includes your enemy is met with
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something more than just difficulty.
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It's met with intellectual hostility.
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That is such a sharp observation.
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I mean, think about it. Most people, even if they aren't
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Christians, will admit that virtues like, you know, radical
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generosity or absolute honesty are high standards.
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Maybe impossibly high, but they're still admirable.
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They're good ideals. Exactly.
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But Lewis points out that when you apply forgiveness to real
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life, when you actually suggest forgiving someone who has done
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something truly awful, the idea is often met with what he calls
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howls of anger. The reaction isn't, oh, that's
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too difficult for me. It's more like that's just
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wrong. That's a hateful and
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contemptible idea. People feel, you know, almost
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sickened by the notion that they should just give up their right
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to be righteously indignant. And this is where Lewis is so
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brilliant, especially as a wartime writer.
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He knew exactly what his audience was thinking because
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this was written during World War 2.
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He anticipates the pushback. He does.
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He basically voices the question that he knows is on your mind as
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you listen to this. How would you feel about
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forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?
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He goes straight for the hardest possible case.
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He doesn't shy away from it. And his answer to that is so
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important for building trust with the reader or the listener.
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He doesn't claim to be some spiritual giant.
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He just honestly says I don't know.
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He doesn't know what he would do if he were facing torture or
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death. That honesty is key.
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He's not posturing. He's careful to say.
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His goal isn't to talk about what he, CS Lewis, can
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personally do. He admits he can do precious
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little on his own. His whole point is just to state
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as clearly as possible what Christianity is.
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What the standard is, regardless of our ability to meet it.
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Exactly. And what Christianity is
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includes this really serious, non negotiable term for
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receiving God's grace. It's a term we all recite, often
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without thinking, every time we say the Lord's Prayer.
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Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against
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us. And that's the absolute starting
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point. It's the theological foundation
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for this whole discussion. Lewis really hammers this point
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home. He says the condition is
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perfectly clear. It's not conditional on how
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you're feeling. It's not conditional on whether
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your enemy repents. It's a direct parallel that
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Christ himself established. It really sets the terms of the
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deal, doesn't it? We're asking God to cancel this
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infinite debt we owe Him, and the only currency He asked for
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in return is for us to cancel the tiny, tiny debts others owe
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us. Well said, and for us, coming
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from a Reformed perspective that really takes God's sovereignty
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and the seriousness of sin to heart, that the fact that our
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sin truly deserves God's wrath, this command is frankly
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terrifying. It is.
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Lewis puts it so bluntly. There are no two ways about it.
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If you're holding on to hydrid, you are literally asking God to
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use that same standard of non forgiveness on your own soul.
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You can't just rationalize that away with Mahdi sentiment.
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So, OK, the duty is established, it's non negotiable, and it
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demands something from us that, you know, most people find
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repellent, especially when they're thinking about real
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monstrous evil like the Gestapo. But then Lewis, being the master
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teacher he is, gives us a way forward.
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He says you can't just jump into the deep end.
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You can't start with the ultimate moral calculus.
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He gives these incredibly practical steps.
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He compares the whole process to learning mathematics.
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If you're going to learn math, you don't start with advanced
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calculus. You have to start with simple
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addition. And the mistake we all make, he
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suggests, is that we immediately start with the calculus, we
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start with this huge theoretical problem of forgiving, you know,
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the Gestapo or some historical tyrant.
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And because that enemy is so distant, maybe abstract or just
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imagined, it lets us feel justified in our hatred without
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actually having to change anything inside ourselves.
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Today, the real work, the simple addition, is much, much closer
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to home. Lewis says we have to start with
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our immediate relationships. Your husband, your wife, your
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parents, your children, or, and I love this example, the nearest
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NCO. Yeah, let's pause on that for
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anyone listening who might not be familiar.
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And NCO is a non commissioned officer.
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So think a Sergeant, a corporal, the person in charge of your
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day-to-day discipline in the military.
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And it's such a specific reference.
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He's talking about that constant low level friction of
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institutional life. He means the person who makes
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your life difficult not through some grand act of tyranny, but
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just through, you know, incompetence or a bad temper or
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just being the one who gives you annoying orders.
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The instruction, then, is to forgive that person for
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something small they did or said just in the last week.
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That irritation? The spouse who didn't do the
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dishes. The kid who ignored A chore.
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The boss who was nitpicky. That is our addition problem.
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And Lewis is so right, he says, that just dealing with that
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daily friction, with those small habitual resentments we carry
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against the people closest to us, well, that's probably enough
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to keep us busy for a while. We tend to dismiss those little
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things, but they're like a constant spiritual drag.
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They create a foundation of bitterness in our souls.
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So if we can't even pass the simple addition test of
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forgiving small offenses, we have absolutely no hope of ever
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handling the calculus of truly monstrous evil.
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But it all depends on one thing first.
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What's that? Lewis says?
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None of this works. None of it even gets off the
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ground unless you really want to learn how to forgive.
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So it comes back to the will. This is classic Reformed
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thinking on sanctification. The action has to be driven by a
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genuine desire. The desire to obey God's command
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has to be real. If your will is still fixed on
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enjoying that feeling of righteous anger, then the whole
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exercise is just a performance. It's a lie.
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You have to 1st want to be changed and then you can start
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working on the small sins of unforgiveness right in front of
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you. OK, so once the will is engaged,
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Lewis gives us a second huge tool to help us obey, and it
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involves redefining what we mean by Christian love.
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Right the command is love your neighbor as yourself.
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So Lewis says OK, let's be logical.
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Let's analyze the one kind of love we all seem to have
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mastered perfectly, our love for ourselves.
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This. Is such a clever move.
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He asked us to just be honest with ourselves for a minute.
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Do you love yourself because you're constantly feeling this
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wave of fondness and affection for yourself?
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Do you always enjoy your own company?
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And the honest answer is, of course not.
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We often disapprove of ourselves.
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We get annoyed by our own failures.
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We definitely don't feel fond of ourselves right after we've done
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something stupid or selfish. And this realization, Lewis
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says, brings an enormous relief. Because if loving yourself isn't
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primarily about having a warm, fuzzy feeling, then loving your
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enemy doesn't mean you have to feel fond of them either.
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It doesn't mean you have to find them attractive or even want to
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hang out with them. That's a game changer.
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If the command required a certain feeling, it would be
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impossible. You can't force yourself to feel
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something you don't. Exactly.
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But the fact that the command rests on the same principle we
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apply to ourselves, that love is an act of the will.
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It's a choice directed toward a self that means the duty is
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actually possible, even if it feels agonizing.
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And he pushes this clarification even further.
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We aren't required to sort of invent a false appreciation for
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the enemy. No, he's very clear on this.
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Loving them does not mean you have to think they are nice or
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not such bad fellows. After all, you're not supposed
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to lie to yourself, especially, as he says, when it is quite
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plain that they are bad fellows. They might be cruel or petty or
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treacherous. The duty to love isn't built on
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some sentimental idea about their character.
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So if it's not about liking them and it's not about making
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excuses for what they did, then what is that specific quality of
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self love that we're supposed to apply them?
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What's the internal mechanism that lets us hate the action but
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still wish the actor well? And that leads us straight into
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what I think is the most brilliant part of this whole
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chapter. It's Lewis's logic on how to
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hate the sin but not the Sinner. He admits that for years he'd
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heard Christian teachers use that phrase, and he always
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thought it was, in his words, a silly straw splitting
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distinction. It just sounds like theological
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hair splitting, doesn't it? How can you possibly hate the
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terrible things a man does without also hating the man who
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does them? The two seem completely tied
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together. The mental friction there is
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huge. It feels psychologically
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impossible to separate the deed from the doer, especially if the
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deed is something monstrous. It does, until, as Lewis
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explains, it hit him him years later that he had been perfectly
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applying this exact, seemingly impossible rule to one person
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his entire life. Himself.
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Himself, he realized that in his clearest moments of self
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reflection, he knew he wasn't a nice person.
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He was, as he puts it, a very nasty one.
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He could look at some of his own actions, moments of cowardice or
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his own ridiculous vanity and conceit or acts of greed, and he
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could look at them with genuine horror and loathing.
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He knew those acts were detestable.
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They were disgusting failures of his Christian character, and
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yet, despite seeing how ugly the sin was, he never stopped loving
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the man, the self who did them. He didn't, you know, discover
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his own cowardice and then decide to stop eating or taking
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care of his body. Right, so the difficult
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distinction, hating the action but loving the person is
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actually something we all do naturally internally.
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The paradox just dissolves when you see that the hatred is meant
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to be restorative, not just punishing.
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That is the key. The whole reason Lewis hated his
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own acts of cowardice or greed was because he loved himself.
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He was sorry to find out he was the sort of person who did those
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things. The hatred for the sin is born
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from a desire to see the Sinner cured and restored.
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And when you apply that externally, it changes
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everything. It means Christianity isn't
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asking us to reduce our hatred for cruelty or injustice by even
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one single atom. We had to hate those things with
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a passion. We should never downplay the
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seriousness of evil in the world.
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But the moral shifts that's required is that we have to hate
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those evil actions in our enemy in the exact same way we hate
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them in ourselves. And that means two things become
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really critical, and they replace that raw impulse for
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revenge. 1st we have to feel genuinely sorry that the enemy
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did such a thing. It's a kind of pity, but it's
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not pity for their suffering, it's pity for the way their own
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nature has been twisted and deformed by sin.
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OK, so a sorrow for their spiritual state.
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Yes. And 2nd, we have to hold on to
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the hope, if it's at all possible, that somehow,
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sometime, somewhere, that person can be cured and made human
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again. It's a discipline of restorative
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hope. It means you recognize the
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eternal potential of that person even as you condemn what they've
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done in the here and now. That shifts the whole frame.
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It demands an intellectual commitment to their restoration,
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even when every part of your human nature is screaming for
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retribution. And Lewis, because he's so tuned
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into the human heart, he immediately follows this up with
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a really practical and honestly a pretty scary test to see what
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state your soul is in. He gives you a simple scenario
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to figure out if you're practicing Christian forgiveness
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or if you're sliding into what he calls diabolical hatred.
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Let's walk through that test because it really shines a light
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on how addictive hatred can be. OK, so Lewis asks you to imagine
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you're reading a newspaper story about some truly filthy
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atrocities, something that just makes your blood boil.
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Now, a little later, you see another report that suggests the
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first story. It might not be quite true or
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not quite so bad as you first thought.
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The way you react to that second piece of information is the
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absolute litmus test for your soul.
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The Christian response. The true Christian response,
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Lewis says, is that your first honest feeling should be 1 of
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relief. Thank God even they aren't quite
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so bad as that. It's relief because if you truly
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love the self that is the enemy, you should be happy to find out
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that self is less morally broken than you first believed.
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Your hope for their cure wins out over your desire for their
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total condemnation. But the other response, the
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Diabolical 1, is disappointment. Not relief, but a hollow sinking
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feeling because the enemy isn't quite as evil as you wanted them
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to be. And that disappointment is
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followed by a determination to cling to the first story for the
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here pleasure you get from thinking your enemies are as bad
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as possible. He's saying that hatred isn't
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intoxicant. It gives us this moral high
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ground that we get addicted to. And clinging to the worst
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possible version of our enemy justifies our own spiritual
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bitterness. That internal clinging, that's
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the critical failure. And Lewis warns that if you give
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that wish its head, that wish to see your enemy as pure,
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irredeemable black, it starts a horrifying and an inevitable
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psychological journey. What's the progression?
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It starts with just wishing that black was a little bit blacker,
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you know? You start to exaggerate the
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evidence, but if you keep indulging that hatred, you move
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to stage 2. You start seeing Gray as black.
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You start misinterpreting ambiguous actions, automatically
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assuming the worst motive for everything the enemy does.
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And the final stage is terrifying.
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He warns that this process of twisting your own perception
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won't just stop with the enemy. If you give that internal desire
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to hate free reign, you will eventually start seeing white
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itself as black. You start insisting on seeing
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evil in everything, in God and your friends, in the world, and
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eventually even in yourself. Louis draws this terrifying
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conclusion that the soul becomes fixed forever in a universe of
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pure hatred. Wow, so unforgiveness isn't just
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a sin against another person, it's an internal port poison
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that fundamentally changes how you see all of reality.
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The soul gets trapped by its own addiction to being righteously
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angry. And the price for that pleasure
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is giving up all hope and all love, not just for others, but
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for yourself too. That brings us to a major point
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of confusion that Lewis knew he had to address.
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If we're commanded to love the enemy, and love means wishing
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them well, doesn't that mean we can't punish them?
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Doesn't a Christian have to be a pacifist?
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And doesn't a judge have to let a criminal go free?
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He tackles this head on by going right back to his most reliable
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tool, the self analogy. He asks, does loving yourself
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mean you should never let yourself be punished, even to
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death? And the answer is clearly no.
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Lewis argues that if he committed a murder, true self
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love which wants justice and order would compel him to turn
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himself into the authorities and be hanged.
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Justice is a necessary good, even when it's applied to
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yourself. Right.
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So if self love can demand self punishment for the sake of
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justice, then it is perfectly right for a Christian judge to
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sentence a man to death, or for a Christian soldier to kill an
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enemy in defense of the nation. The external act of justice is
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totally separate from the internal state of hatred.
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This is an idea that often gets a strong reaction, especially
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because the commandment thou shalt not kill.
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It's so widely quoted as an argument for absolute pacifism.
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It is, but Lewis, being a scholar, points out a critical
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distinction in the language. What's the distinction?
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He notes that in the original Greek there are different words.
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When Jesus quotes that commandment in the Gospels, in
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Matthew, Mark and Luke, he uses the specific word that means
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murder, the unjustified, malicious taking of a life.
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And Lewis says the same distinction is there in the
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Hebrew of the Old Testament. It is so.
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The logical conclusion is that not all killing is murder, in
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the same way that not all sexual intercourse is adultery.
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The line is drawn between killing someone unjustly out of
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malice, which is murder, and the justified orderly taking of a
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life when it's required for defense or by a court of law.
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This fits perfectly with the traditional Reformed
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understanding of the role of the civil magistrate.
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The state is given the sword by God to restrain evil and uphold
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order. So the soldier or the judge is
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acting under a divine ordinance, not out of personal malice.
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And Lewis shows how this is supported throughout Scripture.
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He points to Saint John the Baptist.
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When soldiers came to him and asked what they should do to
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prepare for Christ's coming, John never even suggested they
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should quit the army. Right, he just told them how to
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behave as soldiers. Don't exploit people.
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Be content with your pay. And likewise, Jesus never
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rebuked the Roman centurion. In fact, he praised him for his
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faith. The existence of a military and
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a justice system is just accepted as part of the
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structure of a fallen world, as long as those in it act without
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hatred. Lewis even elevates the idea.
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He says that the idea of the night, the Christian in arms for
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the defense of a good cause is one of the great Christian
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ideas. He's taking the necessity of
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defense and treating it as a high calling, a vocation where
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physical force can be used righteously.
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And this leads him to criticize a modern attitude he calls semi
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pacifism. He says he can respect an honest
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pacifist, someone who genuinely believes all violence is
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forbidden, even though he thinks they're mistaken in the reading
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of Scripture. But he has no time for the semi
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pacifist. No, he can't understand the
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person who says yes, we have to fight sometimes it's necessary,
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but then suggests it must be done with a long face and as if
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you were ashamed of it. Why does that bother him so
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much? Because he argues that this
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reluctance, this feeling of shame about a necessary and just
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act, it robs the young Christian soldiers of something vital.
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It robs them of the natural emotional partner to courage,
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which he calls a kind of gady and wholeheartedness.
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To fight reluctantly, as if the ACT itself is dirty.
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It's like you're fighting badly and you're dishonouring the
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courage that the task requires. It suggests even necessary
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justice is somehow morally corrupting.
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He uses this amazing, almost funny hypothetical from his own
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experience in World War One. He says if he and a young German
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soldier had killed each other at the same moment and then met in
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the afterlife a second later, he can't imagine either of them
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feeling any resentment or even embarrassment about.
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It he suggests, they might have laughed about it.
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That's such a powerful image. It separates the temporary
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external reality of the conflict from the eternal internal state
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of the soul. A necessary act of killing, if
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it's done without hatred, doesn't have to create an
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eternal enmity. So if the external act of
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punishing or even killing is allowed for a Christian, and it
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might look exactly the same as what a secular judge or soldier
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does, Lewis then asks the most important question.
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What's the difference? What makes the Christian view of
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justice different from the ordinary secular 1?
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And his answer is so sharp, all the difference in the world.
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The key is the eternal perspective, something secular
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morality just can't factor in, Lewis reminds us.
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We Christians think man lives forever.
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And if man lives forever, then the outcome of the battle here
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on earth, who wins? Who goes to jail?
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That isn't the most important thing in the end.
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Not at all. What matters most are the little
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marks or twists on the central inside part of the soul, because
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those marks are what we'll decide if that soul becomes a
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heavenly creature or a hellish one for all eternity.
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Which means the Christian's internal rule has to be
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radically different, even if the external actions look the same.
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The rule is this. We can punish and we can kill if
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we must, but we must not hate and we must not enjoy the hating
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or the punishing. That's it.
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The Christian can carry out justice precisely because
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they're acting out of a sense of duty and a hope for restoration.
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But a secular person without that eternal view could so
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easily slip into personal malice and actually take pleasure in
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the enemy's pain. The real battle is always the
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internal one. And that internal battle means
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we have to be constantly working to kill that feeling of
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resentment, that powerful urge to get one's own back.
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And Lewis is a realist about this.
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He knows you can't just wake up one day and decide, OK, I'm
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never going to feel resentment again and have it be true.
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That's not how sanctification works.
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It's a continuous, active struggle that lasts your whole.
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You have to be ready for the fight every single day.
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I love how he describes it, he says.
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That feeling of resentment, that desire for payback, it bobs its
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head up day after day, year after year.
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All our lives long, we must hit it on the head.
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It's hard, repetitive spiritual work.
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And even while we are carrying out justice or defending
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ourselves, we have to hold on to that core goal, wishing the good
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of the enemy. We have to always be trying to
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feel about them the way we feel about ourselves.
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Which means wishing they weren't bad and hoping that they can be
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cured, whether that cure happens in this life through repentance
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or in the next through what we can't even imagine.
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And Lewis is so explicit about what this love is.
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It's wishing them good. It is not feeling fond of them
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or pretending they're nice when they are clearly not.
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So we are required to love people who have, as he says,
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nothing lovable about them. They might be truly cruel, truly
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wicked, with no attractive qualities at all.
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And this is where Lewis brings the whole argument to its
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incredible, logical conclusion. Right back where he started.
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He does, he says. If you struggle to love an
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unlovable enemy, then just take an honest look at yourself with
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all your faults, all your failures, your cowardice, your
21:32
conceit, your greed. Do you have anything all that
21:35
lovable about yourself? And the honest answer is we
21:40
don't love ourselves because of our nice qualities.
21:42
We don't love ourselves because we've passed some moral test.
21:45
We love ourselves simply because it is yourself.
21:48
It's just the basic condition of being a self that makes us love
21:51
it. And that is the final great
21:53
revelation of the rule. God wants us to love all other
21:56
selves in the exact same way and for the exact same reason, just
21:59
because they ourselves creatures made by God.
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Lewis suggests is that by building self love into US, God
22:05
has basically given us the sum ready worked out on our own
22:07
case. We already know how the internal
22:10
math works. We know we can hate the sin but
22:12
still cherish the self because we do it for ourselves every
22:15
day. And now we're commanded to apply
22:17
that same rule to everyone else. It's the ultimate exercise in
22:21
seeing our shared status as depending creatures.
22:23
Yeah. And Lewis concludes that this is
22:25
exactly how God loves us, not for our nice attractive
22:29
qualities, but just because we are the things called selves.
22:32
And the final line of this whole section is just so sobering.
22:36
It's a deeply convicting definition of what we are, he
22:39
says. We are creatures who actually
22:41
find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up
22:44
beer or tobacco. It frames unforgiveness not just
22:47
as a moral failure, but as a deep seated spiritual addiction.
22:51
That is a tremendous and really demanding deep dive into Lewis's
22:57
thought. It just strips away all the
22:59
sentimentality around this Christian duty.
23:01
The key take away isn't that we have to work up a warm feeling.
23:05
It's that forgiveness is an act of the will, and it's driven by
23:08
an eternal perspective that separates the temporary action
23:11
from the eternal soul. And that's where the real
23:13
difficulty is. The main struggle is making the
23:15
act of choice, day after day to kill that internal pleasure we
23:19
get from hatred and resentment. It's about sacrificing A deeply
23:23
addictive emotional habit for the sake of our own spiritual
23:25
health. Which brings us right back to
23:28
that non negotiable condition from the Lord's Prayer.
23:30
Forgive us our sinned as we forgive those that sin against
23:33
us. If our acceptance of God's
23:35
forgiveness depends on our willingness to forgive others,
23:38
and if Lewis is right that we find such an intoxicating
23:40
pleasure in holding on to vengeance, well, what is our
23:43
desire to keep feeding that resentment really say about how
23:46
honest our repentance is? And that's the crucial question
23:49
for you as you listen. If you've been struggling with
23:52
the idea of forgiving some great wrong, maybe you've just been
23:55
starting with the wrong kind of math.
23:57
What's the simplest, most immediate step, that simple
24:00
addition that you need to take today to begin the process of
24:04
forgiving that closest relative or that Co worker for that small
24:08
irritation from this past week? A difficult but necessary duty.
24:12
Start there, Lewis would say, or risk fixing your soul in that
24:16
universe of pure hatred, not because of what they did to you,
24:19
but because of the pleasure you took and hating them for it.