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Navigating Morality in a Fraught World · Scripture-ish

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I am reading my essay, Navigating Morality in a Fraught World.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Near the end of Mere Christianity, C.S.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Lewis includes a chapter called Two Notes,
0:20
SPEAKER_00: a very brief chapter,
0:22
SPEAKER_00: which essentially offers two long footnotes to the previous chapter,
0:26
SPEAKER_00: which is called The Obstinate Toy Soldiers.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: The first note explores why God created humans as toy soldiers and not as sons.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Lewis answers that it had to be this way.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: We had to be toy soldiers and not sons.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: But I'll let you read how he presents his case.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: The second note.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Concerns how humans are connected to one another and yet different.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in
1:13
SPEAKER_00: a list, but as organs in a body.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Different from one another and each contributing what no other could.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: As members of a body,
1:28
SPEAKER_00: we should recognize our connection to one another and respect our differences.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Lewis explains, quote,
1:36
SPEAKER_00: If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself,
1:42
SPEAKER_00: you will become an individualist.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: If you forget that he is a different organ from you,
1:51
SPEAKER_00: if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike,
1:56
SPEAKER_00: You will become a totalitarian,
2:00
SPEAKER_00: but a Christian must be neither a totalitarian or an individualist."
2:11
SPEAKER_00: I love that for Lewis, these are not political choices.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course,
2:20
SPEAKER_00: they are political choices,
2:22
SPEAKER_00: but beyond that, they are moral choices, religious choices.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: He says a Christian must not be either a totalitarian or an individualist.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Of course, this phrase, must not be, does not indicate that one's salvation is at stake.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Is it a salvation issue?
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Can a totalitarian or an individualist gain admittance through the pearly gates?
3:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but that's not the point.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: It puts distance between you and Jesus.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Being a totalitarian or an individualist puts distance between you and Jesus.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Being a totalitarian or an individualist means that you are less like Jesus.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: A Christian must be like Jesus.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Must be.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: But never will be.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Not in this life.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: And now we get to the part of the chapter that I really want to talk to you about.
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SPEAKER_00: The final paragraph.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: This is Lewis's chapter in Mere Christianity.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Jumping off from the notion that totalitarianism is no good
3:48
SPEAKER_00: and neither is individualism, Lewis now says this.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Here's a long quote.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: I feel a strong desire to tell you,
3:59
SPEAKER_00: and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me,
4:02
SPEAKER_00: which of these two errors is worse?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: That is the devil getting at us.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: He always sends errors into the world in pairs, pairs of opposites.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worst.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: You see why, of course, he relies on your extra dislike of the one error.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: To draw you gradually into the opposite one.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: But do not let us be fooled.
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SPEAKER_00: We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: We have no other concern than that with either of them.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Note well what Lewis said here.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: He says,
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SPEAKER_00: the devil relies, quote,
5:03
SPEAKER_00: relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into
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SPEAKER_00: the opposite one, end quote.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I think individualism is good, but people are so crazy.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I just want to let them do whatever they want.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I wash my hands of the whole thing.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I like totalitarianism,
5:29
SPEAKER_00: but do you see what those people over there are trying to do?
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Somebody needs to stop them.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: As Lewis says,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: the choice itself is diabolic because it is a choice between two godless errors
5:46
SPEAKER_00: and our supposed piety steers us away from the godlessness of the one into
5:54
SPEAKER_00: the godlessness of the other.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Or to put it another way, the choice is driven not by love, but by hate.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I love the thing I choose, it's that I hate the other thing more.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: I was reminded of this point from Lewis by an online article published back in March
6:20
SPEAKER_00: at the online news outlet called the dispatch,
6:25
SPEAKER_00: which is by the way, the best news and commentary outfit in the English language.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: You should at the very least make a habit of listening to the dispatch podcast.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: But anyway,
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SPEAKER_00: the Dispatch website published an article back in March called The Philosophers
6:42
SPEAKER_00: and Churchmen Who Fell for Fascism.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: And it was written by a guy named Nathan Beacom.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: The article treated the Frenchmen during the 1930s and 1940s who ended up supporting
6:57
SPEAKER_00: the pro-Nazi government of France based in Vichy and those
7:03
SPEAKER_00: who resisted this collaborationist French regime.
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SPEAKER_00: Times of intense stress,
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SPEAKER_00: such as World War II,
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SPEAKER_00: present many opportunities, almost universal opportunities, it seems.
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SPEAKER_00: For people to choose something important,
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SPEAKER_00: it therefore presents many opportunities for moral compromise.
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SPEAKER_00: Eight and a half decades of hindsight make it obvious to all of us that it was
7:40
SPEAKER_00: the resistors of Vichy France who were right.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: While the collaborators compromised their morality in all kinds of amazing, depressing ways.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: But without that hindsight, if we had been there at the time, what would we have done?
8:01
SPEAKER_00: Resist or collaborate?
8:05
SPEAKER_00: What is so clear to us in the 21st century was perfectly clear to a lot of people in
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SPEAKER_00: the early 1940s.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the film Casablanca was released in 1942, for goodness sake.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: But of course,
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SPEAKER_00: the Nazis had their intellectual apologists,
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SPEAKER_00: and what is so distressing about the article by Nathan Beacom is his profile
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SPEAKER_00: of primarily two apologists from within Christianity,
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SPEAKER_00: the French bishop And my French pronunciation is terrible,
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SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to give this a try.
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SPEAKER_00: The French bishop,
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SPEAKER_00: François-Louis Oveté, and the theologian and friar, Reginald Garigou-Lagrange.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: For our consideration of how Christianity does or does not make people good,
9:06
SPEAKER_00: We could simply read the article,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: the entire article by Beacom, but here I'll just read excerpts.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Beacom sets up the struggle in the 1940s this way,
9:23
SPEAKER_00: quote, In that frothy age in France, there were many forks in the road.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: A person did not wake up one day and decide to collaborate with the Third Reich.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: There was a slow,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: almost imperceptible process of decision whereby someone was led one way or another.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Of those who counted themselves faithful Christians, many adapted to Vichy.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: But many others stood against it in favor of a different idea of France and
10:00
SPEAKER_00: a different idea of faith.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: This is still a quote from Beacom.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: It is instructive,
10:09
SPEAKER_00: however,
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SPEAKER_00: to consider how individuals who began
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SPEAKER_00: from similar starting points went two separate ways.
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SPEAKER_00: Some...
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SPEAKER_00: Like the philosophers Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson,
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SPEAKER_00: saw the wickedness of Vichy for what it was,
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SPEAKER_00: while others, like Bishop Ovity, compromised themselves morally step by step.
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SPEAKER_00: How to maintain moral clarity and avoid a blind wandering into wickedness is
10:43
SPEAKER_00: a question of perennial importance.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, who is this Bishop Ovety?
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know where to go to get quick answers to such questions,
10:58
SPEAKER_00: and let me now read to you the opening paragraph of Wikipedia's entry on the Bishop.
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SPEAKER_00: François-Louis Ovety,
11:07
SPEAKER_00: the 9th of January,
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SPEAKER_00: 1874, that's when he was born, 1874, to the 15th of February, 1964.
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SPEAKER_00: So he lived a long time.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Bishop of Mindy in the 30s and 40s was one of seven French Roman Catholic bishops
11:26
SPEAKER_00: who were obliged to submit their resignations to Pope Pius XII because
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SPEAKER_00: of their enthusiastic collaboration with the occupation of France by Germany.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Now that was just the opening sentence of the Wikipedia article.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: This guy was a bishop.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Who lived to be 90 years old.
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SPEAKER_00: Who knows how many people he helped during his long life, how much good he did in this world.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: But according to Wikipedia,
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SPEAKER_00: the first thing you need to know about Bishop Ovety is that he collaborated with
12:06
SPEAKER_00: the Nazis.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: My goodness, talk about beclowning yourself, covering your legacy with shame.
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SPEAKER_00: Whatever good you did in the world is overshadowed because in the moment
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SPEAKER_00: of decision,
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SPEAKER_00: when the stakes were the highest,
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SPEAKER_00: when you had the opportunity to be a hero or a villain, you chose poorly.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's what people need to remember about you.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Yikes.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Back to Beacom's article.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Here's another quote from Beacom.
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SPEAKER_00: To the end, Ovity operated out of a fear of the liberal Republicans.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Of course,
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SPEAKER_00: this is French politics,
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SPEAKER_00: remember, so it means different things than in America in the 21st century.
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SPEAKER_00: He operated out of a fear of the liberal Republicans,
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SPEAKER_00: and at each decision point,
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SPEAKER_00: he decided to go whatever direction would most clearly work against them.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Now I pause here in my reading of Beacom to explain that Republicans
13:15
SPEAKER_00: in this context does not mean conservatives or the GOP or MAGA as it does
13:22
SPEAKER_00: in America now, but it means almost the opposite in Overtis context.
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SPEAKER_00: Republicanism in France is most clearly associated with the French Revolution at
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SPEAKER_00: the turn of the 19th century.
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SPEAKER_00: Being a conservative and being a fan of the Catholic Church means
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SPEAKER_00: that Bishop Ovity disliked French republicanism.
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SPEAKER_00: He longed for the old days.
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SPEAKER_00: He wanted to make France great again.
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SPEAKER_00: Note, as Beacom tells it, that the bishop operated out of fear.
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SPEAKER_00: He chose the Nazis because he wanted to oppose what he saw as an error,
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SPEAKER_00: the liberal republicanism of his day.
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SPEAKER_00: But of course he chose the Nazis,
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SPEAKER_00: not right off,
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SPEAKER_00: but at the end of a string of choices that started much more innocently.
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SPEAKER_00: As Beekum tells us next, here's a quote from Beekum.
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SPEAKER_00: And so he embraced Vici and Vici led him to embrace collaboration with the Reich.
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SPEAKER_00: And this led him to preach to the faithful that they ought to obey and be loyal
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SPEAKER_00: to Vici,
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SPEAKER_00: even to that dreadful point of urging them to allow themselves to be taken
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SPEAKER_00: to Germany for unpaid labor.
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SPEAKER_00: He counseled Frenchmen to become Nazi slaves.
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SPEAKER_00: Ovity's hatred for his traditional political enemies led him,
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SPEAKER_00: he who thought he was defending old Catholic France,
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SPEAKER_00: to betray his country to a foreign power and to fail in the duties to his faith.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
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SPEAKER_00: Do you hear this?
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SPEAKER_00: What was Bishop Ovity's motivating impulse?
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SPEAKER_00: Beekham tells us.
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SPEAKER_00: Hatred for his traditional political enemies.
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SPEAKER_00: Now listen closely here.
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SPEAKER_00: Hatred is the motivating impulse in American politics today in 2026.
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SPEAKER_00: Hatred is the animating force.
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SPEAKER_00: It's what gets people out of bed in the mornings.
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SPEAKER_00: I've got to stop those other people.
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SPEAKER_00: Is this true of all American politics?
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SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty high percentage on the national level.
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SPEAKER_00: These days,
16:00
SPEAKER_00: when it comes to national politics,
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SPEAKER_00: it's pretty common for people to vote against a candidate rather than for someone
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SPEAKER_00: that they like.
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SPEAKER_00: And if they do like a candidate,
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SPEAKER_00: it's oftentimes not because of that candidate's policies,
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SPEAKER_00: but because the candidate mocks or disparages the people that
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SPEAKER_00: the voter also despises.
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SPEAKER_00: You want to raise money in politics?
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SPEAKER_00: Make people afraid and criticize the people that they hate.
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SPEAKER_00: Do I need to tell you that this is bad for you,
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SPEAKER_00: that this is morally corrupting,
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SPEAKER_00: that following the path of Bishop Ovidy does not lead toward the blissful life
16:48
SPEAKER_00: with Jesus?
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SPEAKER_00: It is at this point,
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SPEAKER_00: after describing Bishop Ovity's embrace of the Nazis because of his hatred
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SPEAKER_00: of liberals, that Beacom reminds us of what C.S.
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SPEAKER_00: Lewis said about the devil sending errors into the world in pairs.
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SPEAKER_00: What Beacom adds to Lewis is the subtlety of the choice,
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SPEAKER_00: the fact that we don't make it all at once, but step by step.
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SPEAKER_00: One last quote from Beacom.
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SPEAKER_00: Without knowing it,
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SPEAKER_00: we make little choices to compromise on telling the truth,
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SPEAKER_00: or to use underhanded means to achieve our ends, or to slander our opponents.
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SPEAKER_00: As time goes on, the compromises get deeper and deeper, and we risk losing ourselves altogether.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Now, near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount,
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus applies a strange label to his audience.
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SPEAKER_00: Salt.
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SPEAKER_00: Here's how the Lord says it.
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SPEAKER_00: Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt hath lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?
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SPEAKER_00: It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.
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SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus mean by salt of the earth?
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SPEAKER_00: I know that salt flavors things, but it doesn't flavor the earth.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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SPEAKER_00: one of the ways of punishing an enemy is by salting the earth so
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SPEAKER_00: that his crops won't grow.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm just pointing out that it's a strange image, not just salt, but salt of the earth.
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SPEAKER_00: But ignoring the earth part, people like to talk about
18:51
SPEAKER_00: People like to talk about in what ways the followers of Jesus ought to be salt.
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SPEAKER_00: But such discussions often lose sight of what Jesus actually says about the salt,
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SPEAKER_00: which is entirely negative.
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SPEAKER_00: He doesn't talk about the benefits of salt or all its good qualities.
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SPEAKER_00: He merely issues a warning about losing one's saltiness.
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SPEAKER_00: For Jesus, this is what you need to know.
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SPEAKER_00: Losing your saltiness is a real possibility, even an urgent possibility.
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SPEAKER_00: And in that case, wherewith shall it be salted?
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SPEAKER_00: The result is uselessness.
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SPEAKER_00: It is good for nothing.
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SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say so right here,
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SPEAKER_00: but I imagine that such saltless salt He would want to spit out of his mouth.
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SPEAKER_00: He has said such things before.
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SPEAKER_00: Saltless salt is not actively evil, just worthless.
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SPEAKER_00: Remember how Navalny criticized the people that just stare at the table?
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SPEAKER_00: Or from King's letter from a Birmingham jail, remember the white moderate?
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SPEAKER_00: Again, this is a real possibility.
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SPEAKER_00: In Navalny's telling, it's most people.
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SPEAKER_00: We remember how Corrie Ten Boom noted ruefully how many
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SPEAKER_00: of her fellow Dutch capitulated to the Nazis.
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SPEAKER_00: And then there are the people that actively work against the purposes of God,
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SPEAKER_00: whether they are Christians or not.
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SPEAKER_00: Usually, especially if they are Christians, it does not happen all at once.
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SPEAKER_00: Bishop Ovety is a helpful illustration of this slow process, but hardly the only one.
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SPEAKER_00: We have them all around us in America in the year 2026,
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SPEAKER_00: people who claim to represent Christianity while obviously and giddily betraying
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SPEAKER_00: the basic principles of Christianity.
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SPEAKER_00: We remember that Jesus and the apostles not infrequently guided us toward
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SPEAKER_00: the more important truths, the non-negotiables.
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SPEAKER_00: Among these was not a cappella singing in the Christian assembly or
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SPEAKER_00: the activities permitted to women in public worship or even the correct procedures
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SPEAKER_00: for baptism.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Now hold on,
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SPEAKER_00: don't be one of those fools who thinks that because I said these issues are not
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SPEAKER_00: the most important issues in Christianity that what I meant was
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SPEAKER_00: that they have no significance at all.
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SPEAKER_00: Surely none of you listening to this is so dumb.
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SPEAKER_00: I certainly am not.
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SPEAKER_00: But these important aspects of Christianity are not the most important aspects of Christianity.
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SPEAKER_00: I know that for sure.
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SPEAKER_00: Because of words that appear in my Bible in red.
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SPEAKER_00: The non-negotiables, the issues of highest importance are altogether different.
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SPEAKER_00: One time Jesus distilled the weightier matters of the law as justice and mercy and faithfulness.
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SPEAKER_00: These are the non-negotiables,
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SPEAKER_00: the aspects of Christianity that should be front and center in our mind and
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SPEAKER_00: in our practice.
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SPEAKER_00: The devil and his servants want us to be motivated by hatred.
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SPEAKER_00: The way of Jesus is the opposite.
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SPEAKER_00: Some people treat Romans 13 verses 1 through 4 as if it were the most important part
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SPEAKER_00: of Christianity, or at least maybe in the realm of politics.
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SPEAKER_00: It's neither.
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SPEAKER_00: I know that because in the very same chapter,
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SPEAKER_00: Paul said that the command to love one's neighbor,
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SPEAKER_00: not the command to submit to the government,
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SPEAKER_00: the command to love one's neighbor fulfills the law.
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SPEAKER_00: Submitting to the government is important,
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SPEAKER_00: but if there is a tension between submitting to government and loving our neighbor,
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SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us which one wins if we want to be pleasing to Christ.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Thinking about the relationship between Christianity and morality over
23:43
SPEAKER_00: the past few episodes has clarified some things for me.
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SPEAKER_00: First of all, Christianity should make you good.
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SPEAKER_00: Better than you used to be,
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SPEAKER_00: more morally upright,
24:00
SPEAKER_00: because the entire point of Christianity is to make you like Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: to conform you to the image of the Son of God,
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SPEAKER_00: as Paul says in Romans 8,
24:08
SPEAKER_00: 29, and as the New Testament indicates in many other passages.
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SPEAKER_00: The reason for your existence is for you to become like Jesus,
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SPEAKER_00: and that means, yes,
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SPEAKER_00: Christianity should make you good,
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SPEAKER_00: But not every Christian,
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SPEAKER_00: not everyone who claims Jesus as Lord,
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SPEAKER_00: submits to baptism and regularly attends a Christian worship assembly.
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SPEAKER_00: Not all of these people want to be like Jesus.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: There is seed sown among the weeds.
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SPEAKER_00: This seed produces no fruit, but it does produce a plant, a plant that is choked by weeds.
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SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what the weeds represent?
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SPEAKER_00: The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things.
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SPEAKER_00: Good grief, how many people does that list describe?
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SPEAKER_00: How many people that go to church regularly are motivated not by a desire to conform
25:22
SPEAKER_00: to Christ, but by lusts of other things?
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SPEAKER_00: I think it is the unfortunate truth that none of us wants to be like Jesus fully.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: We all want to hold something back.
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SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that some people have as their highest aim,
25:46
SPEAKER_00: not their only aim, but their highest aim, to be like Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: They are on the path to fulfilling the Shema, loving God with all their heart.
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SPEAKER_00: They're on the path.
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SPEAKER_00: They're not there yet.
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SPEAKER_00: And some people, maybe a lot of people, who go to church are not on that path.
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SPEAKER_00: I won't judge the eternal soul of Bishop Ovity,
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SPEAKER_00: but I can say that to the extent that he was motivated by hatred of his enemies,
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SPEAKER_00: he was not on the path toward Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: He may have thought he was, but he wasn't.
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SPEAKER_00: Last time,
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SPEAKER_00: when I talked about the parable of the tares,
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SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that to avoid being a tear,
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SPEAKER_00: we must realize the constant possibility that we are a tear.
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SPEAKER_00: Or, as we have seen here, that we might lose our saltiness.
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SPEAKER_00: And we have to desire not to be a tear.
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SPEAKER_00: This essay has explored both of those points,
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SPEAKER_00: but here at the end, I want to emphasize the second.
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SPEAKER_00: Our Lord said, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
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SPEAKER_00: For us, the treasure is Jesus, and he has our heart.