Transcript Week 3 PowerPoint

Mere Christianity Book 3 Lecture
The Three Parts of Morality
Fair Play and Harmony
Between Individuals
 Harmonizing things inside
each individual
 General purpose of human
life as a whole

Fair Play and Harmony Between
Individuals
◦ Modern people always
thinking about the first
thing and forgetting
the other two.
◦ When you say, “It is
moral because it isn’t
doing anyone any
harm.” you are
thinking only of the
first one
Harmonizing things inside each
individual
Courage and
unselfishness of
individuals is the only
thing that will make
any system work
properly.
 Without good men
you cannot have a
good society.

General Purpose of Human Life as a
Whole

Every human being is going
to live forever
◦ If I were only going to live
70 years there are some
things I would not bother
about correcting
◦ If individuals live only
seventy years, states,
nations, society is more
important than an individual

In Christianity the eternal
individual is infinitely more
important than the state,
nation, etc..
Cardinal Virtues
Prudence
 Temperance
 Justice
 Fortitude

Prudence

Practical common sense
◦ Taking the trouble to think out what you are
doing and what is likely to come of it.
◦ Child’s heart but a grown –up’s head

Christianity demands your intellectual
capacity as well as your heart.
Temperance

Going to the right length and no further
with all pleasures
Justice

Characteristics
◦
◦
◦
◦

Fairness
Honesty
Truthfulness
Keeping Promises
A man who perserveres in doing just
actions gets a quality of character
Fortitude

Facing Danger
Right actions for the wrong reason do
not help build character or virtue.
Social Morality

Characteristics of a Christian Society
◦ No passengers or parasites. If a man does not
work, he ought not to eat. Every man’s work
is to produce something good
◦ No “putting on airs.”
◦ Cheerful Society full of singing and rejoicing
Social Morality Random Ideas
Lending money at interest is forbidden in
the Old Testament and in many other
religions.
 Charity – giving to the poor – essential

◦ Parable of Sheep and Goats
Charity

“I am afraid to say the only safe rule is to
give more than we can spare…. If our
expenditure on comforts, luxuries,
amusements, etc. is up to the standard
common among those with the same
income as our won, we are probably
giving away too little.”
Morality and Psychoanalysis
God judges by moral choices more than
external behavior.
 Everytime you make a moral choice you
are either turning more like Christ or
more like Satan.

Good Moral Choices

Lead to joy, peace and knowledge and
power
Bad Moral Choices

Lead to madness, horror, idiocy, rage,
impotence, and eternal loneliness
“When a man is getting better he
understands more and more clearly the
evil that is still left in him. When a man is
getting worse he understands his own
badness less and less.”
Sexual Morality
Perfect chastity like perfect charity will
not be attained by any merely human
efforts. You must ask for God’s help.
 After each failure, ask foriveness, pick
yourself up, and try again.
 This process trains us in habits of the soul
which are more important still. It cures
our illusions about ourselves and teaches
us to depend on God.

Sexual Morality

The center of Christian morality is not here.
This is not the supreme vice.
Christian Marriage

Marriage is for life
◦ Solemn promise is made to stick to partner
till death
◦ Protects home for children
◦ Protects the woman
◦ Divorce is like cutting up a living body.
Wives are to submit to husbands
 Husbands are to love wives as Christ
loved the Church

When “The Thrill is Gone”
It is simply no good trying to
keep any thrill..Let the thrill go.
Let it die away. Go on through
that period of death into the
quieter interest and happiness
that follow.
 If you decide to make thrills
your regular diet and try to
prolong them artificially, they
will get weaker and weaker and
fewer and fewer..you will be a
bored, disillusioned old man for
the rest of your life.

Forgiveness
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea
until they have something to forgive.
 Start with something easy such as
forgiving a mom, dad, brother, sister,
husband or wife

Love Others as Your Self

How do you love yourself?
◦ Sometimes you hate the things you do.
◦ Sometimes you realize you are a bad person.
◦ You always, however wish better for your self.

That is exactly how we should view and
feel about others.
“Something inside us, the feeling of
resentment, the feeling to “get one’s
back.”, must be simply killed.”
 Day after day, year after year, it is hard
work

The Great Sin
Pride or Self
Conceit is the
Great Sin
 Humility is the
opposite
 Pride leads to
every other vice: it
s the complete
anti-God state of
mind

Pride Test

Ask yourself,
“How much do
I dislike it when
people snub me
or refuse to
take any notice
of me, or shove
their oar in or
patronize me or
show off?”
Pride




Pride is competitive
Proud of being richer,
cleverer, or better
looking than others
The proud man has
got more than he can
possibly want, will try
to get still more just
to assert his power.
As long as there is
one man in the whole
world more powerful,
or richer, or cleverer
than I, he is my rival
and my enemy.
I Am the Greatest Speech

http://www.
youtube.co
m/watch?v=
qxczlps5_bg
Pride Continued
Pride is the chief
cause of misery in
every nation and
every family
 Pride always means
enmity
 Pride is spiritual
cancer: it eats up
the very possibility
of love,
contentment or
even common
sense.

Pride Continued

The real black diabolical Pride, comes
when you look down on others so much
that you do not care what they think of
you.
If you meet a humble man..
“Cheerful, intelligent chap who took a
real interest in what you said to him. If
you do dislike him it will be because you
feel a little envious of anyone who seems
to enjoy life so easily. He will not be
thinking about humility: he will not be
thinking about himself at all”
Charity
Giving to the poor.
 Love in the Christian sense does not
mean emotion. Love is distinct from
affection but it leads to affection.
 It’s easier to be charitable to people you
like.

“Do not waste time bothering whether
you love your neighbour; act as if you
did… When you are behaving as if you
loved someone, you will presently come
to love him.”
 This quote applies to loving God as well.

Hope
Continuing looking forward to the
eternal. It is not wishful thinking.
 It does not mean we have to leave the
current world as it is.

“Most people … want acutely
something that cannot be had in this
world”

Fool’s Answer
◦ If I only tried doing something else I will be happy.
Read quote.

Disillusioned, Sensible Man
◦ Settles down and learns not to expect too much
and represses the part of himself which used to
“cry for the moon”.
“Most people … want acutely
something that cannot be had in this
world”

Christian Answer
◦ Creatures are not born with desires unless
satisfaction for those desires exits…If I find myself
a desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was
made for another world.
Faith

Faith comes when you discover your own
personal bankruptcy.
◦ You discover this when you try your best to
be moral without God
◦ You say to God, “You must do this. I can’t”
◦ Change from being confident about our own
efforts to the state in which we despair of
doing anything for ourselves and leave it to
God.
Faith
Put all your trust in Christ: trusts that Christ
will somehow share with him the perfect
human obedience
 Christ will make the man more like Himself
 Share His sonship with us make us, like
Himself, “Sons of God:
 Christ offers something for nothing He
offers everything for nothing. Whole
Christian life consists in accepting that very
remarkable offer.

Faith

If you have handed yourself over to Him it
must follow that you are trying to obey
Him. Trying in a new, less worried way.
Not doing these things in order to be
saved, but because He has begun to save
you already.
Faith – 2 Mistakes

I can believe and then go on sinning.
◦ This is not faith. This is intellectual belief.

I must do good works to be saved.