Tell Me, Friend, When Did We Let Evil Become Stronger Than Us?

Arguably the most thought-provoking dialogue in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, so far, can be found in the stirring exchange between the elves Legolas and Tauriel on the outskirts of King Thranduil’s Woodland Realm in The Desolation of Smaug (hereafter, D.O.S.). 

Tauriel & Legolas

The Context:  After Thorin Oakenshield and his company successfully escaped from Elvenking Thranduil’s Mirkwood prison, the compassionate elf warrior Tauriel, a captain of the Mirkwood Elven Guard, left Thranduil’s palace unannounced and without the king’s permission to hunt a pack of 30 or more Orcs who were seeking to kill Thorin and his companions.  Legolas, Thranduil’s son and elven prince of Mirkwood, pursued and caught up with Tauriel, just as she had hoped.

Legolas:  The King is angry, Tauriel.  For six hundred years, my father has protected you; favored you.  You defied his orders; you betrayed his trust.  Come back with me.  He will forgive you.  

Tauriel:  But I will not.  If I go back, I will not forgive myself.  The King has never let Orc filth roam our lands.  Yet he would let this Orc pack cross our borders and kill our prisoners?  

Legolas:  It is not our fight.

Tauriel:  It is our fight.  It will not end here.  With every victory, this evil will grow.  If your father has his way, we will do nothing.  We will hide within our walls, live our lives away from the light, and let darkness descend.  Are we not part of this world?  Tell me, Mellon [friend], when did we let evil become stronger than us?

While re-watching D.O.S. last week, I was struck by the timely application of Tauriel’s words to the present state of Christianity in the Western world, specifically in the U.S.  I will explain why in a moment.  But, first, I need to get some definitions out of the way.

The majority of self-identifying Christians in modern-day America can be divided into two camps:  what screenwriter Brian Godawa terms cultural gluttons and cultural anorexics.

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.  Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’  If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18-20).

The cultural gluttons are not merely in the world but are very much of the world as well.  These are the people pleasers whose thinking, speech, and conduct are so much like the rest of society that they are virtually indistinguishable from non-Christians.  They are the “friends of the world” who spend more time being changed by the culture than changing the culture — that is, the proverbial “thermometers” who ought to be “thermostats.”  Informed more by Hollywood and New York Times bestsellers than the Bible, cultural gluttons have little to no spiritual discernment because their consciences have been desensitized through overexposure to worldliness.  And although some cultural gluttons may be genuinely born again, many in this camp are false converts.

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?  Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). 

The cultural anorexics, in contrast, are neither in nor of the world.  These are the lukewarm Christians who are either overly offended by or under-concerned about the hellish direction the culture is headed.

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.  So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked . . . Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore, be zealous and repent” (Revelation 15-17, 19).

Cultural anorexics have developed a compartmentalized “secular-versus-sacred” worldview that renders them oblivious both to the gravity of the problem and the solution to it.  After having relinquished the most influential platforms and vocations in society to the secularists in the mid-20th Century, the culturally anorexic Christians largely withdrew from the public square, academia, science, politics, law, the arts, media, etc. and have remained complacently isolated within the comfortable confines of their local sanctuaries and self-manufactured “Christian” subcultures (guilty as charged) while a spiritual war for the souls of mankind rages relentlessly outside, and even inside, their cozy church walls.

In the meantime . . .

False teaching abounds, the authority and divine inspiration of the Bible are constantly under assault, and the holy Scriptures are regularly twisted out of context until they are made to say things God never would while our mostly biblically illiterate congregations can’t tell the difference.

The sacred, divinely designed social institutions of the family, marriage, church, and government have been undermined and disfigured so radically that it no longer seems possible that God ever had any involvement in the creation of said institutions.

Innocent children are slaughtered by the thousands per day through elective abortions — an abhorrent reality that is still the law of this land.

And neither abortion nor sexual immorality, in its many perverse varieties (fornication/pre-marital sex, cohabitation, homosexuality, adultery, pornography, etc.), is even addressed by most preachers.  Worse, it seems as though half the churches in this country now either condone and/or openly ordain individuals who knowingly engage in sexual sin and refuse to repent of it.  Even worse still, many professing Christians are rashly revising and reinterpreting what God unequivocally stated millennia ago about these behaviors, because it is always much easier and safer to ride the waves of popular opinion than to swim boldly against the tide.

What’s more, far too many believers are rolling over and playing dead while our fundamental religious liberties (e.g., the right not to be coerced by the government to violate our conscience or the Word of God and the freedom to speak Biblical truth without facing legal punishment) are being eroded, one by one, by “special interest” bullies and tyrannical judges who have no constitutional, much less divine, authority to do so.

Tauriel was right:  With every victory we allow it to have, evil will grow.  Things will only get worse if the righteous — that is, those of us whom Christ has mercifully delivered from bondage to sin and clothed with His own goodness and who, as a result, possess the sole remedy for the problem of evil in the world — hide within our churches or homes and do nothing.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” – attributed to Edmund Burke

Clearly, Christians have plenty of moral problems to contend with in our own backyard.  But what might the American Church also learn from Tauriel’s impassioned appeal to Legolas’ conscience to join the fight against evil/injustice everywhere it exists?  Recall what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said about this subject in his remarkable “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.  Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.  I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea.  Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963

Dr. King’s and Tauriel’s sobering words remind me that no man is an island to himself and why the body of Christ must, by necessity, be concerned with what happens to each of its indispensable parts, irrespective of location (see 1 Corinthians 12).

Shall the children of God in the U.S. turn a blind eye to the diabolical darkness that continues to spread far beyond our national borders?  Can the Christian sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about the barbaric genocide, torture, and unjust imprisonment that is happening daily to his brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa?  Or can one indwelled by the Spirit of God simply ignore such real and present vileness as infanticide, human trafficking, child pornography, and slavery (yes, it does still exist)?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once famously stated, “Inaction in the face of evil is itself evil.”  A similar maxim goes like this:  “Tolerance of sin is itself sin.”  The point of both expressions is that there is no such thing as moral neutrality.  In the eyes of God, the so-called sins of omission (i.e., passively failing to do the right thing) are just as bad as sins of commission (i.e., actively doing what is wrong).  Truly, to do nothing is to do something — namely, to surrender to evil and betray our Savior.  As the Apostle Paul would say at such a time as this, “May it never be!”

The Great Commission is not merely local but undeniably global in scope.

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

Are believers and unbelievers not all part of the same world, every square inch of which belongs to God our Sovereign?

Is not every human being, regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, health, appearance, or social status, a fellow image bearer of God filled with inestimable dignity, and does He not earnestly desire to save all of humanity?

Is not the Christian’s greatest task making disciples of all the nations so that people everywhere may be released both from the manipulative clutches of the Great Adversary, Satan (who, make no mistake, is craftier and more malevolent than all the Orcs, Goblins, Uruk-hai, and the dark lord Sauron combined), as well as from the power and prison of their own intrinsic evil — spiritual forces that only Christ Himself can and has defeated and over which He has purchased, with His blood, everlasting victory for anyone who will step out of the enslaving shadows of sin and into the emancipating Light of His glorious grace?

“This [i.e., praying for all who are spiritually lost] is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:3-6).

Fantasy, allegory, and the parables that Jesus so masterfully employed are powerful modes of storytelling that can convey transcendent truths in ways the most eloquent sermons cannot.  Through a most unlikely voice — a mythical female elf character who was created ad hoc for a film adaptation of a fictional novel — I have been convicted to repent of my own passivity and indifference and challenged to obey the marching orders of my great General and King (the King of kings, to be exact).

Peter Jackson’s marvelous Hobbit films and, even more so, the magnificent Lord of the Rings trilogy never fail to remind me that God purposefully created and strategically positioned me in this specific historical epoch to fight as one of His soldiers in the greatest of all conflicts, using weaponry and armor that are not of this world (i.e., the Bible, prayer, and the fellowship of the saints).

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ . . .” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.  Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.  Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:10-13)

I would like to remind fellow Christians who are reading this that you also are troops who have been specially drafted into the battalion of the Almighty.  The question isn’t, “Must I go to war?”, for surely, you are in a war, whether you want to be or not.  Instead, the question we should all be asking ourselves, every day, is this:  “Am I faithfully serving my Lord in the battle, cowardly trembling in the trenches, or traitorously siding with the enemy?”

Far from being cultural gluttons who partake in evil, or cultural anorexics who retreat from it, followers of Jesus Christ should follow Tauriel’s example and embrace our proper role in culture as agents of change devoted to doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God (cf. Micah 6:7-8).  In every generation in church history, there has always been a remnant of Christians who have fallen into this category — men and women of God who did not set out to change the world, but who simply obeyed God and applied Scriptural truth whenever and wherever the Lord gave them opportunity.

Paul of Tarsus, William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Billy Graham, and Chuck Colson are classic examples of change agents who well understood the Christian’s correct relationship to, and role in, the culture.  Joni Eareckson Tada is a great modern example.  Her amazing life testimony should strip away every last excuse that we “pew warmers” might try to use to justify our (unbiblical) nonintervention.  Undeterred by her physical limitations and personal suffering as a quadriplegic, Joni makes use of what she can — her voice — to speak for the voiceless, defend the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, and tirelessly demonstrate to a culture that has become notorious for devaluing the sanctity of human life that every single person is precious to Jesus.

I know the situation seems hopeless at times.  When I get to thinking about the way our nation and world are headed, it certainly appears as though Christians have allowed evil to grow stronger than us.  But when I stop dwelling on the doom and gloom and turn my focus to Scripture, I am motivated by what God has to say:  Evil can never be stronger than the people of God, because God Himself lives within His people (see 1 John 4:4)!  With this great truth inscribed on our hearts, we Christians ought to be actively and winsomely engaging the fallen world in which we live by carefully teaching and urgently proclaiming the Truth of God’s liberating Word and courageously shining the inextinguishable Light of Christ in every dark place so that every evil deed may be exposed and all servants of darkness may flee to Jesus for personal rescue.

“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:18-20).

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.

“You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house” (Matthew 5:13-15).

How can we who call ourselves disciples or followers of Christ continue to stay put inside our “holy huddles,” wasting the resources, gifts, and abilities with which God has graciously equipped us, knowing that He has commanded (not requested) us to be the Truth-preserving salt and the Life-giving light of this sin-darkened world?  With the way things are now, will we not be found guilty of hiding our lamp under a basket and losing our saltiness?  And how can we be good ambassadors for Christ if we water down, revise, or otherwise compromise the very Gospel that is absolutely essential for one’s eternal redemption?

We cannot.

My Prayer:  Heavenly Father, I implore you to send sweeping repentance and reformation throughout the apathetic and increasingly worldly church bodies in America:  a Third Great Awakening — one that yields greater Spirit-led revival in the culture than the previous two combined — so that when Christ returns, He will find His people faithfully fighting evil and courageously walking in the Light of Your love and Truth, rather than being ashamed to find us either indulging in, or cowering in fear of, the darkness of this world.  Father, I ask that You would re-sensitize our dulled consciences to the gravity of our sins, fill us with compassion for the lost as well as the saved, and make it crystal clear to each of us exactly where and how we may best serve You so that we can be most effective in this great spiritual war and do our part to overcome evil and correct error, in the name of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, wherever injustice and falsehood exist.  To You alone be the glory, now and forever.  Amen.

“If your faith does not lead you to heroic action, you must ask yourself, ‘What do I believe?  Do I believe anything?'” – Jason Snyder

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pascal’s Fixed Point, and the Moral Law

I agree almost word for word with Eric Eisenberg of Cinema Blend.  Although lacking some of the high-spirited patriotism, emotion, and fun of its predecessor, 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, the more intense and suspenseful Captain America: The Winter Soldier is easily the best of the “Phase 2” Marvel films, and it is the most well-written and entertaining comic-related flick since 2012’s The Avengers.

Cap (“on your left”!) and Sam “Falcon” Wilson

“They who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

The script is strong:  a political conspiracy/action thriller with a superhero twist (of course) featuring relevant criticisms of present-day America’s intrusive big government/surveillance state, the surrender of liberty for “security,” terrorism, and the corruption & danger that arise when too much power is concentrated into too few hands.

The acting is consistently well-done.  Chris Evans has settled comfortably into the role of Captain America, and this time he’s better than ever.  Anthony Mackie fits right in as Cap’s new compadre and fellow war veteran, Sam “Falcon” Wilson.  Sebastian Stan is great and already under-appreciated by critics as the titular villain who, being a mostly silent, machinelike assassin, does most of his communicating through tortured and confused facial expressions.  Even so, when Stan does speak, he manages to evoke sympathy for the decent man trapped somewhere beneath all the HYDRA brainwashing and continually raises viewers’ hopes for his character’s eventual redemption.  Robert Redford and his numerous henchmen, especially Brock “Crossbones” Rumlow, convincingly portray hatable malefactors; and recurring supporting characters Black Widow and Nick Fury (heretofore depicted in Marvel films as largely shady and forbidding, if not callous, consequentialists) finally open up and show some personality, transparency, and, yes, scruples — a softening of heart/conscience no doubt spurred on by the Captain’s positive influence on the two.

CGI use in The Winter Soldier is minimal — probably the least used in any Marvel movie.  This is a big plus in my book, as it helps remove this story from the predominantly science-fiction realm of most Marvel films and “ground” it in reality, thereby making the story more relatable to audiences.  Fortunately, the visual effects are no less impressive for it.  Far too many action/adventure films today rely so heavily on computer-generated imagery that it’s often hard to tell if one is watching a movie or a cartoon (or video game!).  Winter Soldier’s simplicity and minimalist approach, in this regard, is very refreshing.

The fight scenes were meticulously choreographed and brilliantly executed — some of the best I’ve seen, frankly.  In particular, Winter Soldier does a better job than all previous live action portrayals of Captain America at demonstrating just how superb Cap is at tactical planning, hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, and stealth, ninja-like maneuvering, specifically in the outstanding opening rescue mission (one of the film’s highlights).

That said, the violence is a bit excessive at times, thanks mainly to the often vicious antagonists who have zero regard for human life.  This really should have been toned down in several places, especially considering that children are a key demographic for superhero movies.  There are some light expletives (no F-bombs or blasphemous uses of God’s name, thankfully!) sprinkled throughout, as well.  Still, overall, good (represented with consistent clarity by Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson) conquers evil in satisfying ways.

To give you an indication of how engaging I thought the film was — particularly the compelling relationship between Rogers and James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, his best friend “to the end of the line” — the somewhat cliffhanger ending of the film left me vocally lamenting, “No, don’t cut to the end credits yet; keep going!”  Indeed, I was anxious to see Captain America 3 immediately!  And I’m sure that’s exactly the sort of thing the directors want to hear.

The number one reason you should see this movie, though, may best be summarized by a line that Agent Phil Coulson delivered in response to Cap in The Avengers when Rogers expressed his doubts as to whether his country still needs an outmoded military hero:  

“[With] everything that’s happening — the things that are about to come to light — people might just need a little old-fashioned.”

Steve Rogers, a member of the “Greatest Generation,” whose values were informed by and firmly rooted in the predominantly Judeo-Christian worldview of 1940s America, brings direly needed moral leadership and rock-steady integrity to a nation gone adrift — a solitary anchor, as it were, holding firm and resolute as his 21st-century countrymen float aimlessly past him and downstream the murky waters of “situation ethics” and circumstantial “truth.”  (Sound familiar?  If not, just look around you.)  Ever concerned with doing the right thing and always willing to lay down his own life to save the lives and protect the liberty of others (John 15:13), Rogers is the most believable and venerable “hero”/role model in Marvel Comics’ voluminous ensemble of colorful, super-powered protagonists.  And never has this fact been made more salient than when Cap’s unflinching scruples are juxtaposed with the moral relativism and recurring treachery that permeate the plot of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

That brings me to one of the most enlightening observations ever written by the 17th-century French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and all-around prodigy Blaise Pascal:

“When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving . . . When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving; but if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.  We must have a fixed point in order to judge our course” (Pensées, vol. 33).

Truly, Rogers’ anachronistic “Man-out-of-Time” character serves as a fixed point of black & white moral clarity for an America that is vastly different from the one he remembers — a country that has spent the last 60 years or longer wandering farther and farther away from the God upon whose eternal precepts its freedoms were established and whose citizens have, subsequently, become so desensitized to sin and shame that they casually rationalize the most underhanded decisions (lying, stealing, murdering — you name it), provided it gets them what they want and doesn’t result in too much collateral damage.  (Recall Fury’s words to Rogers when describing Black Widow’s ethics:  “Romanoff is comfortable with anything” and Alexander Pierce’s utilitarian readiness to bring what he deemed “order” to the lives of 7 billion people by sacrificing 20 million others.)  

How inspiring it is, then, to see an honorable man of principle rise to the occasion “for such a time as this,” buck the cultural trend, and follow, without apology, his “archaic” convictions that truth and morality are not matters of personal preference or cultural convention; but that they are, in fact, grounded in something — or, more likely, Someone — transcendent, unchanging, ever-dependable, and perfectly good.  Granted, Rogers communicates these convictions more through actions than with words; but that is precisely why everyone he comes into contact with stands up and takes notice.

When a person tenaciously sticks to his principles through the most antagonistic of circumstances, it emboldens others to follow his contagious example and reminds them that there is still some good left in this broken, mixed up world that’s worth fighting for.  Natasha Romanoff, Nick Fury, many within S.H.I.E.L.D. (i.e., the ones who weren’t covert servants of HYDRA), and even the Winter Soldier himself discovered that when betrayal abounds and not even your longtime teammates and closest “friends” can be trusted, rest assured, Captain America can be.

“Hey, I’m always honest.” – Captain America speaking to Black Widow

Significantly, after witnessing the uncommon integrity and trustworthiness of this single individual, those men and women (that is, the ones whose hearts/consciences were not completely hardened and given over to evil, à la the HYDRA sleeper agents) were inspired to a better way of life.  I don’t know about you, but I want to be that kind of man and have that kind of impact within my own sphere of influence. 

Who Is Cap’s “Commanding Officer”?

Fictional superheroes such as Captain America (who, similar to Aslan from Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, typologically points us to the Person of Jesus Christ) inspire us to be better people — to pursue a life distinguished by counter-cultural nobility and valor, even when pressures to compromise beset us from all sides.  But have you ever paused and wondered why human beings ought to be good, or why there are desires within us to be “better people” and to do noble or courageous things?  What can adequately account for these?

Back to Cap, what do you think is the basis or origin of Steve Rogers’ personal sense of moral duty and justice?  Put another way, where does his desire to do “the right thing” come from, and how can he know for sure what “the right thing” to do even is?  You can’t say it was the Super Soldier Serum, because Rogers was every bit as conscientious before the genetic transformation took place.  One might respond, “Well, his mother taught him right from wrong when he was a child,” or “Maybe he learned it from the society or culture in which he was raised.”  However, those replies answer the wrong question.  I’m not asking how did Steve Rogers discover or come to know about certain values or moral duties.  I’m asking, whence did the values and moral duties themselves originate, and why does Steve believe so strongly that he is obligated to abide by them?

Moreover, to whom or what exactly is Captain America morally obligated or duty-bound?  In other words, who is Cap’s “Commanding Officer,” if you will?

Personally, I believe that the Ultimate Fixed Point — that is, the transcendent, unchanging, absolutely good, and forever trustworthy Moral Law Giver — to whom Steve Rogers appeals and bends his knee has to be the one true God of the Bible, full of grace and truth, whom Captain America himself acknowledged in my favorite quote from The Avengers:

“There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure He doesn’t dress like that.” – Captain America, quickly correcting Natasha Romanoff (a.k.a. the Black Widow) after Romanoff told Cap that Thor and Loki were “basically gods”

What say you?  If not God, then who or what is the ultimate source of moral rules/laws, of humanity’s intuitive awareness of the rightness & wrongness of our actions (i.e., thoughts, words, and deeds), of the “guilt” we experience when we do what is evil or fail to do what is good, and of the innate sense of duty and justice that seems to have been pre-programmed into every human mind?  And if not God, then by what standard can humanity rightly judge our course?  Before you attempt to answer, I challenge you to think very carefully about some of C.S. Lewis’ profound observations about the universal Moral Law (or moral objectivism) from his seminal work, Mere Christianity (pp. 10-12 and 22 of the PDF edition, emphasis mine):

[S]ome people wrote to me saying, ‘Isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn’t it been developed just like all our other instincts?’  Now, I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct:  but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law.  We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct — by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food.  It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way.  And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person:  and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct.  But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help, whether you want to or not.  Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger.  You will probably feel two desires — one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct); the other, a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-

preservation).  But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.  You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.  The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play:  Our instincts are merely the keys.

When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another?  Have any of the changes been improvements?  If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress.  Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better.  If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised (sic) morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.  In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others.  We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or Pioneers –people who understood morality better than their neighbours (sic) did.  Very well then.  The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other.  But the standard that measures two things is something different from either.  You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.  Or put it this way.  If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about.  The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said ‘New York’ each meant merely ‘The town I am imagining in my own head,’ how could one of us have truer ideas than the other?  There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all.  In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour (sic) meant simply ‘whatever each nation happens to approve,’ there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or morally worse.

If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong?  [For] many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling ‘whatever you say, and however clever your arguments are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power?  Aren’t all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?’  But then that threw me back into another difficulty.  My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?  A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.  What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
. . . Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own.  But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too, for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.  Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely, my idea of justice — was full of sense.

Thoughts?