Motive lies behind every action we take, and can often cause an action that is seemingly good to become immoral. The motives behind our beliefs are no exception, and as a result Christians are subject to immoral Christian belief; an immorality that lies in the motive and not in the consequence. When one devotes oneself to Christianity under desires other than to seek the truth and find God, the faith loses its validity and becomes one of mercenary affairs instead of Godly affairs. These desires take many forms and are laced throughout C.S. Lewis’ writings Throughout The Screwtape Letters, Lewis most explicitly states the desire to bolster a cause and rally a group together as an illegitimate motive for adopting Christian ideas. Lewis makes
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In fact, all other motives for adopting and holding Christian beliefs that aren’t based off the search for truth are off base and subject to criticism, but that’ll be left for now to be expanded on in a little bit. The more specific issue that must be faced with this motive is how the person wanting to adopt Christianity to pursue a more moral life, after doing so, will have to come to terms with the fact that living a moral life isn’t even close to the goal of the Christian faith. In his essay titled “Man or Rabbit”, Lewis explains how “even if you were [good], you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created” (113). Lewis reminds his readers that our mortal worries about ethics are insignificant when we face the reality of our immortal lives with Christ. Christ bore humanity’s immoral tendencies and freed the individual from goodly concerns when he became the ultimate sacrifice. If the person were to wholly adopt Christianity (which he ought to do maximize his ethicality), he would find that Christianity does little to make him feel better about his morality and instead reveals to him how shockingly we fall short of God’s goodness. Christianity does not satisfy the motive of …show more content…
I would like to argue that, for some Christians, being a part of this “Inner Ring” of Christianity is a powerful motive for being a part of the religion. This doesn’t hold true for most American urban areas, but a large portion of rural Pennsylvanians are regular churchgoers. Most of these people have developed deeply rooted connections with the Church leaders and with the Church body, connections that are (at least initially) based on their unifying beliefs of Christianity. Lewis believes that “this desire [to be in the inner circle] is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action” (“The Inner Ring”, 151). It might be that this desire to remain in these Christian groups, groups that know something about the world that others don’t, is one of the greatest motivations for some people to remain Christian. It might be that there lies some fear of being outside of these groups; a fear that partially comes from losing companionship with dear friends, and a fear that partially comes from no longer being “in the know”. Even the inconveniences and issues of Christianity would hold little power to those caught in the desire to stay in the Inner Ring according to Lewis, as he argues that the pains of not mattering to the Inner Ring are much more significant than the pains of the duties of the Inner Ring (148). People would much rather deal with the
In fact, all other motives for adopting and holding Christian beliefs that aren’t based off the search for truth are off base and subject to criticism, but that’ll be left for now to be expanded on in a little bit. The more specific issue that must be faced with this motive is how the person wanting to adopt Christianity to pursue a more moral life, after doing so, will have to come to terms with the fact that living a moral life isn’t even close to the goal of the Christian faith. In his essay titled “Man or Rabbit”, Lewis explains how “even if you were [good], you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created” (113). Lewis reminds his readers that our mortal worries about ethics are insignificant when we face the reality of our immortal lives with Christ. Christ bore humanity’s immoral tendencies and freed the individual from goodly concerns when he became the ultimate sacrifice. If the person were to wholly adopt Christianity (which he ought to do maximize his ethicality), he would find that Christianity does little to make him feel better about his morality and instead reveals to him how shockingly we fall short of God’s goodness. Christianity does not satisfy the motive of …show more content…
I would like to argue that, for some Christians, being a part of this “Inner Ring” of Christianity is a powerful motive for being a part of the religion. This doesn’t hold true for most American urban areas, but a large portion of rural Pennsylvanians are regular churchgoers. Most of these people have developed deeply rooted connections with the Church leaders and with the Church body, connections that are (at least initially) based on their unifying beliefs of Christianity. Lewis believes that “this desire [to be in the inner circle] is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action” (“The Inner Ring”, 151). It might be that this desire to remain in these Christian groups, groups that know something about the world that others don’t, is one of the greatest motivations for some people to remain Christian. It might be that there lies some fear of being outside of these groups; a fear that partially comes from losing companionship with dear friends, and a fear that partially comes from no longer being “in the know”. Even the inconveniences and issues of Christianity would hold little power to those caught in the desire to stay in the Inner Ring according to Lewis, as he argues that the pains of not mattering to the Inner Ring are much more significant than the pains of the duties of the Inner Ring (148). People would much rather deal with the