The Poison of Subjectivism is one of many essays that C.S. Lewis wrote about judgments of value. Lewis’s main premise is that all cultures have the same set of morals; it is just the way the morals are interpreted that is different. Anyone who attempts to change the moral system is just rewording the morals that they already have. Lewis then attempts to show that God must be the source of such morals. If judgments of value are not determined by society, then there must be some other determining factor. Lewis argues that goodness is not something that was created by God because “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God” (6). As such, no man can be truly subjective. Everyone has a sense of right in the back of their minds and saying that they are being subjective would be ignoring that sense of right. By trying to be subjective, Lewis argues that we have made people wishy-washy and afraid to stand up for things.
The idea that God is goodness really interested me during this passage. This really gives weight to God’s character. Not only is he a good being, it is impossible for him to not be so. Goodness is so entwined in God’s nature that he is goodness. So often, we think of evil as being of Satan and not divine. How often do we think of goodness and being completely divine and perfect? Our imperfect natures can do what we call “good” at times, but we ultimately fall. I think that this is why it is so hard for us to grasp the power implicit in goodness. Goodness in our world is broken, but it is not meant to be that way. The world that God originally created was good in everything. We cannot even imagine the goodness in that world.
As Christians, we tend to come up with lots of adjectives for God. Awesome, wonderful, mighty, majestic. These words seem so much cooler than good. But good is all that God needs. He is all those other things, but he is those things because of his goodness. We love him because he is good. We are dependent upon him because he is good. The only adjective that God needs is good.
I never realized how much weight there can be behind the word "good." I see now why Lewis was always so careful with his words and was a proponent against verbicide. Because when we allow "good" to mean nothing more than approval, it loses its significance when we call God good.
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about other words we use for God, like Love, Truth, Justice, etc. But I think, in the end, we can trace these all back as 'things which are good.' "The only adjective that God needs is good." Well said.
I also love that quote from this essay about God's goodness. God is the epitome of goodness, and anything we encounter that is good, we know that God is through, in, and around it. It's interesting to think about goodness in ways that we can't even imagine. We only see a very small part of the story; something we may think has absolutely no good in it might be part of God's whole and perfect plan. This is often difficult to think about and wrap our minds around, because we always only tend to look at our own lives instead of the big picture. We just have to trust God because he is the only one who can see the entire picture.
ReplyDeleteI have found it interesting learning over the years in church and catechism that God is His Names. Whenever you come across a Name of God in Scripture, or a virtue, God is that. This is different from us, the name Joe does not reveal anything about who I am, it just reveals what people call me. But when you say that God is God, or that God is good, you are saying something about the nature of God.
ReplyDeleteOften we try and think about the mind of God. Why he does things and it's so hard for us to comprehend. I think more often than not the answer is simple. It's God's nature.
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