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C.S. Lewis
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In the frequently debated essay in The Weight of
Glory titled “Why I’m Not a Pacifist,” Lewis asks a simple,
provocative question: “How do we decide what is good or evil?” It seems
easy enough. It’s our conscience, right? Lewis says that’s the usual answer,
breaking it up into what a person is pressured to feel as right due to a
certain universal guide, and what a person judges as right or wrong for him or
herself.
The first is not arguable given its universality
(something some argue nonetheless), but Lewis warns that the second is often
moved and sometimes mistaken.
Enter Reason. We receive a set of facts, we have
intuition about such facts, and we have need to arrange these facts to “produce
a proof of the truth or falsehood,” Lewis says. This last ability is where
error usurps reason or simply a refusal to see and understand the truth.
Most of us have not worked out all of our beliefs
with Reason. Rather, we lean in on the authority on which those beliefs are
hinged and we are humble enough to trust it.
Why not pacifism then? Here’s his rundown, in
brief.
First, war is very disagreeable in everyone’s point
of view. The pacifist contends that war does more harm than good, that
every war leads to another war, and that pacifism itself will lead to an
absence of war, and more, a cure for suffering. Lewis is pointed in his
response:
I think the art of life consists in tackling each
immediate evil as well as we can. To avert or postpone one particular war by
wise policy, or to render one particular campaign shorter by strength and skill
or less terribly by mercy to the conquered and the civilians is more useful
than all the proposals for universal peace that have ever been made; just as
the dentist who can stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all
the men who think they have some scheme for producing a perfectly healthy race.
In other words, doing good in tackling immediate
evils with deliberate force, does more good than setting up position statements
based in some humanistic view that improvement will inevitably come just
because… it’s supposed to come.
Hold on. Jesus says a person should turn the other
cheek, right? Lewis presents three ways of interpreting Jesus. First, the
pacifists way of imposing a “duty of non-resistance on all men in all
circumstances.” Second, some minimize the command to hyperbole. The third is
taking the text at face value with the exception toward exceptions. Christians,
Lewis says, cannot retaliate against a neighbor who does them harm, but the
homicidal manic, “attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of
the way, [so] I must stand aside and let him get his victim?” asks Lewis, who
answers his own question with a resounding, “No.”
Further, Lewis says, “Indeed, as the audience were
private people in a disarmed nation, it seems unlikely that they would have
ever supposed Our Lord to be referring to war. War was not what they would have
been thinking of. The frictions of daily life among villagers were more likely
on their minds.”
Lewis ultimately lands on authority, referencing
Romans 13:4, I Peter 2:14, and the general tone of Jesus’ meaning.
Here’s Romans 13:3-4: “For rulers are not a terror
to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in
authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is
God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not
bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries
out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
And I Peter 2:13-14: “Submit yourselves for the
Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme
authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong
and to commend those who do right.”
Do you agree with Lewis’s rationale? How does
your understanding of the Bible and Christian faith influence your feelings
toward war?
