The Bird,

or If Poe’s The Raven  appeared in “The Message” version of the Bible

By Ben Craton

One dark and stormy night, while I was thinking
About some old books that no one remembers,
I was very tired, but suddenly there was a tap,
As if someone was knocking softly on my bedroom door.
“It must be a visitor,” I muttered, “knocking on my bedroom door-
Only this, and nothing else.”

Oh, I remember clearly, it was the in the middle of Decemeber,
And embers from my fire died on the floor.
I wished it was tomorrow;-in vainity I wanted to read
My books to bring an end to my sorrow-sorrow for my lost Lenore-
That special and glowing woman that the angels named Lenore-
She no longer has a name.

And the sad, nervous rustling of the silk purple curtains
Excited me-filled me with nightmarish terrors I’d never felt before;
So that now, to stop my heart from beating so hard, I stood repeating
“It’s some visitor wanting me to open my bedroom door-
Just some late vistitor wanting me to open my bedroom door;-
That is all, and nothing else.”

At this, my courage grew; and waiting no more,
“Sir,” I said, “or Ma’m, I am so sorry;
But I was just taking a nap, and so when you knocked so softly,
And you did knock very softly, knocking on my bedroom door,
That I wasn’t sure I heard you”-here I opened the door wide;-
There was only darkness, and nothing else.

I looked deep into that darkness, I stood there a while, fearing,
Doubting, thinking up thoughts too frightening to be thought before by anyone;
But the silence continued, and the darkness was too dark to see anything,
And the only thing I could think of was to whisper, “Lenore!”
After whispering, an echo repeated back, “Lenore!”
Only this, and nothing else.

I turned back into my bedroom, furious and frightended,
But soon I again heard a knocking, louder than before.
“Surely,” I said, “surely that is something at my window shade;
Let me see, then, what it is, and figure this out-
Take a deep break and figure this out;-
It’s just the wind and nothing else.”

At this point I opened the shutters, when, with feathers rustling,
A raven stepped in, looking all prim and proper;
He didn’t pay attention to me, he didn’t wait a second;
But, acting like a snob, perched above my bedroom door-
Perched on top of my bust of Pallas just above my bedroom door-
Perched, and sat, that is all.

This this black bird caused me to smile,
Since it had this air of nobility,
“Even though your feathers seem like it,” I said, “you aren’t a coward,
You depressing and old raven wandering in from the night-
Tell me what your name is in hell!”
The raven said, “Nevermore.”

I was struck by hearing this nasty bird talk,
Though its answer didn’t make any sense;
Because who else could ever say
That they had seen a bird above their bedroom door-
A bird, or any animal for that matter, on a statue above their door,
With a name like “Nevermore.”

But the raven, sitting by himself on that bust, only said
That one word, as if he said everything he was in that word.
He said nothing else and he never moved a feather-
Until I muttered under muy breath “All my friends have left me-
In the morning, he’ll go away, just like all my hope.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

I was startled at the silence being broken by just a sharp reply,
“At any rate,” I said, “it only knows that one word
He probably learned it from some pathetic owner who had some sadness in his life
He probably repeated this word over and over in his crying-
Until his hope was gone and only this bird could say this word,
of ‘Never-nevermore.’”

But the raven still made me smirk,
I wheeled my chair in front of the bird, the bust, and the door;
Then, I sat down, and started thinking
Long and hard, wondering what this ominuous looking bird-
this dark, clumsy, skinny, and ominous bird
Meant in saying “Nevermore.”

And so I tried to guess, but I said nothing out loud
To that bird whose eyes seemed to burrow right into me;
This and more I sat thinking about, while reclining
On the soft lining that glowed from the lamp’s light,
But whose lining that glowed from the lamp’s light,
She will never touch again!

Then, I thought, the air seemed thicker, and began to smell
As though angels had entered the room.
“Wretch,” I screamed, “your God has sent you with these angles
Escape and wine for forgetting my memories of Lenore!
Let me take the wine and forget all about Lenore!”
The raven said, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” I said, “You evil thing!-still a prophet, regardless if you’re a bird or devil!-
Whether you were sent by Satan, or you were blown in by a storm,
Alone yet completely clam, on to this empty land-
On to this house which is haunted-tell me the truth, I beg of you-
Is there-is there salvation?-tell me-tell me, I beg of you!”
The raven said, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” I said, “You evil thing!-still a prophet, regardless if you’re a bird or devil!-
In the name of heaven-in the name of God who we both love-
Tell me, sad as I am, if, in paradise far away,
There lives a woman who the angles named Lenore-
There lives a special and glowing woman who the angles named Lenore.”
The raven said, “Nevermore.”

“Then with that, please go away, you bird or enemy!” I screamed, standing up-
“Go back into the storm and the darkness of the night!
Do not leave any feathers as a reminder of what you just said!
Let me be along!-Get down from the bust above my door!
Take your beak out of my heart, and your body from off of my door!”
The raven said, “Nevermore.”

And the raven, never moving, is still sitting, is still sitting
On the white bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes seem like those of a dreaming demon,
And the lamp’s light casts his shador onto the floor;
My soul is as black as that shadow on the floor
And will always be that way!

As you may or may not know, I identify most strongly right now with that of the Orthodox tradition. In their Easter or Pascha service, a phrase is used quite frequently; that of “He is risen!” with the response of “Indeed He is risen!” I had never heard this phrase before I had begun to go to Pascha service about four or five years ago and it struck me as something unique to the Orthodox faith, like a calling card of sorts. It seemed kind of like the custom in Alabama of saying “Roll Tide” or “War Eagle” to which the other party would respond in kind as a symbol of a shared secret brotherhood to which the outsider was ignorant.

Last year, Pascha and Easter were on the same day so when I saw the Facebook posts stating “He is risen” and “Indeed He is risen” from some people whose faith I did not know precisely, it only passed over me that perhaps there were more people out there that found Orthodoxy, or at least perhaps the liturgy, inspiring. This year by contrast, I saw about a tenfold occurrence of the phrases used by people I now know, or have known, have nothing at all to do with Orthodoxy or Catholicism (or any faith with a liturgy). Indeed, the phrase has morphed into “He is risen” and “He is risen indeed”. A very odd thing that protestants would want to take something from a liturgy at all, so I figured that the changing of the phrase was to make it slightly less recognizable in its origins.

Then, as I was wondering about this, I saw some other posts not saying “Happy Easter” but instead saying “Happy Resurrection Sunday.” OK, I thought, so they are trying to put the emphasis on what Easter is all about, but then that didn’t really make that much since because that is all Easter is about to begin with. Why the need to change the name at all?

At this point, something occurred to me. Several years ago, a pastor friend of mine said that their particular church was trying to incorporate more things into its service that were “high church,” as he described it. It was this recollection that made me reach a kind of epiphany as to what was going on. I’m not sure why, but it seemed to me like these folks weren’t really sure who they were. It seemed like they were re-branding themselves, or at least re-branding what it was they were professing. It’s not as though this would be anything new, modern protestant churches are usually trying to change things about themselves so they appeal to more and more people, but for some reason these simple little observations make me feel like the re-branding has gone deeper than just changing service styles to changing the faith below.

It’s worth noting that I already feel like when I visit protestant churches now a days it feels like I’m going to amateur hour. Perhaps it’s my terrible judgmental side coming out, but after seeing how the Orthodox conduct themselves in worship to God, seeing protestants attempt the same thing with little to no “professional” guidance makes it seem a shadow of what it could otherwise be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not commenting on the sincerity of those present in the service, but the service itself and the underlying principles seem pale and transparent, like returning from the Louvre to a small town art show.

What stuck me how the use of these things, the liturgical phrases and changing of the name Easter, seemed like new paint on a worn out car. It is as if to keep the spirit of Easter alive they have to take from the “high church” and make it seem as though they are closer to deep truth than they would be otherwise. It is as if they admit that they have lost the meaning of Easter already that they must rename it. And I find myself asking, if they already lost the name, why would they not lose it again? What is in a name? If they find deeper truth in liturgy, why do they insist on just taking bits of it, why not the whole thing? Or to put it more bluntly, do they know who they are?

I guess the real rub of the matter is that in just seeing a few phrases bandied about, I find myself thinking that the answer is: no, they do not know who they are. All the re-branding is just a glossing over of that fact. If you keep changing yourself, you come to a point when you no longer can point to the real you. I have to wonder, are they willing to ask themselves who they really are? Am I?

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote anything. I apologize for that. It seems that for the last year or so I have been wrestling with some questions. Some of these questions are about religion in general and some of them are directed solely at the Christian Church. A lot of these questions remain unanswered, even after taking so long to meditae on them. The other night, though, I found something that opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. I found a new way of looking at not only my own questions, but of the things the questions themselves were questioning.

If you know me, you know that I have a deep seeded resentment towards ignorance in the face of knowledge. Show me someone who would rather take it easy rather than learn something about themselves or the world and I would see someone I would rather kick in the back of the head. For a long time, whenever someone in the American Christian church would talk about religion, I would basically tune it out. The reason being that I had come to the conlusion that most American Christians would rather be boiled in acid then acually have to think for themselves. I chalked it up to a hatred of knowledge on their part and dismissed the idea that maybe there was some other factor involved. That is, until I read something in a book.

In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamees Buddhist monk, discusses the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. For the first part of the book I was not much impressed. I had read much concerning Buddhism beforehand and what this book was saying about the similarities between the two religions was not very revealing, at least not in a new and novel way. It wasn’t until I got to the titular chapter that I had my mind blown. Hanh states, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way,’ He meant that to have a true relationship with God you must practice His way. … But we must distinguish the ‘I’ spoken by Jesus and the ‘I’ that people usually think of. The ‘I’ in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way.” It was here that suddently things began to click.

For as long as I can remember, the statement “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me,” was always used only in one context: to prove that Christianity was the only way to heaven. I can not recall a time in which this statement, spoken by Jesus, was not used to disregard another religious teaching or philosophy. The only way to heaven is through Jesus, which means that the only way to heaven is by worshiping Jesus, which means that anyoen who doesn’t worship Jesus is going to go to hell. That was the interpretation I learned from the Church and from other Christians. But this statement by Hanh, esspecially put in the context I had prior to learned about Buddhists, is of monumental importance to me.

The true meaning of the statement, in my view, is two fold. The first one is like the original interpruation: Jesus is the way to heaven. The second one is this: being as Jesus is the way to heaven. I think that American Christianity has lost a lot of itself in he last century. It is told to me that there were people in the world who became like Jesus; people who, instead of following a list of regulations and conforming to a set of social expectations, actually embodied the attributes of Christ in the world. Today, it is hard to imagine what such a person would be like.

Christians today have taken, what I consider, a grave turn. Instead of becoming like Christ, they have instead taken to becoming a Jesus cult. This may sound ridiculous, but consider it for a moment. A lot of Christians today would describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” or would give an account of the religious affiliation as “I love Jesus”. Go to a “praise session” at a modern church and you will find people who will, instead of reflecting on how to become more like Christ, put their hands in the air and chant or mutter “Jesus” over and over. There is a strange fixation on the death and sacrifice of Jesus to the point where all other teachings of Christ fall by the wayside. I think it would be fair to say that to some extent they could be called a Jesus-cult. A cult which is hung up on the humanity of Jesus instead of on his divinity and his teaching.

Let me clarify a bit. I am not, I repeat Not, saying that loving Christ or the sacrifice made by him for humanity is not important or in anyway a bad thing. What I am saying is that it would seem that Christians today, especially in America, have become stuck in a rut of making those the focal point of their entire lives. Why, though, is that a bad thing? Christ did come to die for our sins, no doubt. However, if that was all he was here to do then he could have done that at any time. What makes a Jesus-cult bad is that it religates the teachings and the life of Christ to the back burner if not cuts it out all together and begins to teach that all that is needed for salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and all is forgiven and you are heaven bound. If that was really all there was to it we would be no better than the Buddhist cult that believes that they can lead any kind of life, but as long as they call upon the name of the Buddha before they die they are guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land.

Christ did not come just to die so that we could claim him as a savior and then go about our merry way so long as we worship his name every noe and again. He came to teach us how to live–Not only as a guideline, but as a requirement. It is not enough that we say “I believe in Jesus.” We must become like Christ. We must live like Christ. We must follow his teachings: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself regardless of what he has done or what he believes; to be charitable and merciful; and to seek peace within ourselves and to spread that peace to others. As Hanh says, “If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus.”

The Jesus-cult is so prevalent because it is so easy. In today’s society we like things that are simple, easy, and convenient. Showing up to church, praising the name of Jesus, getting swept up in the emotion of a crowd (as opposed to fostering true emotions within one’s self), claiming Jesus as a personal savior, and going home, these are easy and simple. There is no real life change except maybe for a new schedule to follow and a few new social norms to abide by. But the true person has not, I think, been changed at all. What has been changed are only the clothes of the person. Being a true Christian is hard, strenuous, and tough. It requires not only “rebelling” against a society in which we are in to be “good” but requires us to change ourselves from the soul out. It demands us discovering who we are, who this person is whom I call “I”. It requires knowledge and wisdom, something that has become hard to aquire as those who could pass it on have themselves passed on and those who seek the easy path have nothing to offer. When Christ said that there were two paths, a wide, easy path a rocky, narrow one, he did not mean just “being evil is easy and good is hard”, he also meant that being good is easy, but following his life and his teachings is hard.

Examine your own faith, if you are a Christian. Are you being as Christ or are you simply praising the name of a man?

Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.

Probably the biggest fear I had about this lent was prayer. No, I didn’t fret over what I would be eating or how much studying I would do or how much church I would attend. The fear I had was actually praying to the power that created the universe and who has the final say over my salvation.

Perhaps a little background is in order. As many of you know, I am originally from a Church of Christ background. This is a big deal here because one of the few things that particular denomination does not do is teach you how to pray. A large section of my life was spent in CoC and I never knew how to pray. Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t pray, I just had no idea how. You see, most protestant denominations (especially restoration movement ones) are big into praying “from the heart.” It certainly sounds good and in truth that is what we should be aiming for at all times: to have our hearts constantly praying. But what it translated to in practice was no one really seeming to know how to pray except through impromptu.

Let me say that I have no problem with impromptu prayer as such. Meaning, I don’t have a problem with a random prayer to god welling up and coming out in honesty. What I do have a problem with is two fold. I have a problem with prayer that is planned for, for a group for instance, and the leader of the prayer gets up and makes it up as he goes. I also have a problem with prescribing this method of prayer to laymen at large for private prayer.

I am sure most of us have been in a congregation where it came time to pray and the leader got up and said something like this:

God, I just also lift up soandso to you, Lord, I just join all of us in asking, Father that you would just love us and Lord, we love you. Lord, and Lord, just pray over us, Lord, and Lord, bless us Lord. We don’t deserve your Love Lord. And Lord, thank you for Jesus Lord, because Jesus is Lord, Lord. Lord Jesus, Lord, you are Lord Lord Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord Lord Lord. Amen.

OK, maybe that’s a little over the top, but I’m sure you can relate at some level. What is it about this prayer that is wrong? Well.. none of it really. It may genuinely be a prayer from the heart to God. My question though is this. We are in front of the god all mighty, maker of heaven and earth and everything in between and speaking for your congregation or group you say that. Imagine you saying that to a king on earth. Or perhaps imagine you saying that in front of a stadium of people you do not know. Would you be embarrassed? Would you perhaps want a chance to prepare your prayer first?

So there’s my nitpick section. Prayers lead by a designated person should be thought out for the group and not impromptu on the spot. Why you ask? Why should they? Why can not a man get up in front of his church family and open his heart to god? My answer is two fold. One, doing it impromptu means there is either undue pressure on the speaker to say the right things or no pressure at all to say anything significant. These are our petitions to the Lord. They should be handled with care. Second, impromptu without any knowledge of the structure of how to pray gives the impression that that’s how everyone should do it. Just open up and let loose to god.

There is where my big problem came from. My idea of how to pray was just let loose. Tell god how I feel and what I want. “Talk to Jesus as a friend,” I was told growing up. Yes, I know, god loves us all. However, we are also called to have fear of god. To know his power and glory. Years of laying in bed at night saying “Dear lord, please help with this and please do this for me. Oh, and let me have this. And please make so and so do this. In Jesus name, amen” was getting nothing done other than me treating god as though he were some advise column at best and salesman at worst. Years of treating god like a chum, like a pal, had slowly degraded him in my mind to something even lower than myself. I had relegated him to my co-pilot, the guy I turn to when trouble hits and who I ignore the rest of the time.

Then I went to the Pascha service at my Dad’s church (orthodox) last year. For the first time I saw a purely liturgical prayer. “Nonsense!” I thought, “Prayer like this has no soul behind it. They are just saying words on a page.” And so I left there thinking that impromptu was still the way to go, even if flawed. Then I read a book my dad gave me called “The way of the Pilgrim.” It is about a Russian man who wants to learn how to pray. He goes to his priest and asks him, “Father, how must I pray?” And he is told, “Pray the Jesus prayer until it flows from your heart unbidden.”

If you are asking yourself what the Jesus prayer is, it is this “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. He was told to pray this over and over until it became like breathing. The man did, and it changed his life. Every action he took from then on was exposed under the light of these words coming from his heart unceasingly. It was then, in that book that I discovered how to pray.

Prayers are not just petitions to god for ourselves. They are more. They are us speaking to the creator of all, who has power of life and death, who holds salvation in his hand. If we are to pray, we must hold that in mind. So with that in mind, I revisited the liturgical way of prayer. I realized they were not just words on a page. They were words of power written down by holy men who have prayed the same prayers for thousands of years. Praying those words was to commune with them in the presence of god. It was to understand what a holy petition was to god.

With that said, allow me to share two examples of this. The first are the Trisagion Prayers. These are said before private morning and evening prayers as well as various other prayers.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to You, Christ our God, our hope, Glory to You!
Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of life: come and abide in us. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, O Gracious Lord.

Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.
Holy God. Holy Mighty. Holy Immortal Have mercy on us.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

All Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive our sins. Master, pardon our transgressions. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for the glory of Your name.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

And one more, the prayer of St. Ephraim

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.”

“But grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to me, thy servant.”

“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own failings and not to judge my brother; for  blessed art Thou unto the ages of age. Amen”

I do not have the time to explain the significance of these two examples. A book could be written on each. And that’s just the point. In these little petitions are the power of thousands of words.

And that is why I was scared. To say these words, even silently, while on your knees is powerful and moving. Perhaps most frightening, they are changing. Say them enough and they begin to stay with you all day. When you sin, when you fall, you can hear your own words come back to you, rebuking you and correcting you. You have no choice really but to change.

On the first day of Lent, it took me a good five minutes to work up the courage to actually do this. I stood there in an almost empty room, all alone, willing myself to kneel and say these kinds of words to god. It was so vastly different from what I was used to. It was like that time I was doing it for real for the first time, as though I was actually in front of god this time and beseeching his mercy for me being a screw up.

So in the end, it is changing me. Even though its only been 5 days, I can feel it. I have seen a more excellent way and I would ask that if you are doing Lent as well, even if you’re protestant (which I still am, technically) try praying like this. Reflect on what you are asking god and let it change you as well.

http://www.transchurch.org/sguide/praybk.htm

I’m sure many, if not all, the people who read this site have read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It seems like the prerequisite reading for anyone on facebook who is listed as a Christian and also who has books on their profile. A badge of honor, one might say, for any good Christian boy or girl it to have read this book at some point as if to point out that they had read the authority on logical progression from a moral law to Jesus Christ. I too have read this book and regard it with probably the same level of respect as Lewis himself gave to the works of Augustine and MacDonald. However, when I read it again earlier this year I was hoping for a renewal of confidence in my own arguments for theology. Unfortunately, I found the opposite.

If one recounts what the first part of Mere Christianity is about one will remember the foundation Lewis laid for the rest of his argument: that there seems to be a universal moral law. This idea, in and of itself, flies in the face of the modern view of pluralistic ideologies and most readers would be content to leave it at that and move on, satisfied that they had uncovered the truth beneath an otherwise innocuous stone. But for myself, I had a difference take on it this time around. For me, the problem lay in that while there was good evidence that a universal moral law existed, there wasn’t much talk about where it came from. It should be noted, Lewis himself at the beginning of the book stated that he was not writing the book as a theologian or for theologians but for the common layman and so this omission of where the values of the moral law came from (aside from the obvious conclusion Lewis was attempting to make) was not considered for the sake of brevity.

In my view though, I was left with a dry mouth. Lewis had shown that there did seem to be a universal moral law that extended throughout civilizations that was also apparently mutually exclusive to a particular religion. For example, stealing and murder were universally condemned where as bravery and self-sacrifice were extolled. The problem was no alternatives were presented to where these universals came from other than the conclusion that they pointed to the existence of a supernatural origin. I had many friends who would look at the argument then that “universal morals extend everywhere therefore there is a god” and laugh. And at first blush, as well they should. The argument can be made though that these values seem to all be within man, why should we not conclude that they are a natural extension of the animal kingdom into our animal bodies?

This argument takes place because several of our own values can be extended into the animal realm of survival. “Do not murder because it will be detrimental to the species.” “Do not steal or our means of supporting ourselves may collapse.” And so on. It would seem then, that because an alternative solution exists to the question of values’ origin that we should then invalidate the original conclusion or at least not make it the sole conclusion we can draw (and thus negate the absoluteness and the core of Lewis’ argument).

This problem has been bothering me for about a year. I tried very had to think of something that is not found at all within the animal kingdom, no trait or behavior at any rate, that could not be a relic of what we call today “human nature” or what we possess that is somehow beyond the realm of what could have been nature specific. At one point I thought I had found that music might be something unique to humans, but that fell out of favor as it did not touch upon the merit of values, only of our ability to discern that some combinations of tones were more pleasing to our nerves than others. This problem confounded me until last night as I drove home and decided to listen to an audio book as I did. I chose to listen to The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.

The Abolition of Man is a three part essay in which Lewis sets up the basis for answering this question. In this work, he does not define where values come from (he makes no mention of the Christian god) but instead where it does not come from. Specifically, he defines the moral law as something that can not be deduced from nature or instincts within man. He does this within three separate stages.

In the first part “Men without Chests” Lewis describes something he as found in a school literature book in which two professors are making the point that when something is said about an object (the example given was “That waterfall is sublime.”) the meaning of the statement is not that the waterfall itself is sublime but that the feelings the speaker is having about the waterfall is sublime. The act of giving an object value then is “debunked” and replaced with the value itself coming from the feeling the speaker has and not from the object. The conclusion Lewis draws then is that modernism is interested in removing intrinsic values and replacing them with values which stem from subjective relativism.

In part two, “The Way” Lewis moves on to say that using this new relativism based on feelings that stem from within man himself will ruin civilization. He grants exceptions to two scenarios though: that educators can find a basis for which their system of values is more valid than the one they are replacing and using “instinct” as the arbiter in which system is better. Here he separates the “moral law” (or the morals which are universal to east and west) which he calls the Tao from the man made system of values. Changes made to a system of values outside the Tao is subject to failure, says Lewis, because most external value systems are made from picking and choosing which bits of the Tao are useful and which are not. They validate some and discard the rest. The problem in this is there is no reason given that one value should be put above one other. One must discredit all or none of the Tao. Changes made from within the Tao need no special reasoning as any changes are intrinsically an extension of an existing presupposition. The difference in the Tao and external is as Lewis put it, “the difference between a man who says to us: ‘You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?’ and a man who says, ‘Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead.’”

The third part “The Abolition of Man” takes the train of thought to its logical conclusion. We have thus been subjecting our moral value systems to the same conquering of nature as we have electricity and genetics. In reality, says Lewis, we are really only giving more power over ourselves to lesser and lesser men. He does not abdicate that science if evil, nor even of its misuse, but he does state that with technological advancements and man’s conquering of nature we in truth seem to only be at the will of those who wield that power whether it be bombs or power companies or radio stations. He also states that our future generations are dependant on our actions as we are dependant on those individuals who hold nature in their hands. In short, there will come a time when through eugenics and science, one generation will rise above the rest and wield the most power as possible by humanity over nature. He will have molding man to his own image and removed everything from their value system that was not man made. With his own value system created by a select few who are above the value system as its creators he creates a system based on instinct and want. IN short, man has been playing a sham all along. IN conquering nature we really only allow nature to finally conquer us.

This was the answer I was looking for. The Tao can not be something that arose from nature because it is a system that seems to push down the natural impulses or controls them and bends them to our own will. This seems then to validate the rest of Lewis’ argument within Mere Christianity. I would highly recommend that you read this book if you have a chance if you would like a better understanding of the actual base from which the rest of Mere Christianity is written and is presented in a much better way than I did in this article. I’m grateful I was able to find this book and learn from it the answers I had been looking for as well as finally hearing put to paper the types of thoughts I had been having over the last year.

You can read The Abolition of Man by following this link: The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis