5. We Have Cause to Be Uneasy
I ended my last chapter with the idea that in the Moral Law somebody or
something from beyond the material universe was actually getting at us. And
I expect when I reached that point some of you felt a certain annoyance. You
may even have thought that I had played a trick on you-that I had been
carefully wrapping up to look like philosophy what turns out to be one more
"religious jaw." You may have felt you were ready to listen to me as long as
you thought I had anything new to say; but if it turns out to be only
religion, well, the world has tried that and you cannot put the clock back.
If anyone is feeling that way I should like to say three things to him.
First, as to putting the clock back. Would you think I was joking if I
said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is
often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from that
whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting
nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong
turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the
wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right
road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most
progressive man.
We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have
started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start
over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about
being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at
the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been
making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we
must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.
Then, secondly, this has not yet turned exactly into a "religious jaw."
We have not yet got as far as the God of any actual religion, still less the
God of that particular religion called Christianity. We have only got as far
as a Somebody or Something behind the Moral Law. We are not taking anything
from the Bible or the Churches, we are trying to see what we can find out
about this Somebody on our own steam. And I want to make it quite clear that
what we find out on our own steam is something that gives us a shock. We
have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has
made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to
conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful
place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the
universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of
evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a
better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You
find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general
just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than
by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we
conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right
conduct -in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and
truthfulness. In that sense we should agree with the account given by
Christianity and some other religions, that God is "good." But do not let us
go too fast here. The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking
that God is "good" in the sense of being indulgent, or soft, or sympathetic.
There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It
tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful,
or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then
He is not soft. It is no use, at this stage, saying that what you mean by a
"good" God is a God who can forgive. You are going too quickly. Only a
Person can forgive. And we have not yet got as far as a personal God-only as
far as a power, behind the Moral Law, and more like a mind than it is like
anything else. But it may still be very unlike a Person. If it is pure
impersonal mind, there may be no tense in asking it to make allowances for
you or let you off, just as there is no sense in asking the multiplication
table to let you off when you do your sums wrong. You are bound to get the
wrong answer. And it is no use either saying that if there is a God of that
sort-an impersonal absolute goodness-then you do not like Him and are not
going to bother about Him. For the trouble is that one part of you is on His
side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and
exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let
you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind
the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behaviour, then He
cannot be good.
On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an
absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix
we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all
our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making
ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least
likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We
cannot do without it. and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He
is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most
want to hide from. He is our only possible-ally, and we have made ourselves
His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness
would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with
religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger-according
to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. Now my third
point. When I chose to get to my real subject in this roundabout way, I was
not trying to play any kind of trick on you. I had a different reason. My
reason was that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced
the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to
repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I
know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of
and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have
realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and
that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power-it is
after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
When you know you are sick, you will listen, to. the doctor. When you have
realised that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand
what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we
got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer
an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the
Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law,
which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself
becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God. It is an old story
and if you want to go into it you will no doubt consult people who have more
authority to talk about it than I have. All I am doing is to ask people to
face the facts-to understand the questions which Christianity claims to
answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it was possible to say
something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. Of course, I
quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of
unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the
dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to
that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war
and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for
it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for
comfort you will not get either comfort or truth- only soft soap and wishful
thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over
the prewar wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did
the same about religion.
