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3. Social Morality
The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and
man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new
morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by)
is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.
Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks
and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, "People need to be reminded
more often than they need to be instructed." The real job of every moral
teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple
principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse
back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back
and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.
The second thing to get clear is that Christianity has not, and does
not profess to have, a detailed political programme for applying "Do as you
would be done by" to a particular society at a particular moment. It could
not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular programme
which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow, that is
not how Christianity works. When it tells you to feed the hungry it does not
give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures it
does not give you lessons in Hebrew and Greek, or even in English grammar.
It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and
sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs,
and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will
put themselves at its disposal.
People say, "The Church ought to give us a lead." That is true if they
mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the
Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And when
they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some
Christians- those who happen to have the right talents- should be economists
and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians,
and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to
putting "Do as you would be done by" into action. If that happened, and if
we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian
solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. But, of course, when
they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to
put out a political programme. That is silly. The clergy are those
particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained
and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to
live for ever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for which
they have not been trained. The job is really on us, on the laymen. The
application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education,
must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just
as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists -not
from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and
novels in their spare time.
All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a
pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps
it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no
passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every
one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to
produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and
then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to
be no "swank" or "side," no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian
society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always
insisting on obedience-obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of
us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am
afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly,
it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding
worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the
New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."
If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I
think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its
economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, "advanced," but that
its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned-perhaps
even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it,
but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what
one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We
have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us
wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan
itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really
Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those
bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that is
why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are
fighting for Christianity.
Now another point. There is one bit of advice given to us by the
ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the
great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic
system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money
at interest: and lending money at interest-what we call investment-is the
basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are
wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians
agreed in forbidding interest (or "usury" as they called it), they could not
foresee the joint stock company, and were only dunking of the private
moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said.
That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do
not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are
in or not This is where we want the Christian economist But I should not
have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilisations had
agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which
we have based our whole life.
One more point and I am done. In the passage where the New Testament
says that every one must work, it gives as a reason "in order that he may
have something to give to those in need." Charity-giving to the poor-is an
essential part of Christian morality: in the frightening parable of the
sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some
people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of
giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no
poor to give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce
that kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can
stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian
morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am
afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words,
if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the
standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably
giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I
should say they are too small There ought to be things we should like to do
and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am
speaking now of "charities" in the common way. Particular cases of distress
among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it
were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling
and endangering of your own position. For many of us the great obstacle to
charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in
our fear-fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation.
Sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more
than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and
less than we ought on those who really need our help.
And now, before I end, I am going to venture on a guess as to how this
section has affected any who have read it My guess is that there are some
Leftist people among them who are very angry that it has not gone further in
that direction, and some people of an opposite sort who are angry because
they think it has gone much too far. If so, that brings us right up against
the real snag in all this drawing up of blueprints for a Christian society.
Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what
Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from
Christianity for the views of our own party. We are looking for an ally
where we are offered either a Master or-a Judge. I am just the same. There
are bits in this section that I wanted to leave out. And that is why nothing
whatever is going to come of such talks unless we go a much longer way
round. A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really
want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I
may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the face, but I
cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot
learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot
learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you,
we are driven on to something more inward -driven on from social matters to
religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home.
