I normally agree with C. S. Lewis. But when I wrote my first book on ethics, I felt I had to put Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer against him—a chapter on each of the three of them, two against one: in Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (2008).
I liked most of what I read by Lewis on how to live in the world. But I concluded that there was a conspicuous gap in his published thought on large-scale social structures, from cities to nations. He seemed almost hobbit-like in his resolute focus on the individual and one’s band of friends.
(Indeed, while Lewis was a faithful churchgoer, he seems to have been, at best, an unenthusiastic one. To my knowledge, he never gives attention to the local church, whether in general or his own—except by way of occasional examples of enduring mild irritation at worship.)
In my reading of Lewis, I found disappointing in such a capacious mind—one at home across multiple centuries of British history and literature—what seemed to me a pitifully narrow outlook on civic affairs:
The main practical task for most of us is not to give the Big Men advice about how to end our fatal economy—we have none to give and they wouldn’t listen—but to consider how we can live within it as little hurt and degraded as possible” (“Good Work and Good Works,” The World’s Last Night, 1952).
I acknowledged Lewis’s heritage as a Protestant in Ulster, dominated by hostile political forces both Irish and English. I acknowledged his wartime experience in the profligate and pointless First World War, dominated by fatal politics and foolish generals. I could understand someone with such a background shrinking from engaging large-scale civic matters.
Still, surely someone needs to think on a city-wide scale, on a national level! We can’t all just return to the Shire, get out the pipes, and sit by the fire.
This past week, Donald Trump nominated a number of members for his Cabinet. I merely needed to see names such as “Matt Gaetz” and “Tulsi Gabbard” to confirm that Mr. Trump was making good on his promises and threats. Not being enamored of any of those three individuals, my mood turned sour.
And for what?
It occurs to me that I should be regarding the incoming American administration the way most people through most of history have regarded a change of regime: like a change of the weather.
You can dislike the weather. You can think that the weather has made some bad choices. You can devoutly wish the weather would behave otherwise.
Dwelling on the weather, however—glueing yourself to the Weather Channel and subscribing to websites and magazines that explain weather systems and detail previous weather patterns—seems excessive. Unless your job requires such knowledge—forecasting, the actual study of meteorology, chaos research—it is difficult to justify a preoccupation with weather studies parallel to the way some of us follow politics.
I recently came across a forgotten stack of back issues of The New Yorker, a magazine I read assiduously. I tore through this stack pretty quickly, however, because in just four years a good third of the articles had become irrelevant: profiles of people who used to be influential but aren't anymore. The weather had changed.
To focus on politics the way many of us do is to distract ourselves from our callings, to deplete ourselves of the precious resources of attention and emotion, and to desert our posts in the vital work of the Kingdom of God.
Yes, I should know enough about politics and current events to exercise my responsibility to vote. Yes, I should know much more if God calls me into party politics, government service, social activism, and other pursuits requiring political knowledge.
Most of us most of the time, however, need to get more knowledgeable about marriage, and child reading, and our work, and church life, and our souls. Those are the spheres to which God has called us and those are the projects in which we can and must accomplish something good.
Reinhold Niebuhr clearly was called by God to reflect on Big Social Facts. Dietrich Bonhoeffer clearly was called by God to prophesy during a political and cultural crisis. Pastors, institutional leaders, politicians, and other Christians whose jobs require political savvy need to acquire . . . political savvy.
Most of the rest of us, though, need to leave politics mostly alone as the social bloodsport it has become for far too many. Who cares what you think about Donald Trump . . . or Justin Trudeau? Who should?
We need to know enough to cope with the weather—literal or political. Having gotten today’s weather report and noticed what (little) matters to us, let’s tend to our gardens, the part of creation over which God actually has given you and me responsibility.
And now that we’ve had this pleasant chat in front of the hearth, let’s check the weather and then get back to work.
Recommended Further Reading:
You can get a free sample here. Or better yet, you can buy your own copy and dive right in here.
"I know of no other book that explains so clearly, with so lively a pen, and with such economy the various intellectual currents that are now disturbing our cultural peace. What is even rarer is that the author grinds no axes, treating both sides of the culture wars with thoughtful charity and a deeply Christian intelligence. 'Woke' has important things to say and it does so in a highly readable manner."
— Nigel Biggar, Ph.D., Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, University of Oxford
