The Condition of Man

God’s greatness is not threatened by our importance. God formed man from the dust of the ground; however it is when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life that the man thus formed became a living being. The physical body of a man is made from the substance of the earth, but the life did not come from the dust, but from the eternal living God.


Moreover in John 17:22 Jesus talks to the Father and says “the glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one. . .” Therefore, the glory of Jesus has been given to us.


Consider I Corinthians 15:46-48 “The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.”


Notice this verse does not says “as was the man from heaven” but “as is the man from heaven so also are those who are born of heaven.”

In the Church there is the view that man is unworthy perpetually even when the fullness of God inhabits man, he continues to see himself as the unworthy scum of the earth. Or another view is often maintained that brings the greatness of God down to the level of a “buddy” completely stripped in all practical purposes of His magnificent greatness so that we can have the intimate relationship with God that the Bible promises.

However, I think it is much more accurate to continue to see God’s greatness as that which surpasses all understanding. Also that this same God lifts us up out of our earthly born nature and sets us in the high places in Christ as Christ fills us with His glory and makes us heirs with Him giving us His righteousness.

Ephesians 2:4-7 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.”

We who are in Christ are already raised with Him and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We are in Jesus and He is in heaven so we are also now born of heaven, not of earth. We were not worthy of our own earthly nature, but we were made worthy by His heavenly nature.

God can have such an intimate relationship with us because He already stepped down into the depths with our sin and rose without it. We now are raised in Him without blemish fully made righteous for it is written “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)”

Righteousness

This post is to clarify the last post and to answer comment responses given to that post.

God does not wish anyone to do wrong/bad/sinful things. Doing these things harms the person and other people.

We all do these wrong/bad/sinful things. We have all sinned. God takes this seriously, He even equates thinking murderous thoughts as being as bad as doing the deed. Naturally, it’s not as bad for the victim if it wasn’t carried out, but to the person doing the thinking it is harmful to them to have such malice in them.

However, we sin because our nature is sinful and we are bound to that nature by birth since the first sinners sinned because something changed in the very core of humanity and the world when evil was actualized.

Now the way to doing righteous things is to have a righteous nature. But we don’t have a righteous nature in our fallen state, we have a sinful nature. God makes possible for each and every person to have a new nature given as a gift and that gift is Jesus. That new nature is the eternal life of Jesus. This isn’t something bestowed to us from Jesus, this is something Jesus is in His being and when we are in Him we have this new nature too. So from this new nature, righteousness is our being, and when we act according to our new nature righteous good acts are the result.

When a person with this new nature does something sinful they are acting according to a false reality – their old self. It is not who they are anymore, but learning about our new selves is a process that is worked out in time and as we grow in that new reality we grow in external expression of that goodness which is within us.

So it isn’t that God isn’t concerned about our actions. The truth is our actions are a result of our living life from the fallen nature. Our only resource in that situation is to adhere to moral laws of goodness – laws we gain from society, from our conscious, from religion, from culture, etc. But this moral knowledge can point us to the real Answer and are not the Answer in and of themselves. They are a tool to point to Him who can provide a real change in our nature, which will fulfill the law better than any human effort can before redemption.

Paul wrote in Romans that our newfound righteousness does not give us licensee to go on sinning as we please. Quite the contrary, our job as new creations is to make manifest the true reality of our new identity in Christ. We are called to live from that place of righteousness and bear the fruit of such living. This means that others, by watching our lives, ought to see this righteousness that is on the inside flowing forth on the outside.


Thus, what I am speaking of here is very contrary to the idea that God does not care about us not harming ourselves and sinning as we please because He cares very much. So much so that He provided us the ultimate solution to this problem of sin, His own Son.

Also, the reality of heaven isn’t just some place we go to when we die. It is a current reality from which we live as we gain access to the fullness of heaven when we come into God’s Kingdom. Again while it is a reality we have such full access, we are all learning to what that means and how to walk that out in this world.

There is far more available in the Kingdom than finding forgiveness of sins and freedom from our sinful nature. There is a whole new world available that only starts with redemption and salvation. Salvation is not the end of the Christian life, but the beginning.

Good Being v. Good Actions

The word “good” seems to be an ambiguous term at times especially when it is used without reference to a constant anchor. When we speak of the “good” or “right” with regard to morality there are multiple levels of discussion that can ensue. I will not be covering them all in this post. We could discuss how we can know the good, or how we can’t, or how we decide that in each society, or how it is artificially created versus being discovered and uncreated by humans. . . Even then we could discuss the reality of some of what we consider moral as being artificial and some as being discovered and how to unravel what are cultural mores and what are timeless truths.

Most debate for any of these discussions will have some truth. One can’t say that all rules of living were discovered, because we have obviously as humans invented prudish or practical rules of living that have been abandoned by other generations. However, we also have true good principals for living that have been abandoned at times and rediscovered. Thus, abandoning them doesn’t equate with their artificiality.

It is human to be moral beings concerned with right and wrong in some form or fashion whether in extreme or in balance. Thus, we transfer our desire to “be a good person” to a God who we extrapolate to think like we do who equates goodness with moral actions. In reality, God does not equate goodness with good actions. He equates goodness with His life and He gives us that goodness so that we can live a new life from righteousness instead of as slaves to unrighteousness. So we no longer have to pattern our lives trying to figure out whose rules to follow to be good, but we begin a life learning how to live from the goodness of the life within us. We learn to live from His life rather then by rules. That doesn’t exempt a person from the goodness of the rules; it just means the person goes about it by a different method. Good actions become a by product of knowing the Lord rather than the moral goal of life.

Now this is why there is not much use in morally condemning people because of their sinful actions. A person is not morally “bad” or “good” based on their actions. Goodness doesn’t come from “good actions” it comes from a good God. Bear with me for a minute, I know this has not been proven to you and that many of you do not believe it is possible, but I am trying to help you understand the Christian position before you argue against it, or for the sake of argument, my Christian position. We need not divert on debating whether or not every Christian sees it this way.

Now, like I indicated above, the discussion of the good is multifaceted. There is a difference between not condemning and not helping a person doing something that is not good for them or others. For example, a friend of yours is cheating on all of his college exams. If you condemn him you may say something like, “Frank you are a despicable person cheating like that you should be ashamed of yourself—you are so stupid.” Then think to yourself how much better you are because you don’t participate in such sinful things. Of course, most who think this way are doing a plethora of their own “bad” things they fail to see. However, the non-condemning, but helpful option might be to talk to him about how he is hurting himself by not learning the material legitimately and offer to help him study. The second option is out of love and concern for your friend where the first would be an indignant tongue lashing that only leaves him feeling terrible and worthless. The first response might cause him to continue his behavior, where the second might set him on a new course of life that validates his learning ability and keeps him from a life of cheating.

So while cheating or not cheating doesn’t make people more “good” in their being, there are life problems that are caused by making bad choices and doing bad things. So it wouldn’t be love to ignore a loved ones bad choices or to keep them from consequences of them by enabling them. This is to say that there are times where consequences for actions that harm others or oneself is necessary especially in a society where laws are established to protect the society and enforce obedience to those laws. However, laws are not always matters of right and wrong, but matters of legality as we have agreed. Sometimes they correspond to something really wrong, but most of the time they are a matter of safety of the individual or group rather than ethics. Love isn’t blind to a person’s faults, but loves despite of them.

RECAP:

God isn’t after us to earn moral goodness

We become righteous when His life merges with ours

God gave external laws and wrote them into our consciousness so that those who did not know Him could keep from doing things that harmed them – not as a rule book for gaining goodness. This was for our well-being.

We don’t have to live by laws when we know Him for He promises to show us how to live from our new identity as righteous beings which will manifest externally as we grow

It’s not necessary to condemn someone who lives in sin (at any level of sin). This does not mean a person who harms another should be brought to justice according the laws of the land. But it means our heart attitude is forgiving despite the necessity of the person enduring consequences for the sake of justice, for the good of the society, and for their own good.

Many of these things I am talking about may be foreign concepts and some may seem preposterous. I am not asking for you to believe this is true, but to understand this in the way you would seek to understand a view point on a topic for a college essay. It doesn’t mean you agree with the view, but you would be seeking to explain it fairly. Once I see there is understanding, then it is much easier for you to give a counter argument. Please ask questions so I can clarify anything that needs to be explained more fully.

Morality Revisited

The nature of morality seems to be an ever present hot topic of discussion especially amongst the philosophical bloggers. I have addressed this subject often on this blog, but I feel the need to unearth it once again as I have been talking with bloggers outside of this forum regarding this topic. I am still encountering a lot of misconceptions regarding the Christian view of morality and so I hope to untangle the web of misconstrued ideas to provide some clarity. For those who have discussed this topic at length with me already, please excuse my return to the subject. What follows will be from the Judeo-Christian worldview regarding this subject, at least as best as I am able to represent it and communicate it herein.


All people of all cultures, tribes, nations, societies, have a moral infrastructure within their nature. Everyone has what Francis Schaeffer terms “moral motions” and C.S. Lewis often calls “the moral ought.” We all feel obligatory to some form of ethics and morals even if it is subjectively our own system of what we think or feel are the best course of conduct. Granted while there are great similarities the world over in particulars there are also many variances between cultures and within cultures. Even between families and down to differences between individuals. We all have different particulars of what we see as right or good.


In addition to this, we have the revealed laws given from God to man as recorded in Scripture. Some of these would be in line with what was already figured out by man naturally, but others are somewhat different to what would seem natural and yet often we see the goodness in them and sometimes we just have to trust that it is good. The Scriptural revealed morality is not exhaustive and it is not intended to be. The Old Testament law had a purpose in helping men through an external law to do what is good for them and it had a primary purpose of showing mankind our fallen state and our need for God’s salvation by grace. The law was setting the stage for the next phase of humanity that would soon open the door to freedom from a life in subjection to external laws. God was providing a way to heal the heart so that the laws become unnecessary for out of the heart a man acts if the heart is restored to righteousness the actions will follow.


Let us go back to discussing morality outside of a revealed law. Let us consider the people who have never seen any revealed laws or do not seek them for their moral instruction. These people still have a moral understanding. They feel they know the difference between right and wrong and know they “ought” to do what is right. Their idea of “right” may be skewed, the particulars may be wrong, but the idea that one “ought” to do what is right if only we can figure out what is right is universal. No one says they ought to do what is wrong. They may do what is wrong willingly, but they know they ought not to. The problem consists in figuring out what is the good, the right. The second problem is how to accomplish it for if we think a certain action right we struggle to do that which we think is right despite our convictions of its goodness. So even if we can be certain that A is the right course of action rather than it’s opposite we still encounter the struggle to do A. And even if we succeed several times at doing A, we might not the next time.


So in our natural understanding of morality we have a struggle to do what we think is right as well as having uncertainty regarding what is right. The only thing we really know is that there is a right/good and we ought to be doing that. However, I do realize that there are those who do hold the position that there is no right and wrong, but few if any seriously live out that philosophy in their daily life. Seldom do I meet an atheist who doesn’t think that there is a right and wrong even if our apprehending of the particulars is wrought with subjectivity. Moreover, I understand that atheists argue that morality is arrived at by agreement of a people group or by evolutionary progress of humanity by which our moral understanding mirrors what is beneficial for our survival.


This could naturally explain the moral obligation, but I do not think it satisfies our knowledge of the attainment of the good. We all seem to have this understanding even if we do not philosophically accept this that there is a right, good, true ideal of sorts by which we want to use to measure what’s right and good. However, when we try to actualize this without a God construct it eludes us. Plato spoke of good as being rooted in an abstract form, but his form had no being, no personality. It was just this allusive abstract thing with nothing real from which good could flow.


I present to you that there is this good true right absolute is not an abstract form, nor a subjective collective of humanity, but is found in a real ever present personal holy and eternal being; God. We strive to do what is right because we were created in the image of God. We were made good in a good world by a good God. But something happened that actualized evil and corrupted the good creation. Our struggle between good and evil and even attaining some semblance of certain knowledge of what is good has been brought on by this corruption. We still see glimmers of good, we have moral motions to attain what is good and yet we fall short of the goodness of God for the corruption of creation and our own sin that is in our beings separates us from God. We can see enough to lead us to the path of righteousness, but our efforts are futile without accepting His aid which He has given freely through the work Jesus did in our place to bring an end to the corruption thus bringing restoration to a path of fruition.


Through faith we accept the gift of grace from God to step out of a world of corruption and into the normal good world found only in Him. The real, the good, is rooted in His being and when we step into Him we find what we are looking for. The reality of our being is changed in an instant giving us complete and perfect righteousness free from any performance, work, duty, or moral obligation. It is a gift of grace. Then we start day one afresh walking a new life being born into righteousness and learning along the way how to actualize the reality of our new restored condition awaiting with eager expectation the day when all who are in Him and all of creation will see the full and complete restoration of all things. The glory and goodness will be free from all corruption, sin, death, and decay and it will all shine in the perfect goodness we sometimes see glimpses of when we see a sunrise, the birth of a baby, or some other magnificent beauty of nature that captures our hearts in wonder.



So where does this bring us regarding morality? Morality then becomes obsolete for we don’t earn moral goodness we are given it by the grace of God. We are given righteousness. Our identity changes from one who is unrighteous and struggles for the elusive good to one who has been made righteous and learns to live a new life. Just as when we are naturally born into this world we have to learn how to live this new life. We don’t instantly know how to live it, it is a process being worked out in us. We are not alone in this process, we journey with God’s presence aiding us each step of the way as we go from learning to sit up, to crawling, to walking, and onward as we grasp the reality of this new life. Our transformation is from the inside out; our restoring heart produces new actions that are in line with truth and goodness. We journey as a community helping and encouraging each other in our walk with Jesus. So morality then comes from the inside from our new being as righteous people and not from obedience to laws. The right actions then follow truly from our righteousness in Christ instead of from futile moral obligation to rules that only lead to guilt. Christ sets us free from this guilt of moral failure and gives us the goodness we once sought through obligatory duty to what is right. He makes us right and then shows us how to live right in freedom.


I know this is a whole lot of information, but I attempted to give a thorough treatment of the topic. Each paragraph could easily be an essay or a chapter in a book in and of itself and I am willing to discuss any aspect of these thoughts in further depth in future posts. To those of you that read here regularly and have repeatedly given me your positions on this subject please don’t feel the need to reiterate as this post is more for those who are new here and to those I am conversing with in other forums. However, if you do have any questions or things you want me to expound on I am always willing to hear what you have to say. Thank you for your patience and time.

Righteousness Reflected

Sometimes the right thing at the wrong time can be the wrong thing. Jesus said He only did what He saw His Father doing and only said what He heard His Father saying. This means He was walking in a present reality of His Father’s will. He wasn’t doing what His Father was doing yesterday, but what He is doing today. God is righteous and when we are in Him, we are made righteous and we can share in a righteous nature by which we are enabled to live righteously.


The normal tendency is to divorce right living from righteous being. We then structure rules to follow to make our own self-righteousness. Sometimes those rules are things He has told us in a moment that we take as a law. He leads us to hug a homeless person and we turn it into a rule that we have to hug every homeless person and make everyone else do it too. It’s easier for us, we think, to find a structure of rules to obey then to have relationship with the one who is righteous. He does the work for us, and yet we try to keep doing the work on our own strength for our own merit. He says give me your burden and I will exchange it for something lighter, for something better. And yet we hold on to our burdens and struggle under the weight of things He is ready and willing to free us from.


What if when we get married our spouse gives us a list of things to do that they believe will be good for the marriage. What if we then work at the list and try to fulfill it day after day? Maybe that list even has really good things like spending time together or loving each other. But all that is being done is to honor the list to keep the law. All becomes rigorous duty instead of the actions of love. Would it not be better, for the husband and wife to serve each other out of a relationship of love instead of duty? It is the same way with God; Christ frees us from the law of obligations and duties. He came to open the door so that we don’t need external guidance from a set of laws.


When I profess that Christ frees us from the law, I am not saying that we are given license to sin, far from it. I am saying that we are freed from needing the law to keep us on the right path. We have something better; the door to the Father has been opened to us without our earning entry. The price was paid by Jesus and we can enter into full righteousness through Jesus. Also the Holy Spirit guides us in all truth. We learn to listen to the voice of God and allow Him to direct our path. It’s not a control thing, it’s a relationship thing. When you are in relationship with the Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, Almighty God, the Perfect Father, the Loving Friend, you soak in His love and righteousness and from that place you desire to live as He and reflect Him. He doesn’t hold the puppet strings and make us conform to Him, but the more we get to know Him the greater our desire to shine Him in all we do.


When we accept our inheritance from Him, He saturates us with Himself. He dwells within us and us within Him simultaneously. We take on a new nature because He is giving us His nature. This does not mean we become God. But it does mean we become like Him in our identity just as a son is like his natural father. He isn’t his natural father, but he can be like him. The Bible equates our union with our spouse – our oneness – to give analogy of the oneness we can have with God. The husband doesn’t become the same person as the wife, but they become one. It’s a mystery of unity. In the earliest days of the Church the followers of Christ were dubbed “Christians” as a derogatory term meaning “little Christ.” The irony is that there is great truth espoused even when it was done to be derogatory. The truth is, as believers, our lives are to be a reflection of Him. What was intended as an insult was really a testimony of the witness of the early Church and how they were living lives that mirrored their Savior.

What is Righteousness?

Righteousness happens in us when we become reconciled to God through Christ. We are aligned to His rightness. The evidence of being righteous is living rightly, but living rightly doesn’t make us righteous. We can’t earn it by works, but are freely given it by grace. We gain a new nature in Christ, one that is reconciled to God and is free of the impurity of sin. Evidence of that new nature is a new way of living; living from love, not from fear, or by following rules. We do what is right because we are in God’s love and it overflows from us back to Him and our fellow man. We do what is right not out of a moral obligation or duty, but because His nature flows through us.

Fear is the opposite of love. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” (I John 4:18) Love always trust, always preservers, and always hopes. It is kind. Not self seeking. It is sacrificial. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not easily anger. It always protects. (I Cor. 13)

When we are reconciled to God’s love we are made righteous and we live lives of love. Love is perfected in us as we mature in our relationship with Him. We grow in love as we grow in Him. We do what is right because we love, not because we fear. We do what is right because we desire to, not because we ought to, because His love motivates us internally.

We drink from his eternal love; a well spring that never runs dry. We don’t depend on ourselves for the strength to “be moral” we depend on Him for a changed nature being made righteous by His sacrifice and living accordingly by His power.

Freedom To Righteousness

Humanity typically looks at good with reference to evil. We see some acts as evil and others as good. We judge subjectively. We usually judge others harsher than we judge ourselves. We think we are good because we haven’t stolen anything or murdered anybody. Or we think we are good because of what we do, aiding our neighbor, raising our kids, loving our spouses, or giving food to a hungry person. But at the same time we are doing things that are not good all the time. We see good as the opposite of evil or evil as the opposite of good. But we don’t understand “good” without reference to evil. Even in our own hearts evil is always lurking. We are always comparing and contrasting and justifying ourselves. We find even the most giving people in the world have dark nights of the soul with the published diary writings of Mother Theresa. Yet we still reach for righteousness. We yearn for world peace. We want everyone to get along with everyone as if fighting, murder, and violence isn’t supposed to happen. We see these actions as somehow out of kilter with what “ought” to be. How can this be if at the same time we deny that there is a standard of what “ought” to be outside of our own subjectivity?

I’ve been watching the popular TV show Heroes. The characters are becoming duplicitous. The “good” ones are becoming corrupted in their fight for justice and the “evil” ones are showing compassion and integrity for the first time on the show. The lines are being blurred. The struggle in the hearts of man is coming to the forefront. Corrupted morality and compassionate acts of kindness are rising up in the same individuals. How can they determine the right path when their own hearts are so duplicitous?

Humans are only left with subjectivity when we try and figure out how to live in a way that is good. Some would say that’s all we have and we must make the best of it. But what if that’s not all we have? What if there is a better way than the human way? What if we can enter righteousness to where we can have our eyes opened to pure perfect goodness without contrast to evil?

The biblical moral code is quiet extensive. The law that was given to Moses was in effect when Jesus walked the earth. He encountered many people who were living out the law, or at least claiming to be, but whose hearts were corrupt making them unable to keep the law. Jesus said the law is fulfilled by loving God and loving people. He said that these were the two greatest commandments that fulfilled all law. The law was given to show us that we cannot keep it without His eternal love working through us. The focus was never to control people to conform to God’s law, but to free people to conform to righteousness personified in Christ Jesus. When we live in our corrupted nature we are not free. When we live in oneness with His nature we are the most free. Jesus said he came to give us life so that we could live life more abundantly. We can be transformed to righteousness and be free of all the weight of corruptness of heart, mind, and soul. The chains that bind us to thinking naturally, to evil, to sin, to corruption of the heart, and the bondages of addictions are broken by the cross of Christ. There’s more, Christ resurrected making it possible to live life a new – to live like Him.

To often the Church has tried to control people to live a certain way instead of simply leading people to Christ who doesn’t need us to put rules on people. Christ transforming power is more than sufficient to bring about righteousness in a person, to change hearts, to renew minds. Moreover fear ought never to be employed in sharing about Christ. Jesus didn’t invoke fear of punishment, penalty, or hell. He lived the truth He personified, being himself the example of life properly aligned with God. He came to point us to the way to life, not to bring condemnation and judgment. The world was already living in that by their own corruption. He came to free them from that way of living. He came to free them from guilt, condemnation, judgment. He came to raise us up to be heirs with Him in all things.

Justice of God

I have posited that there can be no justice without the existence of a Just God. To provide argument to support this claim let us look at what “justice” means. According to the American Heritage Dictionary:

Justice (n.)

1. The quality of being just; fairness
1. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
2. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
4. Law The administration and procedure of law.
5. A judge.
6. A justice of the peace.
1. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
2. Law The administration and procedure of law.
3. A judge.
4. A justice of the peace.
3. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason: The overcharged customer was angry, and with justice.
4. Abbr. J. Law
1. A judge. A justice of the peace.

The very employment of justice presumes a standard of rightness to which governs the actions of humanity. If justice is a “conformity to moral rightness” or “righteousness” there must be a standard by which conformity is judged.

If there is no objective righteousness there is no justice. There is no judgment of actions to a standard of righteousness. There is no upholding of a law any higher than man’s subjective laws of society. There is nothing concrete to justice. A victim is no longer a victim because there is no standard to determine violation of personal value or rights. The victimizer is off the hook for there is no standard. The only way that both the victim and the victimizer are brought justice is for there to be an objective moral standard.

The only way there can be an objective moral standard, is if there is an objective moral law giver who is in His character by His nature the self-existing standard of righteousness. Righteousness equates to goodness. If this righteous good God meets out justice according to the holy righteous standard of His character which results in punishment for some and mercy for others. God has decreed that He provided the sacrifice to enable Justice to justify us in Christ. If we are not under the grace of the gift of Christ blood, we are under Justice with no grace. This does not make God less good. We only find goodness in Him; apart from Him we are not good. His character is the standard of goodness and no one gains righteousness apart from His deeming us righteous through Christ.

We cannot judge Him as not good for we have no standard of goodness outside of Him by which to cast judgment upon Him. He gives meaning to the victim that would be lost without Him. He became a victim for us, experiencing our life on earth, experiencing human suffering first hand, and giving His own blood for our sins. What greater goodness could there be than Jesus sacrificing Himself for finite immoral man who rejected Him and rejects Him still? Christ didn’t die for good people; He died for unworthy sinners to make us worthy. He doesn’t ask for us to be good to earn salvation. He asks us to receive salvation from the only one who can give us eternal life.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity