H IS FOR ... C.S. LEWIS?

“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping.”
 - C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis began to light his pipe, glanced at Freud, frowned, and then put it away.  

"I forgot.  If smoking brings you memories of past pain, I will not smoke in front of you."

Freud sneered, "I thought you would be in the Great Beyond."

Lewis shrugged, "But I am, Doctor.  I thought you knew: Meilori's is a suburb of  Purgatory."

 Freud snorted, "Have you then been kicked out?"

Lewis smiled sadly.  "Perhaps I have been a bit of a scamp, and I must bide here awhile?"

"Or perhaps you died, remaining here among the dead ashes of your false faith?  You see, I never believed, and here I still am."

 “When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over.  He has not done it so there is yet time for you to reconsider your worldview."

Freud rolled his eyes.  "Please tell me that you are not going to try to harangue me into heaven!"

"Goodness, no.  A man is never successfully argued into changing his mind.  Quite the opposite: the man becomes more obstinate in his views."

"Hfmmmfh!"

Lewis sighed, “Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.” 

"I leave it as I left life.  Ethics are merely a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind that is all. They change with time and culture."

Lewis nodded.  "The German nation under the Nazi regime obviously ignored the law and practiced a morality the rest of the world considered abominable."

Freud's face saddened.  "Indeed.  My four sisters died in one of their foul camps."

Lewis spoke softly, 

"The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, 

saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other."

Lewis took out his pipe out of habit and then put it back into the inside pocket of his coat. 

"The standard that measures two things is something different from either. 

You are in fact comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting there is such a thing as a real Right, 

 independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.”

 Lewis concluded, 

"If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something— some Real Morality— for them to be true about.”

"Bah!" snapped Freud who turned to me.

"We are up to H, Roland.  What does H spark in your mind?"

"Hope," I said.

"Hope?  For what?" barked Freud.

"Hope that you choose wisely in the days to come."

C S Lewis smiled sadly and faded away.