The Serious Business of Heaven
We are pausing our current Sermon on the Mount series to share an exclusive preview from one of Dr. Ken Boa’s latest works, The Serious Business of Heaven. Enjoy chapter one, offered here for your reading and reflection. If you’d like to order the book, please visit our online bookstore.
The Serious Business of Heaven is intended to serve as a guidebook, a traveling companion, as you read Lewis’s work itself. We recommend that you read the corresponding chapter in Mere Christianity, and then read my commentary. You can obviously do it the other way around (read my commentary first), but the former method will allow Lewis’s words to make their own impression upon your mind and soul before being colored by my own reflections and thoughts. However you choose to use this book, we pray that it helps you to increasingly come to know Christ (not merely know about Him), and to genuinely enjoy what G. K. Chesterton called “the gigantic secret of the Christian”: joy. For it is, as Lewis said, the “serious business of Heaven,” a mark of a true believer.
Chapter 1: The Law of Human Nature
Key Excerpt from the Chapter
“It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.”
Commentary
What is the worst quarrel you’ve ever had? Perhaps it was with a parent or a sibling when you were growing up, or with one of your friends as recently as last week. As you reflect on your answer, chances are good you’re not protesting, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone!” Quarreling, after all, is something we all experience at some point in time, whether someone starts an argument with us or we start one with them.
Lewis begins this chapter with quarreling because it is so universal. It is common ground that allows him to capture his audience’s imagination. In doing so, he lists various types of quarrels we’ve likely heard. After all, times change, but the nature of our quarrels remains very much the same. Lewis attributes the universality of quarreling to an underlying principle: the notion of right and wrong. These quarrels appeal to some sort of standard, something we expect the person with whom we’re quarreling to acknowledge.
Consider the way children argue. Young people don’t have to learn to hold another child accountable in some way; they do it naturally. For example, imagine that two children are playing together. One child picks up a toy and begins playing with it—a stuffed animal, building blocks, whatever it may be— and suddenly the other child needs that toy. He had no interest in that toy
before, but all of a sudden, he has to have it, and an argument ensues. “It was mine first! I had it first!” one child cries. “But you had your turn; now share!” shouts the other child. From the very beginning of our lives, we all have an idea of fair play.
When we quarrel, we appeal to some standard of behavior that we expect the other person to know about. We’re claiming—often unconsciously—that the person with whom we’re quarreling has not done what is right or fair or just. As Lewis notes, when we give our reason(s) why the other person ought not to have behaved in such a way, the other person rarely rejects the standard of fair play altogether; rather, he typically argues that the standard is actually on his side (or that there’s some special exception to it in this circumstance). That person appeals to the same standard, but with a different perspective.
Quarreling would be incoherent if there were not some sort of underlying standard in life. If every person created his own subjective, fluctuating morality, there would be no justifiable grounds for an argument. After all, every action would have to be considered right. However, we cannot consistently live as if there is no moral standard—moral relativism only works well for us until
someone infringes upon what we believe to be right for ourselves. When we quarrel, we end up appealing to a standard of some sort, something that justifies our position and invalidates the position of the other person. Lewis points out that the very nature of quarreling involves trying to convince the other side that they are wrong, which implies that the two sides must agree about what right and wrong are. This inherent agreement on a standard is what Lewis calls the “Law of Nature,” the “Law of Human Nature,” or the “Law of Right and Wrong.”
The difficulty with the term “Law of Nature” is that the word “law” suggests the idea of the laws of science—the principle of a gravitational constant, perhaps, or the First Law of Thermodynamics. These scientific laws, however, are different from the Law of Nature. They merely describe natural processes in a consistent way. The laws of science refer to the way things are and the way things must respond, whether we like it or not. These laws do not claim to govern nature, mandating the reversal of gravity for one hour or commanding the planets to change the speeds at which they move. They simply describe what happens.
The Law of Nature, on the other hand, prescribes activities. This law dictates what ought to be done rather than what must be done. This is the crucial difference between the laws of science and the Law of Nature. We cannot disobey the laws of science, but we can choose to obey or disobey the Law of Nature. No matter how often we may read Peter Pan or try to be like Superman, we will never be able to fly. No pixie dust or cape could ever reverse the law of gravity; we cannot simply choose to disobey it. We can, however, choose to violate the Law of Nature. This is because it is not based on a physical process. Rather, it is based on something higher and more profound than mere physical processes. We obey the Law of Nature not by causation but by choice.
The term “law” may seem like an odd choice for this principle of right and wrong, but people in the past called it the “Law of Nature” not because we had to obey it like scientific laws but because it was common to all people. That’s not to say there are no exceptions, but looking at humanity as a whole, people consider what constitutes decent behavior a matter of common sense. Most people have an idea about how their behavior affects others, and how other people’s behavior affects them. Those who do not have any idea of this—diagnosed sociopaths, for example—stand in stark contrast to what we perceive as the normal way of living.
As soon as we consider this idea of “normal living,” we must raise a question: How do we know what the standard is, or if it even exists? A common objection to the idea of a fixed moral standard argues that culture determines right and wrong, thus rendering morality subjective. Lewis briefly addresses this critique, pointing out that although there are some minor differences in the
various law codes of numerous civilizations, there is a remarkable amount of overlap. The application of the moral standard may be different, but all have generally appealed to a similar standard.
To illustrate this point, Lewis invites us to imagine a country where people are admired for running away in battle or where a man feels proud of double crossing those who are dearest to him. Such a country simply doesn’t exist. Yes, there are some differences in particulars of behavior, but on the whole, the standards are the same. This is because, whether we acknowledge it or not, all
humans are created in the image of God. We live in hope of the final restoration of and conformity to that image—although, it is true, we often distort that image and ignore what is absolute, living out of the arrogance of autonomy and ignorance of His will. However, we cannot live this way long; we always end up going by a standard of right or wrong.
This relates to the first of Lewis’s two concluding points: all of us are haunted by the idea of a moral standard, the idea of “ought.” As Lewis says, “Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.”1 Our consciences testify against us when we choose to go against this idea. The apostle Paul comments on this in Romans 2:15: “They show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.” The Gentiles, who did not have the law of Moses, still obeyed it in some capacity—condemning murder, for example.
The reason many people do not accept the existence of the Law of Nature goes back to the idea of choice: we choose whether or not to obey it. Often, when we try to convince ourselves of something, we succeed in doing so. When we choose to ignore the Law of Nature, we really do lose sight of it and try to justify ourselves and our actions apart from it.
This leads to Lewis’s second concluding point: none of us can keep the Law of Nature. No matter how much we believe in right and wrong, we cannot live up to that standard. This often leads us to try to bend the rules, ignore our conscience, or shift the blame to something or someone else for our bad behavior. Aren’t we humans great at making excuses? We have a whole litany of
them ready for our defense. We may argue that we were too tired to respond kindly, or that a person deserved what they got because they were so irritating, or that we simply didn’t have the facts when we entered a shady business deal.
Of course, we string these excuses together for ourselves, but not for others. We like to judge ourselves by a low standard while holding those around us to a high standard. Most of us will take full responsibility when we do a good thing but no responsibility when we do a bad thing. At the same time, we often attribute another’s success to chance and their errors to their own personal
shortcomings. We are amazingly good at this sort of rationalization; our capacity to deceive ourselves is great.
These two principles—that there is a Law of Nature and that we all fall short of keeping it—give us a clearer understanding of ourselves and a foundation from which we can approach our worldview. It is from this foundation that Lewis continues his case for “mere” Christianity.
