Moral Absolutes are Gifts

I have often said that when I get to heaven, I want to tell C.S. Lewis how very much he helped me. We recently read his book The Abolition of Man in our study group. I was so grateful to once more hear these ideas on education expressed so clearly. How important it is to teach children not just the facts, but the correct emotional responses to those facts. You cannot truly teach and ignore morality, or you end up with "men without chests," trying to rule their bellies (instincts, lusts, etc.) with their head. As an educator, you may concoct some "reason" for them to do the right thing, (i.e. why they should die for others) but ultimately that concocted reason will not be enough to affect their behaviors in the heat of the moment. Lewis says that you rob a piece of their soul by failing to awaken in them the proper sensibilities, to teach them to correctly recognize what is objectively right and good and beautiful and awe-inspiring -- and also what is evil and hideous deadly. By stripping them of the "passions" and teaching what you think are only "facts", you leave them vulnerable to propaganda when someone comes along and whips those untrained emotions into a frenzy and channels them in a direction that suits the propagandist. The Bible says that all men have the moral law written on their hearts -- that there indeed do exist "objectively correct" emotional responses to facts and objects, i.e. we are repulsed by cowardice, we are in awe of a powerful waterfall. (God's Word is the ultimate standard undergirding these emotional responses.) But by making all emotional responses nonsense and debunking them, modern educators kill humanity itself. Lewis says, we laugh at honor and then are surprised to find traitors in our midst. We debunk transcendent design and God's soaring purpose for Man, and then wonder why teens kill themselves. If they don't buy into the concocted "alternate" reasons that educators come up with to replace God's own -- then they see no reason to be honorable or to go on living or whatever else we are trying to teach them. Ultimately, when this kind of education is carried out, students learn to "see through" everything, which is to "see" nothing. (As Lewis, says, debunking is good when it eliminates what is false in order to see what is true -- that is, it is important for the window to be transparent -- but when the garden and the trees are transparent too what are you left with?) If students are not taught the givens -- or even that there are certain givens, on which everything else hangs -- they are left with nothing, the abolition of man. I left this book praising God for His "datum". Derived from the Latin word for "give", a datum is a "gift" -- a given or absolute that God has graciously provided. I praise Him for His gracious generosity to us, giving us Truths on which we can stand firm and teach our children with confidence. When we educate, we must do so in light of these unchangeable Truths or we have done nothing.

"See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." (Colossians 2:8)