With the recent surge in C.S. Lewis’s popularity, it is good for us to remind ourselves that Lewis was not just a wonderful popular author, but a solid Christian thinker and apologist as well. One of his many enduring apologetic works is the short book, The Abolition of Man. In it, Lewis argues that there is a way the universe really is, and a way human nature really is as well. This is what he labels the Tao, or the way, and says, “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are.”
In much of the book, including in his wonderful appendix, Lewis argues that there is an objective moral structure in all humans in all cultures in all times. There are differences to be sure, but overall, no culture has ever praised such things as cold-blooded murder, cowardice, lying or promise-breaking. Now the trend in Lewis’s culture was to believe that human liberty consisted in breaking free from those old moral constraints. And to be sure, this is a prominent trend in our culture as well.
Lewis’s answer to this lies in the title of the book. He argued that to deny such obvious truths will do violence on humanity: we will abolish ourselves. To become more human is to take stock of the moral shape of our lives and learn to live in virtue. And, on the contrary, when we think we gain mastery over our natures by escaping morality, we end up becoming slaves to the lowest denominators in our souls.
Christ came that we might live life more abundantly-and we see in Lewis another powerful glimpse into what that life really is like.
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