MY BROTHER,
Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, "Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the center of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual. The pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me [
] they are the animal self and the diabolical self; and the diabolical self is the worst of the two. That is why a cold self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But of course it is better to be neither."
Does anyone agree with Lewis? If so, please provide some support.
SIN IS SIN, and i don't believe that God has a ranking whereby some sins are "better" than others.
That being said, i don't believe that this is what Mr. Lewis is trying to communicate. It seems to me that what he is saying is that the
sins of the flesh--consisting primarily of the misuse or abuse of our God-given physical drives ["our animal self"]--are the easiest to deal with and overcome because they are the more obvious and therefore easier to recognize, surrender to God, and work towards erraticating. Those
sins of the spirit which he mentions, on the other hand, are deeply entrenched in our hearts--planted there by the Evil One--and thus are harder to recognize and thus harder to erraticate--much harder the the obvious physical sins.
Physical sins tend to be black and white and without justification or excuse. The spiritual sins, however, because of their more indistinct and nebulous nature, lend themselves to rationalizations, justifications, denial, etc., which allows them to cling to us very tenaciously. This is one primary reason, i think, as to why the Law could never bring about righteousness before God: the Law dealt
ONLY with the physical aspects of sin, leaving the spiritual sins alive and well in the heart. Jesus, on the other hand, by FULFILLING the Law, dealt with the heart as well as the body, teaching, for example, that looking lustfully at a woman
WAS THE SAME AS actually commiting adultery, or being angry
WAS THE SAME AS commiting murder. Thus, through the Grace of our Lord, we can now be cleansed of
BOTH the physical and the spiritual sins and stand righteous before our God.
ALL GLORY TO HIM!
A BOND-SLAVE OF CHRIST,
ephraim
