Mere Christianity: on morality
Mood: pensive
Posted on 2014-01-30 23:18:00
Tags: essay
Words: 212

I recently reread Mere Christianity and I had forgotten how much good/interesting stuff is in it. (also in it: stuff I disagree with!)

One point in particular that struck me this time around is his thoughts on morality. (specifically Christian morality, but this point has relatively little to do with Christianity per se) He says that if someone has a psychological condition that makes them deathly afraid of cats, the act of facing that person's fear and picking up the cat may show more courage than a healthy man who wins the Victoria Cross. (word of advice: don't search for "Victoria Cross") Conversely, someone who can appear quite nice may be that way only because of their heredity/upbringing and has never tried to be nice, and you should be judged on what you have done for yourself, not what you were born with.

Reading that made me think: Hey, I do this to myself! (in a bad way) I'm a pretty patient person most of the time, and I can feel unduly proud of that. Two things:
- I'm probably not as patient as I imagine myself to be, given rose-colored glasses and all that
- But more importantly, I'm mostly patient by temperament - it's not really something that I've worked particularly hard at.

4 comments

Comment from llemma:
2014-01-31T05:18:27+00:00
Er... why not?

Comment from gregstoll:
2014-01-31T11:35:17+00:00
Apparently there's a (patriotic?) porn star by that name!

Comment from flamingophoenix:
2014-01-31T20:58:59+00:00
This was my guess! (But I was afraid to search, so.)

Comment from wautip:
2014-04-24T14:07:29+00:00
Something that might be true

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