Patricia Hofer

CS Lewis writes about the “raw material” of our moral choices

In his chapter “Nice People or New Men,” Lewis concludes: “What can you ever really know of other people’s souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.” (Mere Christianity 168)

In another chapter, “Morality and Psychoanalysis,” Lewis talks about “raw material” and moral choices, Lewis tells us that “…every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before” (Mere Christianity, 71). Such a view takes the idea of choosing out of the realm of observable sins and denominational practice and good social behavior into the realm of our heart or soul, “the central part” of us. This is the place where our Christ spirit directly confronts our natural selfishness. The most difficult choices for us are not the public ones but the private ones, the not so obvious interior ones. These are the ones that God sees. For they imprint our soul, the “central part” of who we are. (Driving into the Dawn, chapter 6)

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