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The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Christian Vocation and Moral Courage in Wartime
The essays in The Weight of Glory originated as talks offering inspiration and moral guidance during and after World War II, and wartime and postwar themes pervade the book. Especially relevant to Lewis’s student audiences, the theme of searching for vocation and moral courage during wartime informs a number of the chapters.
Two essays deal with the war in particularly explicit terms. Chapter 2, “Learning in Wartime,” encourages students to continue their studies during the war, arguing that civil strife cannot stop the pursuit of knowledge and beauty and that the scholarly life is a God-given vocation. Chapter 3, “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” takes the subjects of war and morality head-on, defending the necessity of supporting a just war. Lewis defends Britain’s involvement in World War II as righteous and argues that citizens should be willing to sacrifice personal safety and even life itself for a noble cause—a view with ample support in the traditions of all nations, argues Lewis.
At first glance, these two essays’ stances might seem contradictory: The first suggests that civilian life and activities remain essential in wartime, while the second makes a moral case for participation in the war itself. The concept of Christian vocation, discussed not only in these essays but throughout the collection, is the missing link. In “Membership,” for example, Lewis argues that while all Christians are called to serve God, they are not all called to do so in the same way. By clarifying the stakes of human life, war poses both challenges and opportunities in this respect. On the one hand, one must guard against the temptation to let fear (of death, suffering, etc.) dictate one’s perceptions of one’s vocation. On the other hand, the clarity that war brings can translate into a moral clarity about one’s purpose, and the turmoil of war may itself afford opportunities to put that purpose into action.
Ultimately, Lewis’s message about the Christian life during war is little different than his message about the Christian life in general because, as he says, “We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’ Life has never been normal” (49). Though he dispels what he views as some particular misconceptions about Christianity—in particular, the notion that it demands absolute nonviolence—his basic tack is to treat war as no different than any of the other conflicting messages that arise from the secular world. In the midst of these, Lewis calls on his audience to stay true to their identities as Christians called to a higher life beyond the satisfaction of temporal needs. The church, as the Body of Christ, honors each Christian’s unique calling in the world, which will eventually allow them to find a unique place in the kingdom of God.
The Relationship Between Education, Culture, and Spiritual Life
As a professor, Lewis was actively engaged with issues pertaining to the education of young people and the health of culture broadly. For Lewis, these topics are inseparable from the spiritual context of Christianity, which must underpin any attempt to discern the proper role of education or the ideal shape of culture.
“Learning in War-Time” establishes the rationale behind this claim. Addressing university students, Lewis defends the life of learning even at times when life itself seems precarious. Human beings express their humanity through the creation of culture. Moreover, a person’s vocation is willed by God, and God calls some people to be scholars. Education and culture thus have a spiritual, eternal dimension. War, by contrast, is temporary and finite. Although it may demand duty and service for its duration, its claims are not absolute. No nation or secular authority has the ultimate claim on a human being that belongs to God alone.
Lewis thus emphasizes that culture and education must be seen in a wider, spiritual context. All human beings are on a path either toward heaven or Hell. Thus, life is “lived on the edge of a precipice” (49). This means that learning and culture exist, not in an ideal setting of leisure, but amid urgent existential questions. Lewis’s argument is in part that it is human nature to continue the quest for knowledge and beauty even under difficult circumstances, but he also suggests that those circumstances must inform that quest. Thus, for example, he argues that an education pursued in accordance with Christian principles is crucial to countering the “intellectual attacks of the heathen” in the public square (58). The learned life, Lewis argues, is “a duty” that intellectually inclined Christians must perform to improve the spiritual health of society. Lewis acts as a model for this kind of evangelism by questioning the intellectual presuppositions of mainstream culture and making a case for Christianity.
Lewis thus suggests that education shapes culture at large and that it can do so in ways that are either conducive to Christian principles or antithetical to them. For Lewis, however, the point is not to cultivate a Christian society but rather to cultivate the individual Christian life. In this context, education and culture are deeply personal topics that must be approached, like any other activity, through the lens of one’s relationship with God. Making time for “good books” and “steady rational thinking” may aid the spiritual life (189), but only if one does not make them ends in themselves. Although culture and education can be ordered to the spiritual life, they are themselves temporal and finite.
The Challenges of Living Faith in Community
A number of the chapters in The Weight of Glory deal with social challenges of living out the Christian faith. Lewis suggests that the Christian life is not lived in isolation or (despite the essays’ emphasis on theology) merely on an intellectual plane, but in community with others and in concrete everyday situations. Ultimately, for Lewis, one’s relationship with God is closely tied to one’s relationships with other human beings.
The essays approach this topic from varying angles. Some, such as “On Forgiveness,” are concerned with what constitutes an appropriate disposition toward others. The essay deals with how to behave toward those who have wronged one; Lewis argues that forgiveness is a reciprocal action that heals breaches between human beings and connects them with God. By contrast, the previous two chapters address how Christians can live moral lives amid societal temptations. Chapter 6, “The Inner Ring,” warns against the dangers of the “in-crowd” and its exclusionary habits; by overcoming the desire to belong to such groups, Christians will experience true fulfillment and the freedom to carry out their God-given vocation. Chapter 7, “Membership,” examines different forms of social belonging as offered respectively by society and the church. Secular society proposes two alternative social structures, individualism and collectivism, that turn out to be false choices for the Christian. Together, these essays paint a picture of community as both essential and as potentially dangerous, with the distinction lying principally in how community is understood—that is, as a collection of individuals versus as an entity in its own right. While Christians must exist in community with others, this entails extending compassion and love to actual human persons, not devotion or assimilation to a social group or its governing principles.
The church emerges in “Membership” as the entity that bridges this gap. It is its own society, a “body” in which each “member” finds meaning through a relationship with fellow members and with the “head” (Christ). The church avoids the pitfalls of both individualism and collectivism because its members find themselves both honored as individuals and connected to each other and to Christ. Secular structures like democracy serve their purpose in a fallen world, but Christianity calls humans to a higher reality that transcends those limited concepts. Lewis therefore suggests that Christians can both find a place in their secular society and remain devoted members of the Body of Christ. Even after secular structures have perished, Christians are destined to be eternally united with God and one another.
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