Law and "Awe"

We live in a world in which it is increasingly clear that both morality and worldview are completely up for grabs. There is little we can assume any more. This can be seen in many of the issues, debates, and discussions of our day. Everything is questioned. There's a sense in which this is good, in that blindness to moral issues such as racism that so characterized the past, in many ways are being uncovered. But there's also a sense in which it's troubling; not because it raises uncomfortable questions, but because it looses us from our moorings, both spiritually and morally.

One of the phenomena I found somewhat amusing recently is the campaign recently to promote Christmas from an atheistic perspective, i.e., "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake." The question is then raised, can one be good for goodness sake alone? Is it possible to maintain one's moral center when the spiritual foundation on which that morality is based is jettisoned?

C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Problem of Pain, talks about two components of religion, The first is what he calls the "Numinous," the sense of awe at the spiritual reality that cannot be explained or addressed by examination or science. Another way of putting it might be to speak of that which is transcendent. The other is morality - a sense of ought or should, in terms of our behavior. While these can exist without connecting with each other ("...non-moral religion, and non-religous morality, existed and still exist."), it is a perilous place. We are either subject to "the obscenities and barbarities of the unmoralized worship" or to "the cold, sad, self righteousness of sheer moralism." In our day, however, a growing number of folks are so consumed with "tolerance," anything that smacks of moralism is not tolerated. But I digress. Lewis points out that only in biblical religion, beginning with Judaism and culminating in Christianity (with the additional component of the Incarnation), are these these two strands joined together. To rebel against or discard either of these strands, the Numinous or the moral law, is to put oneself in a precarious place. As he says,

[One] can close his spiritual eyes against the Numinous, if he is prepared to part company with half the great poets and prophets of his race, with his own childhood, with the riches and depth of uninhibited experience. He can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity. He can refuse to identify the Numinous with the righteous, and remain a barbarian, worshipping sexuality, or the dead, or the lifeforce, or the future. But the cost is heavy.

I would say that a solid moral center is rooted in a strong faith in the "numinous," or a transcendent God. Unfortunately in our culture, both a moral sense and awe of the divine are considered passe. Those of us who seek to live as disciples of Jesus Christ are increasingly "peculiar" people. But these ancient documents we call the New Testament tell us as much. So we ought not be surprised.

(Note: quotations above are from the Introduction of The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis. My ruminations are but dim shadows of the blazing light of his thought.)