2 CS Lewis Thoughts on Evil

[image error]Three of us are reading Mere Christianity together. We read a few chapters and head to Starbucks to talk about what we learned. Great fun. Here are two passages from chapter 4, Morality and Psychoanalysis (a chapter title taht didn't make we want to read the chapter!) I thought you would enjoy:

1.    Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you... into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God… or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God…

Does that mean that on some level, hell and heaven begin even while on this earth? I wonder, do we keep changing for the better and the worse after we die?

2.    … the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good; a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right… Good people know about both good and evil; bad people do not know about either.

Have you ever known someone this bad? I can think of times I've been bad without knowing it...