Social Morality by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 12, Mere Christianity, Bk...

C.S. Lewis here addresses all the subjects you shouldn’t discuss in polite conversation, if you want to remain friends - Christianity, politics & money! Study notes in the video description below... You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christiani... (0:49) Nietzscheism is essentially self-worship or the worship of strength, talent & ambition. In the Bible, while you “reap what you sow” in terms of hard work, you have got to sow in the right field. You can't do anything of real consequence without God. Mere strength or mental determination is not nearly enough. “Again I saw that under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge” (Ecclesiastes 9.11). No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength (Psalm 33:16). “You (God) rescue the poor from those *too strong* for them” (Psalm 35.10) and only “the name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale [but it is not unscalable]” (Psalm 18.10-11). ( (4:52) Lewis talks about "the production of objects [or services] which are rotten in quality and which, even if they were good in quality, would not be worth producing” in his essay 'Good Work and Good Works'. ( (5:02) “side” (informal British) - a boastful/proud attitude, or display intended to impress others. ( (5:26) https://biblehub.com/ephesians/5-33.htm The verse “love” is the word agape here. The word for honour means to “prize” or “value, reverence, revere, or fear”, even to “be amazed” (i.e. be amazed at the things he does, which you can’t or don’t want to do). ( (7:13) Martin Luther interpreted Bible passages about usury, especially those that condemned charging interest to the poor, as calls to act generously. Usurers commit a sin, Luther wrote, only when their actions violate the do-unto-others principle – that is, only if ‘they do not want to be treated this way in return by others’. This reciprocity meant merchants and wealthy families were allowed to charge each other interest. Luther asked Christians to offer the needy charity rather than loans – but he still accepted interest rates under 5%. One interesting little story out of history is John Calvin the reformer. The Catholic Church had said on the basis of biblical teachings, that you can't lend money to someone charging interest - that was called “usury”, because the poor would borrow money & be charged high interest & would end up as slaves as happens today throughout Africa and Asia still. So the Catholic Church said no interest should be charged on money to anyone Christian rich or poor. John Calvin the Reformer, reasoned that if I owned a piece of land worth this many dollars, I can rent it out - so why can't I take this same amount of money & rent the money out? Perhaps, if it's to a poor person for food, money should be lent at no interest, but if it's to someone who wants to start a business, why can't I rent money out like I can rent out land? The problem was how do you define how much interest you would charge? And this is the point that Plato was making, the system’s not going to work because of human selfishness. Like Luther, Calvin, said, "I've got an answer". He said that you define the amount of interest charged by the Golden Rule that we all know at heart - 'Do to others as you would have them do to you' - and this idea released the lending of money and actually enabled a whole lot of capitalistic investment, which has produced wealth for individuals and a better standard of living for the poor throughout society. ( One interesting little story out of history is John Calvin the reformer. The Catholic Church had said on the basis of biblical teachings, that you can't lend money to someone charging interest - that was called “usury”, because the poor would borrow money & be charged high interest & would end up as slaves as happens today throughout Africa and Asia still. So the Catholic Church said no interest should be charged on money to anyone Christian rich or poor. John Calvin the Reformer, reasoned that if I owned a piece of land worth this many dollars, I can rent it out - so why can't I take this same amount of money & rent the money out? Perhaps, if it's to a poor person for food, money should be lent at no interest, but if it's to someone who wants to start a business, why can't I rent money out like I can rent out land? The problem was how do you define how much interest you would charge? And this is the point that Plato was making, the system’s not going to work because of human selfishness. Like Luther, Calvin, said, "I've got an answer". He said that you define the amount of interest charged by the Golden Rule that we all know at heart - 'Do to others as you would have them do to you' - and this idea released the lending of money and actually enabled a whole lot of capitalistic investment, which has produced wealth for individuals and a better standard of living for the poor throughout society. (10:18) See the movie 'Shadowlands' by the BBC available on YouTube. The original broadcast had the following words italicised which add to understanding (shown in CAPS): “The real job of every teacher is to keep on bringing us BACK...to the same old principles. The original broadcast had the following words italicised which add to understanding (shown in CAPS): “The real job of every teacher is to keep on bringing us BACK...to the same old principles.