In the year 1940, C.S. Lewis gave a lecture to Oxford Universities Pacifist society entitled “Why I am not a Pacifist.” This lecture produced thoughts ranging from how we decide what is good and evil, the non strength of speculative generalizations, and if you can “do simply good to simply Man.” 1 It was for me, a fantastic mental journey, and if the reader finds in themselves a desire to know more about Lewis’s argument, I suggest they read the lecture in full, because, the item I’m most interested in sharing today, is just a small little bit Lewis offers up at the end concerning what we can and cannot influence.
Pacifism, Lewis felt, was a movement too grand to be practical as a life goal. A tension exists, if you will, between what one can influence and what one cannot, this and each outcomes actual fruition. For instance, suppose there is a Dentist who spends all his time pontificating about the need to rid the world of tooth aches. This Dentist, in truth, could do more for ridding the world of tooth aches by actually pulling one aching tooth than he could in a year of just talking about it. Lewis felt “the best results are obtained by people who work quietly at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace.” 2 On a personal level, I see how I tend to mirror the Dentist mentioned earlier in my desire to protest macro events, universal happenings, instead of events I can touch with my own two hands. Lewis felt this was where the substantial lay, the limited objective, the art of life where one tackles “each immediate evil as well as we can.” To this I would like to add, perhaps starting in our own hearts…
