OPEN-SOURCE MORALITY

I've been reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity the past couple weeks, a chapter at a time every other day or so, just for curious reading. Came across an interesting end to a chapter titled "Sexual Morality":

"...The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must not become. They are the Animal self and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."

I, of course not being religious, am not one to judge, but I have the feeling that there are a disheartening number of people who go to church and fit that last value of "prig". I think this also prevents someone who claims to be "Christian" the effective ability to tell someone else they are morally wrong. We get this a lot in America, and on the news, etc.

I'm not trying to prove a point by using Lewis' statement, because frankly I think his moral comparisons are complete crap. His statement just made me think about what I've seen in the real world, and also what I see on TV every day. In general I feel like "morality" should not be a reserved word for Christianity or any religion, but an open-source concept for all of humanity.