The End of Ethics

MERE MORALITY is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different from that. J.S. Mill and Confucius (Socrates was much nearer the reality) simply didn’t know what life is about. The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that “a decent life” is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable; but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be remade. All the rabbit in us is to disappear---the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined; a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, 112

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Last weekend, Elly (6) told me she was getting out of school on Monday for “King Lutheran” Day. Not sure I heard her correctly, I asked her, “Tell me that again. Why are you getting out of school on Monday?” She was surprised by my ignorance and emphatically responded “For King Lutheran Day! Don’t you know what that is?”

That same weekend, I took the girls out to the mall to get a new swimsuit for Anna. Elly, who already has two swimsuits, was upset that she didn’t get a new one like her older sister. She told me, “I wish I could lose my swimsuits so I could get a new one like Anna.” Confessions of a future shopaholic.

Jonathan (8) was telling Micah (7) that he needed to spend some time with his grandparents so he could get some manners. Micah, not missing a beat, said in a deadpan voice, “I have manners. I just don’t use them.”