C. S. Lewis
–isms are when men think for themselves, form opinions, and publish their opinions, and then others who don’t think for themselves follow them. Sometimes these "authorities" are called philosophers, theologians, politicians, statesmen, and even pastors. In the initial stages of an –ism, problems are examined, and conclusions are drawn. Sometimes good comes from them. But as they ripen, they mellow, and they rot. –isms are substituted for genuine thinking and, in their decaying, they undermine truth and become a substitute for genuine reality. A whole subculture ceases to learn how to think.
In our busy distraction called life, there is little time for original thinking. The world rushes on. We have our pet ideas. There are people we like to emulate. We form cliques we like to run with. It is easy to get an education, collect information, and climb the ladder of success by riding on others’ shoulders. But thinking for ourselves takes time, energy, and discipline. We don’t need to do all that work. Someone else has done the work for us. Original thinking is too hard and too time-consuming. There are other things more interesting. There is also the disease called FOMO, "fear of missing out."
In his book, The Abolition of Man published in 1943, C. S. Lewis wrote about “men without chests." He postulated that society in his day was breeding cerebral men and visceral men. But there was a lack of men with chests. Joe Carter writes:
"Men Without Chests” is the curious title of the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. In the book, Lewis explains that “The Chest” is one of the “indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” Without “Chests” we are unable to have confidence that we can grasp objective reality and objective truth.
The result of such chest-less education, as Lewis warns, is a dystopian future. “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise,” says Lewis. “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”[i]
The apostle Paul stated, “knowledge makes arrogant.”[ii] The King James Version is, “knowledge puffs up.” In our day we say, "a little knowledge makes a man dangerous."
As Christians, we need to resist this tendency to intellectual laziness. In what we know as the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthian church, Paul addressed a congregation that was tearing itself apart. Each chapter deals with a different problem among the brethren. Individuals were taking sides. –isms were already infecting the Body of Christ. He wrote:
For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ." [iii]
James wrote:
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.[iv]
When individuals spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking for themselves, factions creep in leading to quarrels and conflicts. Instead of being men with chests, able to think for themselves and create good, they become mobs who tear down and destroy.
This is not just hyperbole. Think of the many lives lost in human history simply because clusters of nonthinkers became groups who opposed, and then armies who marched. –isms have become the greatest pandemic of our day.
Paul began his letter to the Corinthian church by noting their positives:
I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift…[v]
This generation of mankind has everything it needs in order to think for itself, to draw upon a world of information, and to draw its own conclusions. Christians have an additional toolbox, the Word of God and its author, the Holy Spirit. Putting them together with a little elbow grease; time, effort, and discipline, we have, not –isms, but wisdom.
Paul asked the church at Corinth, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?”[vi]
He answers:
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.[vii]
Paul was not advocating taking a religious pill in the form of The Four Laws of Campus Crusade or Steps to Peace with God, or even the B-Rations of the Navigator’s Topical Memory System. These are the pablum of the faith—just the beginning. We must not graduate from this pablum to easy-read Bible paraphrases and spiritual CliffNotes. This is not being men with chests. Paul wrote:
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.[viii]
We need to learn to study and think for ourselves. Paul instructed his understudy, Timothy:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.[ix]
Peter put it this way:
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…[x]
To avoid being caught up in the pandemic of -isms, we need to learn how to think for ourselves. Or as in C.S. Lewis’ admonition, be men with chests. The Bible needs to be the foundation of our thinking, studied through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul wrote, “be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”[xi]
Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings, and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we shall do, if God permits.[xii]
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[i] C.S. Lewis on ‘men without chests’ (and what that means) – Acton Institute PowerBlog
[ii] 1 Cor 8:1.
[iii] 1 Cor 1:11-12.
[iv] Jas 4:1-2.
[v] 1 Cor 1:4-7.
[vi] 1 Cor 1:20a.
[vii] 1 Cor 1:20b-21.
[viii] Col 2:8.
[ix] 2 Tim 2:15 KJV.
[x] 1 Pe 3:15.
[xi] Eph 4:23.
[xii] Heb 6:1-3.