SQJ Taipei

If you don’t know what POSK is… here’s the first one

From: The World’s Last Night, CS Lewis, pp 89-91

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Life on Other Planets

I…fear the practical, not the theoretical, problems which will arise if ever we meet rational creatures which are not human. Against them we shall, if we can, commit all the crimes we have already committed against creatures certainly human but differing from us in features and pigmentation; and the starry heavens will become an object to which good men can look up only with feelings of intolerable guilt, agonized pity, and burning shame.

Of course, after the first debauch of exploitation we shall make some belated attempt to do better. We shall perhaps send missionaries. But can even missionaries be trusted? "Gun and gospel" have been horribly combined in the past. The missionary’s holy desire to save souls has not always been kept quite distinct from the arrogant desire, the busybody’s itch, to (as he calls it) "civilize" the (as he calls them) "natives." Would all our missionaries recognize a fallen race if they met it? Could they? Would they continue to press upon creatures that did not need to be saved that plan of Salvation which God has appointed for Man? Would they denounce as sins mere differences of behavior which the spiritual and biological history of these strange creatures fully justified and which God Himself had blessed? Would they try to teach those from whom they had better learn? I do not know.

What I do know is that here and now, as our only possible practical preparation for such a meeting, you and I should resolve to stand firm against all exploitation and all theological imperialism. It will not be fun. We shall be called traitors to our own species. We shall be hated of almost all men; even of some religious men. And we must not give back one single inch. We shall probably fail, but let us go down fighting for the right side. Our loyalty is due not to our species but to God. Those who are, or can become, His sons, are our real brothers even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts.

I hate to use 2 CS Lewis quotes in a row… but I didn’t realize it had been so long since my last quote of the POSK and this is just how it worked out.

I love it… totally love it. It is such a shame that we can’t have anything new from Lewis today.

I, too, have found it difficult to stand firm against all exploitation and all theological imperialism. It most certainly is not fun. Sometimes it seems like failure… and only my hope keeps me from calling it an outright failure… but fighting for justice is most definitely the right side.

Press on my friends. Be His hands… be His feet. It is never in vain.