Truth Unites - Perelandra: The BEST Scene: Hatred Has a Purpose

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Gavin Ortlund reflects on Perelandra by C.S. Lewis and whether hatred can ever be good. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/  

This video is about Peralondra. Fascinating work of fiction by C.S. Lewis. I'm holding here in my hand. It's not a long book. You can read it pretty fast. You can see how thick it is. I want to describe one particularly powerful moment in this book, my favorite scene and also a really interesting scene. And then I want to use this as an occasion to reflect on this question. Is hatred ever good? That is a surprisingly complicated question and a surprisingly relevant question in the world right now. at the end of the video, stick around to hear my case for it a little bit. I'm going to argue basically, yes, hatred can be good. Now, this is the second book in the ransom trilogy. I'll put up a picture of all three books for why I call these the ransom trilogy, not the space trilogy, as they're often

called. I'm going to explain that in a video on the first book in this series, out of the silent planet. I'll put up the thumbnail for that. That should come out about one week from this video. I'll also put up a thumbnail for the video I put out on the third book in this trilogy, and there's a link to that in the video description. That's my favorite one. But let me tell you about my favorite scene in this book. Spoilers coming, but nothing that'll make Robb you of the joy of reading the book. But there'll be some details, and this is going to sound super bizarre. So this book takes place on the planet Venus, which is called Peralandra in the book. It's this kind of greenish world, which you can tell from this painting I'll put up.

There's not too many pictures or paintings of it, but there's a few. And there's a character named Ransom, who's the protagonist, who has traveled there along with an evil scientist who has essentially become possessed by a demon. So he's also called the unman. And in this story, Venus is a pre-fallen world, and the Adam and Eve of that world are there, and the Eve of that world is being tempted into sin by the unman. I told you, it's kind of bizarre. It doesn't seem to that bizarre as you're reading the book, but just describing it sounds kind of crazy. But so Ransom is trying to stop this process. And he's basically trying to convince the woman like, no, that's what happened in our world. That didn't work out so good in our world. So you have the, and it takes place

over a long period of time. So you have these kind of philosophical conversations between the demon, the unfallen woman, and this fallen, but basically good man. And so you can see how that kind of plot can lead to all kinds of interesting reflections about the nature of goodness and the nature of evil and so forth. I hope to do another video on Perilondra on the nature of goodness, goodness as developmental and dynamic. I think that's something that's interesting. I also want to do more another video on the view of angels in all three of these books in the trilogy. But here we'll make this basic point. Basically, Ransom gets to a point where he realizes, I cannot win this argument. It's just a matter of time before I lose, and she succumbs to sin.

and evil because of his arguments, the unman's arguments. He realizes, you know, he's smarter than me. He has these brilliant gifts of debate and rhetoric. And he comes to the realization, though it's a shock to him at first, that the only way to save this planet is to physically fight the unman. And this terrifies him, of course. He's a middle-aged man. He doesn't have particular fighting skills. and chapter 11 is all sort of the internal dialogue of this character coming to terms with that. It's kind of a fascinating episode of moral decision-making and just really insightful. But in fact, it's kind of interesting. The way he kind of resolves it is he realizes basically this is going to happen one way or another.

And it says that this solves for him the problem of predestination and free will. But let's leave that aside. We'll talk about that some other time. So he goes to fight the unman and he sees him torturing a bird. This is one of the things the unman does. He's trying to spoil the planet. He's torturing the animals. And then he's taunting Weston for daring to fight him. He's saying there's no way. This is, it's such a vivid presentation of evil. You know, it's just like demons. They jeer and they mock. Their bark is much worse than their bite, you know, honestly. That's actually really true. But, and then he says these famous words of that Christ cried out in the cry of dereliction on the cross from Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me in perfect Aramaic? Ransom realizes he's not quoting, he's remembering. Again, it's this terrible feeling of the gleefulness of evil and triumphing in that moment

or thinking they triumphed. Of course, we know happy thought. They didn't. But nonetheless, so they're fighting back and forth for a while. One of the covers of the book has this portrayed, and it's sort of even for a while. It's like two middle-aged scholars. I mean, this is why the plot is so weird, you know, on the planet Venus, two middle-aged scholars like duking it out. But there comes a point, and this is the scene here, where toward the end of it,

ransom is almost at the end of his energy. And he doesn't really, he feels as though he's spent everything he has, but then he gets a second wind that enables him to win the fight, and the second wind comes from hatred. I'll just read this. Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over ransom. A torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred came over him. The energy of hating never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been

a person, but the ruins of personality now survived in it only at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled ransom not with horror, but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of colored chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotions and its object. And then, of course, this hatred, and him to destroy evil. Two questions that I think this raises really quickly. Number one, can hatred ever be morally good? And this is, in other words, the word lawful came up there. C.S. Lewis uses this word

this lawful hatred. And I'm going to put this out there. I think the answer is yes. I recognize, though, that there are real dangerous to that, just like when we're talking about how anger can be justified, but maybe even more so here. This is really, I'm very aware, this is tricky. And there because any sort of positive orientation toward hatred comes with huge risks of being misunderstood, and it's probably very rare that we ever—I mean, in Ransom's case, it seems like this is the one time he's ever felt this, right? And the reason I'm so concerned and sensitive to this is it seems to me that a huge problem in the world right now is increasing hatred. So, nonetheless, for people who watch my videos who are Christians, it should be significant to us that the Bible has a lot to say

about hating evil. Proverbs says the fear of the Lord is hating evil. Romans 12, 9 says abhor or detest what is evil. Even God is spoken of. He speaks of himself as hating evil, hating robbery, for example, Isaiah 61 and many other passages. So, and even if you're maybe watching this video and you don't, the Bible is not important to you, most of us can actually relate to an intuition that when we're facing an extreme evil, there are kinds of hatred that are appropriate for the evil itself. And I think that's what Lewis is proposing. He speaks of what hatred was made for, and he gives these various analogies, and he seems to be saying there's a place for hatred. Hatred has a purpose. That's an interesting thought, if you think about it. Now,

immediately, though, what we need to say is that ransoms hatred in this scene is not for the man who is possessed by the demon, whose name is Weston, but it's for the demon itself. And I think that's clear for two reasons. One is in the next chapter after this scene, which is chapter 13. He has a conversation with that man, and it's clear he's trying to discern, like, are you still in there or not? He doesn't just start attacking him or hating him, because the man, the unman has come back to his senses now and he's not torturing animals and so forth. But the second thing is even in this very passage, you see this old axis which Lewis seems to take for granted here of love the sin er but hate the sin. Now that can be kind of

a controversial little slogan actually. Some people don't like that. I actually think just for most day-to-day decisions, that's a helpful distinction to bear in mind. And that seems implicit in the reasoning here where Lewis is saying that a failure to make that distinction previously always made it have guilt when he felt hatred. So the object of hatred here is not the man, it's the demon. You see that with this reference to the unman, well, even that very term, right, the unman, fascinating label, but the reference to this no longer being an actual person with a will, but rather a kind of self-exiled negation. And then that recognition is immediately what leads in the next sentence to ransom feeling a kind of joy at discovering, oh, this is why hatred exists. So demons in

Christian theology are irredeemable creatures, completely given over to evil, unlike human beings, who are capable of being redeemed. And Lewis's language here, it's very, you know, Lewis is a great writer, this is a very creative way of this idea of the remnants of personality, a self-exile. This is a very creative way of getting at the kind of the totality of how evil has corrupted and infected demons. Christians believe demons exist and their fallen angels. Their sort of their whole being is sort of warped. That's how Lewis is envisioning it here. Now I'm not saying you have to think just like Lewis on that specific point here, but the idea is that is the object of hatred, the demon. Now, I know a lot of non-Christian viewers of my YouTube channel will maybe find this idea of demons super weird, but I have to

say, actually, let me say this, for all the strangeness of it, I am, honestly, Believing in the supernatural realm like this, angels and demons, is one reason I'm really grateful to be a Christian. And the reason is simple. I'll never forget talking about this with my dad once. He helped me think about this. I think it's really true. If you believe in demons, one advantage to that is you don't have to look back at human history and attribute everything just to human agency. You can also see, when you're looking at, because if you study history, you know, it's pretty dark at times.

There's these unfathomable atrocities that human beings are capable of committing and that come in through human history. And you're able to look at that and say that wasn't just all us. There are supernatural forces at work as well. And I think that's a benefit of a Christian view, actually. But what, and that relates to what I want to propose is the key idea of this video that I am not 100% settled on. So I'm going to put this out there. It's sort of my instinct and my hunch. Let me know what you think in the comments.

And that is, when we find the proper purpose of hatred, we're less likely to misuse hatred. Like, if you believe in Satan and you feel hatred toward him, or even if you don't believe in Satan, but you just say, I'm going to hate evil itself, that act, and you think accurately about that, that actually helps you not misuse hatred by hating other people. Okay, so this is the second question, is if we say hatredism can be morally good, can it ever be practically good? And that's the other thing, of course, in this passage is that it's when ransom feels hatred that he wins the fight.

There's this kind of powerful energy in his blood is burning and so forth, and he's able to find new strength because of the hatred. Some of us have probably experienced that where when you truly hate something, it's really motivating. Now, again, you think of the dangers, absolutely. But this is when ransom comes to know why hatred exists is when he sees this complete form of evil. And what Lewis is saying is, again, there is a kind of purpose to hatred. In many other areas of life, I think we find this, that if you find the proper use of something, you are less tempted towards a misuse. For example, if there's a weapon and you know how to use the weapon,

and even if it's just a sword, you're less likely to accidentally cut yourself. Similarly with human psychology, if you know the proper purpose of, say, anger, that anger serves a psychological purpose, if you're more reflective and self-aware about that, you'll be less tempted toward bad and unhealthy forms of anger. And what if it's like that with hatred? What if there's actually a legitimate role for hatred? so that when we see all the bad hatred in the world, the increasing hatred in the world, the solution to that isn't to say stop all hatred, all hatred is bad, but rather to try

to find the proper purpose of hatred. And here I could just put it like this. What if hating evil, like for those of us who are followers of Christ, we struggle with communicating with charity in our hearts to each other amidst our differences in many cases. We all see that, especially on social media. what if remembering the proper purpose of hatred directed at Satan helps us in the meantime? I think that's really true. I've said this many times.

You know, if we remember, oh, we have a bigger enemy. There's something far more evil than anything we see with our eyeballs. I think remembering that helps us not have sinful hatred because we should not hate other people. Even non-Christians versus Christians, atheists and Christians dialoging or other religions dialoguing, Actually, we need to remember this. The person on the other side of politics or culture or whatever it might be, that person is made in God's image. They are redeemable.

We are called to pray for them. Jesus called us to love our enemies. If you try to do that, you know it's extremely hard to do. I actually think finding the proper purpose of hatred helps us. The proper purpose of hatred is towards Satan. And when we remember that, I think it helps us not hate each other. I think that's right. I'm not 100%.

I'm open to reconsider. put it in the comments if you think I'm wrong. I'm open to reconsidering, but I think that seems right to me. It rings true to my experience. It rings true philosophically. It rings true to the scripture to what I see that basically hate evil, hate Satan that will help you not hate people because people are made in God's image and people are redeemable, and that's really helpful to remember. What do you think about that? Let me know what you think in the comments. What's your favorite scene in Perilondra? And if you have a favorite quote from the book, I'll read through all the comments in this video. Put up your favorite quote from the book. I have several others.

I might put up in a future video. Put up your favorite quote. I'd love to read through them. And the ones, the good quotes, make sure to like the good quotes. And it'll be fun to read through the comments section and get a good list of great quotes from Peralondra in the video description. All right, thanks for watching. Look out for my next video on Out of the Silent Planet. Don't forget to like and support the video if you want. Got lots of great stuff coming for the rest of July, August. I'm excited about Truth Unites. If you want to support my ministry, I really feel that this is what is God has called me to do, and He's blessing me in it, and I'll just love it. It's so much fun. It's so meaningful. I see fruit in it, so I'm grateful to God. Support is really helpful and needed,

so you can do that. Links to the video, or links in the video description to all that if you want to help me out. Thanks for watching, everybody.