Week 5: Chapter 4 — Human Wickedness

1.Lewis argues that the modern denial of human sinfulness is not intellectual progress but a form of self-deception — that we have lost the vocabulary and the mirror for seeing ourselves clearly. Do you agree? What has replaced the older Christian vocabulary of sin in contemporary culture, and does the replacement serve us as well?

2.He points out that the people who have had the clearest sense of their own sinfulness — the great saints — are the very people we most admire for their goodness. Why does Lewis think this is the case rather than a paradox? What does it tell us about the nature of moral self-awareness?

3.Lewis uses the image of a man who has fallen asleep while on duty and wakes up confused about what went wrong. He argues that fallen humanity is in a similar position — we have lost the original 'orientation' toward God and mistake our disordered state for the normal one. How does this image clarify the doctrine of the Fall without making it feel like a fairy tale?