Eleventh Post - Lent 2017 with C. S. Lewis (Membership)

"A dim perception of the richness inherent in this kind of unity is one reason why we enjoy a book like The Wind in the Willows; a trio such as Rat, Mole, and Badger symbolizes the extreme differentiation of persons in harmonious union, which we know intuitively to be our true refuge both from solitude and from the collective. The affection between such oddly matched couples as Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness or Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller pleases in the same way. That is why the modern notion that children should call their parents by their Christian names is so perverse. For this is an effort to ignore the difference in kind which makes for real organic unity... They are trying to drag the featureless repetitions of the collective into the fuller and more concrete world of the family."
- C. S. Lewis, "Membership"

In this current section Lewis reminds me of the difference between a collective and membership within the Body of Christ. Rather than quote the more spiritual sections I decided to go with one of his much more concrete examples of that difference.

I'm not sure who has read The Wind in the Willows but I highly recommend it. If you want to know how diversity works it's in there. Rat, Mole, and Badger, all different, become friends. In the stories they meet each other, they teach each other, they spend time together, they grow closer, they help each other and all three become richer because of their interactions. The other two literary references are to Dicken's The Old Curiosity Shop and his The Pickwick Papers (see, those literature classes do pay off) and are both examples of completely different people entering into fellowship of some type one with another.

In Scripture we are not called to come together like a roll of quarters, each nearly identical and completely interchangeable. I found the comment about children calling their parents by their first name interesting. I had always found it a bit distasteful because it shows disrespect. Lewis takes it deeper as another way contemporary society is erasing those natural differences that occur within the family. In Lewis's words what makes the Body rich is "organic unity", all of us coming together with our differences to make up the whole. If I take a quarter from a roll, not much has changed from the collective. If Rat or Mole or Badger disappeared that friendship is radically altered. If a body loses one of its parts it is forever changed.