Learning in Wartime

Someone at a staff meeting referred last week to C. S. Lewis' sermon Learning in Wartime. I had read it before; back in 2001, after September 11th, a lot of people were reading and discussing it. (Here's an article published in Christianity Today at the time.)

Lewis gave this sermon to undergraduates during the second World War. How, they wondered, could they justify being at university and studying when such cataclysmic events were going on? Particularly, how could they study the seemingly impractical things they were working on? (This is something I think about a lot. I mean, what good am I in an emergency? I can just hear it now: "Ah, someone with a literature degree! Two literature degrees, you say! Just what we need right now in the middle of this crisis, in this country with a 50% literacy rate! Hurry over here, there's a text to be explicated! What a relief to have an expert on hand!")

The relevance of this Lewis sermon now was that we as a staff are overwhelmed with what is going on around us in this country, with the death and destruction and suffering. Of course, it's useful to keep people's children safe and occupied while they are out there making things better. Of course, it's useful to educate children. But sometimes it seems that the things we're teaching are perhaps not the best use of our time - why aren't we out there doing something useful? What good are equations and metaphors and chemical formulae now?

If you've ever felt that way, I highly recommend that you read this piece. (You can find it in PDF format here.) (Edit - Wow, I've worked and worked on posting the right link and I can't seem to get it - just do what I did and Google "C. S. Lewis Learning in Wartime PDF" and you should find it. It's at ncgv.net.)

Here's an excerpt:

Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something
infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed
the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure
the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when
we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been
normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil,
like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to
be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible
reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely
cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long
ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted
knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the
suitable moment that never came. Periclean Athens leaves
us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral
Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have
sought first the material welfare and security of the hive,
and presumably they have their reward. Men are
different. They propound mathematical theorems in
beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in
condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last
new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and
comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is
our nature.

Literature is part of what it means to be human - yes, even in a country where so many can't read it. It helps us understand one another, appreciate one another, and maybe be less likely to kill one another. It may not be of immediate practical value, but humanity wants knowledge and beauty now. The suitable moment will never come.