Artificial Equality A Necessity

In his sermon titled Membership in The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis drops yet another bombshell. He says,

You have often heard that though in the world we hold different stations, yet we are all equal in the sight of God. There are, of course, senses in which this is true. But I believe there is a sense in which this maxim is the reverse of the truth. I am going to venture to say that artificial equality is necessary in the life of the State, but that in the Church we strip off this disguise, we recover our real inequalities, and are thereby refreshed and quickened.

I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for [doing so]. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of demoncracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe [that] the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple [is] as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. But since we learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that "all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because his authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned preists should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interefered with because it is constantly abused.

Equality is for me in the same position as clothes. It is the result of the Fall and the remedy for it. Do not misunderstand me. I am not in the least belittling the value of this egalitarian fiction which is our only defence against one another's cruelty. I should view with the strongest disapproval any proposal to abolish manhood suffrage, or the Married Woman's Property Act. But the function of equality is purely protective. It is medicine, not food. (p. 167ff)

This is refreshing. Not only because he recognizes what we too often complain of today (i.e. corrupt leaders, both civil and religious), but because his explanation makes sense not only of those things that appear to be natural authority structures (i.e. the state over citizens, parents over children, husbands over wives, teacher over student, etc.) but also because it gives us the freedom to affirm such structures in themselves and to recognize that we are the problem and not God's created authority structures. It is too easy today to fix the blame elsewhere and not first look within ourselves find the blame.

This is not to say that such structures can't be (or aren't now being) abused, but that if they are, it's not always because authority itself is the problem; it may more often be the case that the man or woman in authority is. Even here, though, the gospel informs us that neither the authority nor the person are the ultimate problem, and that both will one day "obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). The promise of the gospel is not that authority is the problem, but that there is a King - Jesus Christ - who has begun to rule and whose rule will one day be consummated over all things in the New Creation.