The idea of national repentance seems at first sight to provide such an edifying contrast to that national self-righteousness of which England is so often accused and with which she entered (or is said to have entered) the last war [WWII], that a Christian naturally turns to it with hope. Young Christians especially - last-year undergraduates and first-year curates - are turning to it in large numbersOne cannot help but think of the growing popularity of the more progressive, liberal political views particularly amidst younger evangelicals, but also amidst the older mainstream Protestant denominations which have abstracted Christian virtues out of their biblical context and wedged them into any and all social and political talk.
...men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable. But what actually happens to the youthful national penitent is a little more complicated than that. England is not a natural agent, but a civil society. When we speak of England's actions we mean the actions of the British Government. The young man who is called upon to repent of England's foreign policy is really being called upon to repent the acts of his neighbor - a Foreign Secretary or a Cabinet Minister. The first and fatal charm of national repentance is the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing - but, first, of denouncing - the conduct of others. Unfortunately the very terms in which national repentance is recommended to him conceal its true nature. By a dangerous figure of speech, he calls the Government not 'they' but 'we'. And since, as penitents, we are not encouraged to be charitable to our own sins, nor to give ourselves the benefit of any doubt, a Government which is called 'we' is ipso facto placed beyond the sphere of charity or even of justice. You can indulge in the popular vice of detraction without restraint, and yet feel all the time that you are practicing contrition.
All Christians know that they must forgive their enemies. But 'my enemy' primarily means the man whom I am really tempted to hate and traduce. If you listen to young Christian intellectuals talking, you will soon find out who their real enemy is. He seems to have two names - Colonel Blimp and 'the business-man'. What is certain is that in asking such people to forgive the Germans and Russians and to open their eyes to the sins of England, you are asking them, not to mortify, but to indulge, their ruling passion.
Is it not, then, the duty of the Church to preach national repentance? I think it is. But the office can be profitably discharged only by those who discharge it with reluctance. We know that a man may have to 'hate' his mother for the Lord's sake. The sight of a Christian rebuking his mother, though tragic, may be edifying; but only if we are quite sure that he has been a good son and that, in his rebuke, spiritual zeal is triumphing, not without agony, over strong natural affection. The moment there is reason to suspect that he enjoys rebuking her - that he believes himself to be rising above the natural level while he is still, in reality, grovelling below it in the unnatural - the spectacle becomes merely disgusting. The hard sayings of our Lord are wholesome to those only who find them hard.
One cannot also help feel enormously uncomfortable in an age when, in an attempt to avoid feigned repentance one aligns oneself so closely with political views hardly characterized by humility and true repentance.
It should be clear that only those who believe themselves to be the mouth-piece of God in a world where politics is not ultimate can real humility and prophetic proclamations be made and heard with profit. Also, Lewis' thoughts show once again that public debate was never intended to be, nor can it be, performed at the pace at which news and information are spewed forth today. And we are so much the more impoverished as a result.
BHT
