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<\/a><\/p>\nSorry for the delay in Sunday\u2019s Good Book posts! \u00a0A Song of Ice and Fire<\/a> <\/em>is at least partly to blame, but, now that I\u2019m done with A Dance with Dragons<\/a><\/em>, presumably that particular distraction won\u2019t be a problem for\u2013shall we guess\u2013another eight years. \u00a0I know this is technically going up Monday, but I was gone this weekend seeing my brother at the conclusion of his Shakespeare intensive and it seemed silly to hold the post for a week now that it\u2019s written.<\/p>\n A little while ago, Eve<\/a> lent me a copy of C.S. Lewis\u2019s The Weight of Glory<\/a><\/em>, and I found the opening of the title essay very affecting.<\/p>\n If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given my previous Kantian sympathies<\/a>, this criticism hit home. \u00a0I still have a tendency to try to help other people in a selfish, unpleasant way. \u00a0I might particularly relish a chance to do a good turn for someone who I know doesn\u2019t like me because that way I get the chance to mortify<\/em> my dislike while fulfilling my duty. Essentially, I end up reveling in their dislike or any other brokenness in the world as long as it gives me a chance to prove myself.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost an embodiment of the shallow critique of Kant: \u201cIn a Kantian framework, shouldn\u2019t you wish to hate the Good, so that your\u00a0fulfillment\u00a0of your duty isn\u2019t tainted by pleasure?\u201d<\/p>\n Christians aren\u2019t playing a zero-sum game; they deny themselves baser pleasures because they are pursuing higher ones (see this speech<\/a>, h\/t Eve). \u00a0For an atheist like me, it\u2019s different. I don\u2019t believe myself eligible for any cosmic rebalancing where goodness and sacrifice is rewarded a hundredfold (and even if I did, I certainly disagree with some orderings in the Christian hierarchy of goods). \u00a0But even in an unfair, God-free world, Lewis\u2019s\u00a0criticism\u00a0of self-denial holds water.<\/p>\n Sacrifice should always be sacrifice for<\/em>. \u00a0And choosing to sacrifice means that we thought the price was worth it and have some reason to rejoice. \u00a0Something is lost if we blur the lines between chosen sacrifice for some desired end and aimless self-denial or even happenstance misfortune. \u00a0At best, we\u2019re encouraging a kind of grim stoicism where one aims to sacrifice attachment to emotion\/pain\/etc and becomes unmoored from the physical and social world. \u00a0At worst, we\u2019re back to my bad Kantianism, where every human interaction is reduced to another pop quiz testing my ethics and will, a chance to score points.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n