On Morality & C.S Lewis's Fleet of Ships Analogy

The other day I was reminded of one of C.S Lewis's chapters in Mere Christianity - a chapter called “The Three Parts of Morality”. Some readers may be familiar with it. In this chapter Lewis lays out what he thinks is a good Christian analogy for how “the human machine” goes wrong, by which he means at an individual personal level (failing at becoming as moral an individual as possible), at a level between humans in interactions (failing at treating each other as well as we can), and overall in terms of a broad human teleological purpose (the Christian narrative for human beings as created creatures in the eyes of God).

The analogy Lewis presents is of human beings resembling a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The fleet may be unsuccessful because of internal failures within the ships, or it may fail because the formation of the fleet is upset:

"The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions, they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order, they will not be able to avoid collisions."

 

We all know this is true about both individuals and groups alike - be they religious congregations, political parties, office teams at work, and so forth. If a group is not in a decent state of harmony, with the individuals in order with each other, then it will be an unsuccessful coalition. And if the individual's inward machinery is not in a good state then personal failures upset the cooperation of the group. But here is where things get even more interesting, because while both Christians and non-Christians alike pretty much agree on the wisdom of the above, there is a third element to the analogy upon which they may disagree - the question of whether the fleet of ships is heading where they ought to be heading.

 

This is where C.S Lewis tries to draw out the distinction between the Christian narrative and ordinary human progression. Ordinary human progression may result in our ships working fine internally, and many may even sail in proper fleet formation, but alas they still may not arrive in the right place at the end of their journey.

 

Now all analogies come with limitations, and sometimes Lewis's are overly simplistic, but this one has some interesting connotations, because purely in considerations of human morality (which I think is a human invention in its entirety) the direction of the fleet is more of an unplanned one with no observable end destiny. That is to say, if you'll forgive the introduction of another analogy, human progression is more like the formation of a grand, sumptuous ensemble musical piece over time - it evolves gradually with plenty of bum notes and discordant chords, but along the way the more pleasing sounds survive and are added to the mix as we retain the good and throw out the bad over a long evolutionary percentage game.

 

The Christian narrative, then - being a grace-centred narrative - must, as far as I can see, be equivalent to God using the internal machines of our ships and the evolved formation of the fleet to steer us all in the direction of the destiny of grace-inspired salvation for all (Eventually! There will doubtless be some huge struggles of resistance at the end, rather like stubborn patients who won't take the medicine that will make them better).

 

Observing the rough waters from above, it certainly will look as though among the fleets of harmony there are all kinds of groups heading off from the main trajectory: and if we zoomed in further we would see all kinds of bad machinery in the internal workings of the individual ships. But to me, Christianity speaks the truth about God's amazing love and grace in promising us all the free gift of salvation in the shape of a secured and assured destiny for our ships to travel towards - a destination guaranteed 2000 years ago on the cross.

 

That, for me, is how we disentangle the knotty issue of Christian goodness and what for many people seems to be a human set of moral and ethical ideas that appear to serve God His redundancy notice. Looked at properly, human morality is analogous to the individual interworkings or our ships and the fleet trying to sail harmoniously together. And the destination to which we are all headed is the universal free gift of salvation awaiting us at the end of the journey. And if that seems like a strange mixing of two distinct narratives, remember that the Bible is full of examples of God using human ideas to convey His love for us - most prominently the crucifixion, which is a human invention but one which God uses to show humankind that we are all included in His love and grace.