To Make a Good Man do Bad Things

We all know what an inner ring is, we've all experienced the phenomena of them, whether or not we call them by that name. Cliques, cells, gangs, groups, committees, whatever you want to call them, chances are that we have all both been a part of some inner rings and excluded from others. These inner rings exist in every society, anywhere in the world in any class and culture (which coincidentally can themselves be inner rings). As Lewis says, "It is certainly unavoidable." To go even further Lewis says, "It is necessary: and perhaps it is not a necessary evil." If it is not evil then why does forming clicks have such a negative connotation, even when the exclusion is unintentional. Lewis goes onto explain that "A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous." These groups, these inner rings are one such thing.

Thus we see that it is the desire for the inner ring that is sinful. It is that need to be accepted that we feel that is wrong, not the acceptance itself. Lewis gives examples of how this desire for the inner ring can lead to many acts that are both harmful and sinful. He points out that "when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders." And wonders "whether, in ages of promiscuity many a virginity has no been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus." Furthermore he points out that "the number of people who first smoked  or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large." Indeed it appears that this desire for the inner ring can pierce all other aspects of life and make things that would previously have had absolutely no appeal at all seem all of a sudden absolutely necessary to obtain. Lewis puts it well when he says, "Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things."

I would like to recount a time where this last quote was illustrated in my own life. The story requires a little background so please bear with me. I went to a small missionary boarding school in Pakistan for most of my life. It was to begin with K-12 and later 4-12 but at the time that I was in 5th grade the school split, for reasons I won't go into here, with the high school and jr. high moving to Thailand while the elementary remained in Pakistan. After two years separate they rejoined when I was in seventh grade. When the school rejoined there were then two groups of people especially in my age group. There were those who had gone to Thailand, and those who had remained in Pakistan. These groups were especially pronounced in the class above me, where about half had moved to Thailand and the other half stayed in Pakistan. Now that you have that background I can proceed with the story.

When I was in sixth grade I became good friends with a guy who was a year younger than me. For anonymity I'll call him Enrique (this doesn't imply he's Hispanic, I just decided I didn't want to use any of the typical generic pseudonyms). We became really close friends, almost like brothers at that point. The next year when the school came back together his family was on furlough and I moved up into to seventh grade and began to make friends with some of the guys who came back from Thailand. They were mostly a year older than I was but I had known many of them before the school split. Looking back I can see very clearly that they were an Inner Ring that I was trying to gain access to, but at the time I didn't think much of it.

The next year came around and my friend Enrique returned from furlough and started jr. high. At that point in hind sight I would say I was on the borderline of the Inner Ring of the group from Thailand. At first I was extremely happy and excited that Enrique was back and thought we would resume our friendship where it left off. However, it soon became apparent that my friends from Thailand of the Inner Ring I desired to be a part of were not so predisposed to accepting Enrique as a friend. In fact they treated him rather horribly (I am not saying this to imply that those people were bad people, they to were suffering from the desire to maintain the Inner Ring I believe, and many of them are still among my best friends and have become extremely Godly men) teasing him and excluding him in the mean ways that only jr. high kids can. It is one of my greatest shames that I just watched them and did nothing about it. To this day I regret not having valued my friendship with him much more highly than the virtue of being inside the Inner Ring and wonder at how different things could have been between us had I done the right thing and taken his side.

As it was I spent several months avoiding him before he confronted me and asked what had happened. I talked to told him, I am ashamed to say, that I now had more friends than before and that I could not spend time with him as before. He took it amazingly well, and it is a testimony to his resilience that he formed other friendships that quickly became quite deep and meaningful. The two of us grew apart for a year before my other friends grew up a little and realized that Enrique was in fact a great guy, and only then did I approach him and apologize. I was cowardly but sincere and he was kind enough to accept my apology. We have now become close friends but not in the way that we were that first year. I forfeited that privilege through my foolish desires for acceptance.

Just last summer I had the chance to see Enrique again and we talked about it and he assured me that he had entirely forgiven me. I responded by telling him that I knew but that I still regretted it and the loss of all that might have been. The desire for the Inner Ring, even though brief and fleeting can have such lasting consequences. Even though it seems, more so than any desire, to offer relationships and friendships that are meaningful, it lies and in fact destroys those which mean the most. To make a good man do bad things offer him a chance to enter the Inner Ring he desires to enter.