The Inner Ring

Throughout high-school we all noticed or experienced social clicks. If Lewis’s piece could be broken down and simplified, it would be the perfect diatribe against those cliques we saw in high-school. Once you understand this “inner ring” Lewis describes you begin to see it everywhere; work, school, friends, and all throughout the general population. It is fascinating to look at this idea abstractly as Lewis does. Lewis looks at the situation surrounding the individuals in a “group’ not the individuals themselves. The idea of an inner ring in and of itself is neither bad nor good, it is neutral. What makes inner ring good or bad is not only those within, but those outside them. Lewis states that much of the time the desire to get into the ring is the true magic to an individual, and once they are in the magic is gone.
One idea that I really enjoyed was that if an individual enters into a ring without desire for gain or benefit, but purely for the desire of entrance, he will become a scoundrel. He will become a scoundrel mainly because he is willing to do whatever the ring asks of him purely to remain on the inside. What I also find interesting is one thing that makes rings dangerous is exclusion based on prejudice, pride, bias, selfishness, or anger. Self serving exclusion only serves to make the ring that much more appealing to those who desire to get into it. What I also find interesting is the difference between exclusion and discretion. As a flock or church body we do not limit our outreach to anyone, no one is excluded, but when it comes to the “inner ring” of the worship service or membership in the congregation we use discretion. This discretion is not only for our own churches protection, but also a protection of the sanctity of worship and the sacraments. If you think about it critically, if an unrepentant sinner continues to enter the church, with no desire to repent, his goal is obviously not to become a member of the church body, but to in fact sow discourse and make the church and its worship a mockery, and he should be excluded. If someone enters the church with the desire to repent and desires to become a member of the church, even if he struggles with his sin, his desire is sincere and must not be turned away. In the end such things have a way of working themselves out since, if someone does not truly desire to be in a ring he will leave eventually, not only because he becomes board and finds something new to prey on, but also because the appeal of the ring is the truest onset of the inward desire to be part of something, and since he really is just making a mockery of that desire it is short lived. Once again I would reiterate that we never cease in outreach, we continue to preach the desire for repentance, no matter what. We must also continue to protect the flock of Christ from wolves, who would walk amongst the flock not for membership or in repentance, but for death and lasciviousness.