Introduction

The inner ring is the sort of club where it is not easy to tell who is inside and who is outside. There is no formal admission procedure and no protocol for expulsion. There is usually a constellation of people that are gathered along an invisible border, using the approved slang and nicknames, in hope. People don’t discuss it with others because that is a sure sign of an outsider. Admittance happens when Smith draws you aside and whispers some confidential word of initiation. To be on one side of the invisible line is to be an insider. To be on the other side is to be an outsider. To get in is to climb and then discard the ladder. Exclusion is the essence of the inner circle.[1]

Desiring the Inner Circle

Even though it has no fixed name, everyone recognizes the description. Different names for it might be: the gang, Smith and his group, the important people, the cool kids, or the inner circle. Everyone also recognizes the desire to be in the inner ring.

Why do people want to be part of the in-crowd? Everyone hopes for power and money. But those things don’t satisfy the desire to participate in what C.S. Lewis calls, “the delicious sense of secret intimacy.” This desire motivates far more human behavior than is admitted. Indeed, for some, it is the chief motive of their life.[2] Inner circle syndrome is the need to get inside. It’s the desire to be one of the people in the know. It’s the fear of being left out. It’s devotion to belonging to the elite cabal, to be included in the secret knowledge. The greatest sin is to be an outsider.[3]

C.S. Lewis argues that the inner circle syndrome makes you a scoundrel for two reasons. First, it makes you do wicked things you otherwise wouldn’t do. Lewis says it this way, “The Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” Second, it is always a futile desire. Lewis says, “It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had.” Those with the desire to be “in” don’t get what they want. Lewis says, “Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.” In other words, the truly rare knowledge is not caring about entry into the special caucus.[4]

The desire to enter the inner circle is dangerous. It is egoism to shake off the friends you love—the friends that would last a lifetime—to seek the approval of the cool kids. It is fundamentally self-serving, which is why it is the sin of self-idolization. It values ego over love. It puts one’s own idea of the self over faithfulness to God and neighbor. It wants the ego to have a place at the table with the elites, to belong to the “right side” of sophistication.[5]

Mark Studdock exemplifies the desire to be part of the inner circle. In C.S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, Mark is a soft, pacifistic, non-confrontational person who only wants to be part of Belbury (which represents Babel). Mark defaults to fear and cowardice. His only principle is to take the calculated path that earns passage across the invisible line. “The citizen and the honest man which had been awakened in Mark by the conversation, quailed a little; his other and far stronger self, the self that was anxious at all costs not to be placed among the outsiders, leaped up.”[6] To enter he has to abandon his natural humanity and follow cold reason. Rather than governing his emotions, Mark eradicates them. He is led along by Babel and becomes a spineless follower.[7] He justifies his wicked actions of writing media propaganda with the thought of “Nobody ever again having the least right to consider him a nonentity or a cipher.”[8]

It's easy to assume that inner circle syndrome is the problem of fourteen-year-olds. Certainly, they are in the midst of the struggle. You see it anytime a group of teenagers are walking up a sidewalk, each subtly battling for a spot on the inside. But it is the sort of permanent desire that people don’t age out of. It happens in every social sphere, the struggle, competition, and disappointment to be part of the cool kids. Until you understand the sinful desire to be “in,” you can’t understand the world of teenagers, you can’t understand policy and politics, and you can’t understand why evangelicals are seduced by Belbury. 

Evangelicalism today is afflicted with a particular type of inner circle syndrome. Seminaries, denominations, and coalitions are tempted to adapt their beliefs so they won’t be labeled as, -phobic.  The suffix “-phobic” has changed the moral vocabulary of our culture. It casts a threatening pall over Christians who don’t go along with the latest cultural invention. The “-phobic” suffix is the activist’s most effective way to pin prejudice on a Christian. “Transphobic,” “homophobic,” “Islamophobic,” “xenophobic,” and countless others. This strategy was invented by George Weinberg in the 1970s. As a homosexual and a psychotherapist, Weinberg invented a new psychotherapeutic disease called “homophobia.” This shifted the problem. Homosexuality isn’t the problem. Those who oppose homosexuality are the problem.[9] If you want to be part of the influential set, you need to get with the program. This is why many churches form a theology that magically matches the worldview and outlook of the ruling elites, all the major corporations, the mainstream media outlets, and Ivy League university faculty. That New Testament scholar wants the acceptance of the credentialed in society. That women’s best-selling author of workbook studies wants the “respectable” people to approve. That pastor wants to avoid being called ugly names online. 

Four Concluding Clarifications

There is nothing inherently evil about inner circles. They are inevitable. There are some insides worth reaching. The first clarification is that the desire for the inner ring is different from the need to network. There is a benefit that comes when you have influential friends and it should be counted as the blessing and Providence of God. The second clarification is that inner circle syndrome is different than reaching the peak of your profession. Becoming one of the few sound craftsmen of your vocation doesn’t coincide with those the inner circle produces. The third clarification is that a group of friends with a special bond is not an insider group. It may look like the inner ring, but it isn’t. It's just people who like blessing each other. True friendship is the opposite of egoism. If there is secrecy, it is accidental. No one was drawn to these friends because of secrecy.[10] The fourth clarification is that the love of the inside is the root of this evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. If God has called you to fill an elite position, it is because you have first abandoned your love for it.

[1] C.S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 144f, 148, 150, 156.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 151f.

[3] Christiana Hale, Deeper Heaven (Moscow, ID: Roman Roads Press, 2020), 197.

[4] C.S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 154f.

[5] Christiana Hale, Deeper Heaven (Moscow, ID: Roman Roads Press, 2020), 254.

[6] C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York, Collier, 1965), 100.

[7] Christiana Hale, Deeper Heaven (Moscow, ID: Roman Roads Press, 2020), 197, 210f.

[8] C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York, Collier, 1965), 135.

[9] George Weinberg, Society and the Healthy Homosexual (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972).

[10] C.S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 149, 156f.