matthew94
January 8th, 2004, 4:18:03 PM
Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis
I may not call it my favorite book, but ‘Mere Christianity’ is the book I would take to a deserted island if I weren’t allowed to take a Bible. Few books cut to the heart of so many matters with such precision.
For Christians, this book is an excellent reminder of what our faith is all about. But ‘Mere Christianity’ is really written, for the most part, for non-Christians. It is a step-by-step course on why Christianity alone explains our world. But perhaps the most incredible aspect of the book is that it accomplishes its purpose with extreme kindness and politeness.
‘As a young man, C.S. Lewis had served in the awful trenches of WWI, and in 1940, when the bombing of Britain began, he took up duties as an air raid warden and gave talks to men in the Royal Air Force, who knew that after just thirteen bombing missions, most of them would be declared dead or missing. Their situation prompted Lewis tot speak about the problems of suffering, pain, and evil, work that resulted in his being invited by the BBC to give a series of wartime broadcasts on Christian faith. Delivered over the air from 1942 tot 1944, these speeches eventually were gathered in the book we know today as ‘Mere Christianity.’” (taken from Foreward of the book)
There are four sections of this great book. First, Lewis discusses morality in general. His focus is ‘right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe.’ He doesn’t assume Christianity. He talks about the world as we know it. In the second section he discusses what Christians believe. He shows what makes Christianity distinct from any other religious system. In the third part Lewis discusses Christian behavior. Finally, Lewis guides our first steps into the huge ocean of the trinity.
Instead of summarizing each section, I thought I’d try to pull my favorite quote from each chapter out. There are 33 chapters...that makes for a lot of quotes...so feel free to skim:
1. It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real right and wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on tot my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologize to them. They had much better read some other book, for nothing I am going to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left
2. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which make a kind of tune
3. There is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real- a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.
4. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences…The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it ton when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion with none of the cost.
5. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
6. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
7. Wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness…goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled…evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
8. Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it was worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God…When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.
9. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage-call it unfair if you like- is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?
10. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen
11. Let us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his own ship is his own business. But does it not make a great difference whether his ship is his own property or not?
12. The point is not that God will refuse your admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a ‘heaven’ for them
13. ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed’ The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see
14. Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole…you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature
15. Suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the light went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think that there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?
16. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go- let it die away- go on through the period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow- and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.
17. Hate the sin but not the sinner
18. The Christians are right: it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
19. The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he likes them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people.
20. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.
21. If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
22. There are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road.
23. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God…neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.
24. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal…If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.
25. If God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line.
26. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
27. The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.
28. A Christian must be neither Totalitarian or Individualist
29. Very often the only way tot get a quality in reality is tot start behaving as if you had it already.
30. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self-all your wishes and precautions-to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead
31. ‘God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy’
32. God became a man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man
33. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
C.S. Lewis
I may not call it my favorite book, but ‘Mere Christianity’ is the book I would take to a deserted island if I weren’t allowed to take a Bible. Few books cut to the heart of so many matters with such precision.
For Christians, this book is an excellent reminder of what our faith is all about. But ‘Mere Christianity’ is really written, for the most part, for non-Christians. It is a step-by-step course on why Christianity alone explains our world. But perhaps the most incredible aspect of the book is that it accomplishes its purpose with extreme kindness and politeness.
‘As a young man, C.S. Lewis had served in the awful trenches of WWI, and in 1940, when the bombing of Britain began, he took up duties as an air raid warden and gave talks to men in the Royal Air Force, who knew that after just thirteen bombing missions, most of them would be declared dead or missing. Their situation prompted Lewis tot speak about the problems of suffering, pain, and evil, work that resulted in his being invited by the BBC to give a series of wartime broadcasts on Christian faith. Delivered over the air from 1942 tot 1944, these speeches eventually were gathered in the book we know today as ‘Mere Christianity.’” (taken from Foreward of the book)
There are four sections of this great book. First, Lewis discusses morality in general. His focus is ‘right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe.’ He doesn’t assume Christianity. He talks about the world as we know it. In the second section he discusses what Christians believe. He shows what makes Christianity distinct from any other religious system. In the third part Lewis discusses Christian behavior. Finally, Lewis guides our first steps into the huge ocean of the trinity.
Instead of summarizing each section, I thought I’d try to pull my favorite quote from each chapter out. There are 33 chapters...that makes for a lot of quotes...so feel free to skim:
1. It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real right and wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on tot my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologize to them. They had much better read some other book, for nothing I am going to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left
2. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which make a kind of tune
3. There is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real- a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.
4. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences…The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it ton when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion with none of the cost.
5. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
6. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
7. Wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness…goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled…evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
8. Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it was worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God…When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.
9. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage-call it unfair if you like- is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?
10. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen
11. Let us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his own ship is his own business. But does it not make a great difference whether his ship is his own property or not?
12. The point is not that God will refuse your admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a ‘heaven’ for them
13. ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed’ The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see
14. Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole…you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature
15. Suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the light went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think that there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?
16. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go- let it die away- go on through the period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow- and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.
17. Hate the sin but not the sinner
18. The Christians are right: it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
19. The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he likes them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people.
20. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.
21. If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
22. There are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road.
23. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God…neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.
24. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal…If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.
25. If God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line.
26. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
27. The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.
28. A Christian must be neither Totalitarian or Individualist
29. Very often the only way tot get a quality in reality is tot start behaving as if you had it already.
30. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self-all your wishes and precautions-to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead
31. ‘God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy’
32. God became a man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man
33. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.