Mere Christianity [book III, ch. 8 - book IV, ch. 7]

Main points: Lewis discusses pride, charity, hope as desire for a better country, faith as holding on despite changing moods, and faith as it works with good acts to bring about salvation once we have accepted that we can do nothing. He discusses the nature of God, and how His aim is to make us into new creatures. 

The Great Sin

The seminal work in LDS culture on the topic of pride is Ezra Taft Benson's talk, Beware of Pride. I went through this talk and looked for similarities to my favourite quotes by Lewis on the same subject. 


Lewis: "Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."
Benson: "Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled... Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers."


Lewis: "Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on."
Benson: "Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of “my will and not thine be done.”"


Lewis: "Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God."
Benson: "The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us."

There are several other strong similarities, but these are all I feel like touching on here. You can read the complete chapter "The Great Sin" here, and "Beware of Pride" here.


Other great quotes from this chapter:

"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison— you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."


"We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity—as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him; wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible."

President Benson taught that, "Pride fades our feelings of sonship to God and brotherhood to man."

And finally, how can we know if we are humble? As Lewis wrote, "A really humble man... will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all."

Charity

"Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."


"Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."

"On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." ... But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him."


This last quote reminds me of a few others from LDS church leaders - 

"Too often we behave as if we were in massive competition with others for God’s love. But we have His love, unconditionally and universally; it is our love of Him that remains to be proven." ~Neal A. Maxwell

and, of course, 

"Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount—that is the measure of God’s love for you. Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely. He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God’s love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked. What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us." ~Dieter F. Uchtdorf 

"His pure love directs and encourages us to become more pure and holy. It inspires us to walk in righteousness—not out of fear or obligation but out of an earnest desire to become even more like Him because we love Him...The first step to walking in righteousness is simply to try. We must try to believe. Try to learn of God: read the scriptures; study the words of His latter-day prophets; choose to listen to the Father, and do the things He asks of us. Try and keep on trying until that which seems difficult becomes possible—and that which seems only possible becomes habit and a real part of you." ~Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Hope


"Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither."

Lewis's words on desiring a better world -

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage." 

- reminds me of what he said in the afterword to Pilgrim's Regress about desiring something that doesn't exist.

Faith [I]


In this chapter, Lewis gives on of my favourite definitions of faith - "Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

"One must train the habit of Faith. The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed."
This reminds me of what Alma said in his discourse on faith to the Zoramites:

"But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out... But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life."

We have to constantly be reminding ourselves of what we believe - otherwise it's too easy to forget. This is one of the many purposes of daily prayer, daily scripture study, weekly church attendance, etc. I agree with Lewis that few people wake up and decide to leave the Church... most people simply drift away.


"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist."

"Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now."
King Benjamin teaches this same principle when he says, 

"I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants... And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him. And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately blessyou; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast? And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you."

Faith [II]


"Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What he cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind or quality— the kind of creatures He intended us to be—creatures related to Himself in a certain way."


Lewis then talks about how we need to come to the realization he talked about in the previous chapter - that God is the source of everything in our life and that we can't give anything back to Him except what is already His. {side note: St. John Vianney said that "We have nothing of our own but our will. It is the only thing that God has so placed in our own power that we can make an offering of it to him." and Neal A Maxwell said, "The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we “give,” brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give! Consecration thus constitutes the only unconditional surrender which is also a total victory!"}



"Now we cannot... discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't."

Then Lewis talks about how we must trust God, and clarifies what this means:
"To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

Book IV: Beyond Personality


Making and Begetting


In this chapter we see a really important difference between Lewis' school of thought and LDS doctrine. Central to the Latter-day Saint idea of who we are is the truth that we are sons and daughters of God, and that Jesus Christ is our brother. This sort of takes the legs out from under Lewis' argument; however, there are still gems of truth to glean and interesting ideas to consider.

Note! We do still believe that we must be born again, and in that way become sons and daughters of Christ in the way, I think, that Lewis is talking about. Or at least closer to what he is talking about. {source} {source}

I like what he says at the end of this chapter: "This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the 
statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life." Firstly, it reminds me of the scene at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan breathes on the statues the Witch has created and turns them back into living creatures. Secondly, I think it's true... we are currently in a fallen state, imperfect, and not like God. We can become like Him someday, but only through His power.

Time and Beyond Time


One of my favourite Lewis quotes is,

"God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."

I love this, and I think it's absolutely true. LDS doctrine teaches us that,

"The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever "the morning stars sang together" for joy; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal "now." . . . He comprehended the fall of man, and his redemption; He knew the plan of salvation and pointed it out. . . . He knows the situation of both the living and the dead, and has made ample provision for their redemption, according to their several circumstances, and the laws of the kingdom of God, whether in this world, or in the world to come." ~Joseph Smith

and we learn from Moses that "all things are present with [the Lord.]" The idea of God being outside of time and so able to spend infinite time with each of us rings very true to me. This also helps me to understand how God knows what we're going to choose before we choose it.... because there is no "before" to Him. We've already chosen it. We just have to learn for ourselves what we will choose, because it hasn't happened yet for us. Lewis explains it better...

"Suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him... He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him."

The Obstinate Toy Soldiers

Another important point of distinction between what Lewis teaches in this book and what Latter-day Saints believe is that Lewis seems to think that humanity could have gone on without the Fall, while I believe that Adam and Eve could not have had children until after they had been changed by the Fall. {source}. So there's really no purpose talking about how humanity might have been if it hadn't been for the Fall... because humanity would not have been.

Lewis explains that because God {Jesus} became a Man, we men {and women} can become even as He is now. We thus are all "saved." He explains,

"We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work—the bit we could not have done for ourselves—has been done for us. We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race. If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us. Remember what I said about "good infection." One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him."

As far as I know, Christianity is the only religion in which God descends to draw humans up. Jesus walked among us. He became a man. He bridged the gap between earth and Heaven. I repeat what Lewis wrote: One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him.


Let's Pretend


Again in this chapter we run into the difficulty of Lewis not believing that we are inherently sons and daughters of God, and the He really is our Father. We don't have to pretend that. However, I do agree that by acting like we are Christlike, we become more Christlike. Heavenly Father sees our righteous attempts, and blesses us by changing our natures to make us more like Him.

Lewis wrote, "Above all, He works on us through each other. Men are mirrors, or "carriers" of Christ to other men." This is in line with what Spencer W. Kimball said: "God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs." 

read Mere Christianity here!