Main points: Lewis sets up his argument for Christianity, discusses free will, "good dreams", the trilemma, repentance, and the end of the world.
Mere Christianity is a book I first read all the way through a year ago. It's a fascinating work that builds a logical case for Christianity and teaches us a lot about Christian beliefs. I've been inspired by it, and taken many favourite life quotes from it.
Book I - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe - is mostly spent building a philosophical case for Christianity, starting with the very basics - there exists some sort of moral law that all humans are aware of. Lewis progresses logically from there and discusses the nature of this Mind behind the moral law. This part is very interesting, but not particularly inspiring to me because I already have a very firm belief in God. This just serves to back up what I already know.
Once Lewis has set up the idea that there is a Power or Mind behind the moral law we all know, he establishes a God that loves goodness {as evidence by the moral law He has created} and cannot abide badness. This creates a dilemma - one that is necessary for us to accept before we can accept Christianity. We have to see ourselves in the predicament that we are actually in - opposed to Absolute Goodness. Lewis writes,
"It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen, to. the doctor. When you have realised that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about."This reminds me of the quote by Ezra Taft Benson - "Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ." Lewis expertly sets up our dilemma and gets us to see how much we really need Christ.
I also like this small quote by Lewis: "If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth— only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair."
Lewis' genius is extremely apparent in this work, and I love it. To begin Book II - What Christians Believe - writes,
"If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth."This goes along with something I wrote over a year ago - the idea that there is some truth in everything. Of course Lewis is quick to clarify (and I agree) that where Christianity differs with another religion they are wrong. But it doesn't mean that they are wrong altogether.
Lewis argues against Atheism thus:
"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. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? ... If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark."How very true!
I also enjoyed this little quote about reality:
"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. "
Lewis goes on to debunk Dualism, or the idea that there are two opposing forces in the world, one "bad" and one "good." In doing so, he uses a phrase he also used in The Great Divorce and an idea that shows up in The Screwtape Letters - "badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good." His words on Dualism and why it can't be true are deeply interesting, but I don't want to go into all of it now. Suffice it to say that it is sufficiently de-bunked - that because we recognize that one is "right" and the other "wrong," there must be a higher law by which we judge them. This higher law can be only one God, and he is Good. The Evil power in the world is a fallen angel, lesser than God.
I loved this image of Church -
"Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends."It makes it sound so exciting :)
Lewis' thoughts on free will are worth sharing:
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad... Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.& that pretty much sums it up. :)
This line made me smile - "There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on." Bahaha. Don't argue with God. :)
One point of distinction I would like to make between Lewis' writings here and the doctrine of the LDS church is that being like God is not the sin, it's wanting to get there without going about it the proper way {which would in fact be impossible.}
Another point on which Lewis disagrees with Latter-day Saint theology is that God invented us. Rather, the LDS church maintains that we are His children, not merely His invention or creation. Regardless, He is our Father, whether you take that literally or figuratively. I believe that because of our Divine Nature, we cannot be happy without Him.
One of my favourite quotes from Lewis is: "God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." So true. And the sooner we learn that, the happier we'll be. :)
One of Lewis' ideas that I really love is the idea that God sent the human race "good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." I totally agree that the repetition of Christian themes in pagan and other mythologies is something that strengthens my testimony of the reality of Christ's Atonement and Resurrection, rather than weakens it. Rather than Christianity being an non-historically-accurate myth like the rest of them, it is the one true story that they all copy, even if they don't know it. :)
And now we get to Lewis's famous trilemma! The idea that Christ must've either been "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" or, "Mad, Bad, or God." In Lewis' own words:
"Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time... When you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."How powerful.
Recently in my New Testament class we talked about this quote that comes from Lewis' development of his trilemma:
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? ... Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." {emphasis added}The last lines, about Christ being wounded when I sin against others, really touched me.
Before moving on to his next point, Lewis reminds us that, "Theories about Christ's death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works." I think this is important for people to understand.
Writing about how Christ's death works for us, Lewis said
"If we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be—the inconceivable... You may ask what good will it be to us if we do not understand it. But that is easily answered. A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it."Very true! We must first believe, and then we will see.
I like Lewis' description of fallen man - "fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms."
Lewis describes repentance thus:
"It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it."This is different - though not in discordance with - what I was taught as a young child in church. I think this is an example of just one way of explaining the inexplicable. Lewis himself includes the disclaimer, "Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it."
Lewis makes another important point about repentance when he says,
"Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like." {emphasis added}Lewis writes about how, because we are imperfect, we need God to help us to repent. But He doesn't need to repent; He's never done it. Nothing in his nature compels him to surrender or suffer or submit or die. So He voluntarily became a Man, surrendered His will, suffered, and died for us, all so that He could help us to repent.
I liked this one-liner out of this chapter: "To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?" To what indeed.
I like what Lewis wrote about living as a Christian -
"A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out."I think this is important for us to remember. We don't have to be perfect, we just have to keep trying. And thankfully, Christ is willing and able to help us along. :)
Again, one of my favourite Lewis one-liners comes from this book - "[The Christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us." :)
Lewis next addresses a topic that has been discussed recently in the book Love Wins and elsewhere. {I touch on it here.} That is - "is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him?" Lewis responds thus:
"The truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him."I really like this idea. Of course, as a Latter-day Saint, I believe in baptism for the dead, or the idea that good people who never had the chance to hear about Christ will have the opportunity to accept him and be baptized by proxy after they are dead. This resolves the issue for me. God loves every one of His children enough to give the opportunity to accept Him.... however Christ is and always will be the only means whereby salvation is possible.
Lewis concludes his work with this powerful idea:
Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? ... Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely ... God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.It will be too late then to choose your side... That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it."Bam! Awesomespice.
More thoughts & quotes from Mere Christianity coming later! Read the book here. :)
You really have to read the whole thing to get a sense of the logical progression and pure genius inside. I've only included a few of my favourite quotes and ideas here. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment