Transcript Calvin Academy of Life Long Learning Session II Spring 2003, AD

Calvin Academy of Life Long Learning
The Real C.S. Lewis: His Life and Writings
Compiled by Paulo F. Ribeiro, MBA, PhD, PE, IEEE Fellow
Session II
Spring 2003, AD
SB 101
Scripture
The joy of the Lord is our strength.
Neh. 8:10
The Real C.S. Lewis: His Life and Writings
Provisional Schedule
3/13/ - Surprised by Joy: The Chronology and Development of a Tough And
Holistic Christian Mind
3/20 - Mere Christianity: Orthodoxy and Basic Christian Doctrines (Other
books: Reflections on the Psalms and Miracles)
3/27 - Screwtape Letters: Hell and Heaven
4/3 - God in the Dock: Common Sense Christian Practice and Pain and Love:
The Problem of Pain and the Four Loves:
4/10 - From Narnia to Literary Criticism: A Fully Integrated Christian Mind
4/17- The Last Ten Years: Shawdowlands (BBC Movie)
I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true
perspective. The war [terrorism] creates no absolutely new
situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation
so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always
been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has
always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely
more important than itself. If men had postponed the search
for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search
would have never begun.
C.S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
Three sides:
Lewis, the distinguished Oxbridge literary scholar and
critic;
Lewis, the highly acclaimed author of science fiction
and children's literature; and
Lewis, the popular writer and broadcaster of Christian
apologetics.
Champion of Basic / Mere Christianity
Born into a bookish family of Protestants in Belfast, Ireland.
"There were books in the study, books in the dining room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep)
in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the
cistern attic, books of all kinds,"
A Life of Problems and Moments of Delight (Joy)
Lewis mother's death from cancer came just three months before Jack's tenth birthday, and the
young man was hurt deeply by her passing. On top of that, his father never fully recovered
from her death, and both boys felt increasingly estranged from him; home life was never warm
and satisfying again.
Transition From Christianity to Atheism
His mother's death convinced young Jack that the God he encountered in the Bible his mother
gave him didn't always answer prayers. This early doubt, coupled with an unduly harsh, selfdirected spiritual regimen and the influence of a mildly occultist boarding school matron a few
years later, caused Lewis to reject Christianity and become an avowed atheist.
University Life
Lewis entered Oxford in 1917 as a student and never really left. "The place has surpassed my
wildest dreams," he wrote to his father after spending his first day there. "I never saw anything
so beautiful." Despite an interruption to fight in World War I (in which he was wounded by a
bursting shell), he always maintained his home and friends in Oxford.
Mere Christianity - Table of Contents:
Book I. Right and wrong as a clue to the
meaning of the universe
1. The law of human nature
2. Some objections
3. The reality of the law
4. What lies behind the law
5. We have cause to be uneasy
Book II. What Christians believe
Book III Christian behavior
1. The rival conceptions of God
1. The three parts of morality
2. The invasion
2. The Cardinal Virtues
3. The shocking alternative
3. Social morality
4. The perfect penitent
4. Morality and psychoanalysis
5. The practical conclusion
5. Sexual morality
6. Christian marriage
7. Forgiveness
Mere Christianity - Excerpt from Preface:
I hope no reader will suppose that "mere" Christianity is here put forward as an
alternative to the creeds of the existing communions — as if a man could adopt it in
preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else.
It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone
into that hall, I have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that
there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which
to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms
(whichever that may be) is, I think preferable. It is true that some people may find
they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost
at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but
I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait.
When you do get into the room you will find that the long wait has done some kind of
good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not
as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you
must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above
all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its
paint and paneling.
Mere Christianity - Excerpt from Preface:
In plain language, the question should never be: "Do I like that kind of service?" but
"Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards
this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my
personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?"
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different
doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers
all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them.
This is one of the rules common to the whole house.
Book I - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the
Meaning of the Universe
A Flow-Chart Approach
I Peter 3:15
But in your heart set Christ as Lord. Always be
prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks
you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a
clear conscience.
End of the
Story
Do you believe
in the existence
of a Moral Law?
No
Yes
What Kind:
A Force
(Power)?
An inconsistent Power
End of the
Story
No
Yes
No
A God ?
No
A Force/Power is a sort of a
tame and convenient God .
Is there anything
or anyone
behind the Moral
Law?
End of the
Story
Are you tricking
me with a
religious talk?
Yes
No
We are trying to find
truth and the meaning of
the universe.
Yes
Are you
interested?
No
End of the
Story
Yes
How can we find out more about the
thing behind the moral law and
the meaning of the universe?
Looking into the
The Universe He Made
He is
a great artist
But you cannot know
a man by looking at
the house he built.
Looking inside ourselves,
where He wrote the moral
laws
He is
quite merciless.
The universe is
a very dangerous place.
End of the
Story
The Moral Law ells you to do the
straight thing and it does not seem to
care how painful, or dangerous, or
difficult it is to do.
The Moral Law does not give us any
grounds for thinking that God is “good”
in the sense of being soft and nice..
The Moral Law is as hard as nails.
If God is like the Moral Law, then
HE IS NOT SOFT.
No
Do you want
to proceed?
at your own
risk?
End of the
Story
Yes
End of the
Story
Is He an Impersonal
Absolute
Goodness ?
No
Is He a Personal
absolute
Goodness ?
If the universe is not governed by an
absolute goodness, then all our efforts
are in the long run hopeless.
Yes
Absolute Goodness is either the great safety
or the great danger - according to the way
you react to it.
God is the only comfort and supreme terror
No exceptions, or
allowances
permitted.
End of the
Story
No
End of the
Story
Yes
Have you broken
the Moral Law?
Do you think you need
Forgiveness?
Yes
Yes
Do you want to
find out more
about God
No
End of the
Story
Christianity tells how the demands of the Moral Law,
which we cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how
God Himself becomes man to save man from the
disapproval of God.
Beginning of Chapter 1 of the Great Story ...
Which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better
than the one before.
“My reason for going around in this way was that
Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced
the sort of facts I have been describing.
Christianity tells people to repent and promises them
forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say
to people who do not know they have done anything to repent
of and who do not feel they need any forgiveness. It is after
you have realized that there is a Moral Law, the Power
behind the the law, and that you have broken that law and put
yourself wrong with the Power - it is after all this, and not a
moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
The Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of
unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin with comfort; it
begins with dismay.
In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one
thing you cannot get by looking for it. 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 soap and wishful
thinking to begin with and, in the end despair.
All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts - to
understand the questions which Christianity claims to
answer.”
What Is Mere Christianity?
1 - Christianity is all about Jesus Christ.
2 - Jesus Christ is fully God; Jesus Christ is fully man.
3 - The goal of Christianity is to be conformed into the image of
Jesus Christ.
4 - At the center of Christianity is the Church.
5 - At the heart of Christian discipleship is obedience.
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
Who was (and is) Christ?
Lunatic?
God?
It does Not Make Sense
It is beyond my senses
Great Moral Teacher?
It is non-sense
What was the Purpose of it all?
To Teach
But Christians are constantly talking about something different
Christ
Death
Resurrection
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
Understanding / Believing Christianity
The Real Thing
Pictures
Believing
mutually exclusive
Theories
Understanding
Why did He have to die?
God had to Restore the
Original Order
Man Needed to go through a
complete
restoration / recycle / rebirth
Man needed to be restored and
could not do it by himself
Perfect Humiliation
was necessary
This could not be accomplished
by man himself
God would have to walk us
through the process
Only a God (Perfection) and Man (Humiliation) could do it
HE DID IT - FOR US
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
The Cosmic Equations - Calculus for Life
( 0) God  (Universe)
Creation
 (Universe)dx. dy. dz  (Good )
 ( God ' s... Will )  ( Evil )
Fall
d
( Evil )  ( Sin)
dt
 ( Man' s... Sins)  ( Death)
 ( Jesus' ... Suffering...& ... Re surrection)  ( Death)
Redemption
 ( Death)  ( Eternal... Life)
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
Perfect Humiliation
Perfect because He was God - Humiliation because He was man
How and where from this new man derives his strength
New life - Christ life
Faith
Baptism
Communion
Book 2 - What Christians Believe
Christ-life operate through our bodies,
fingers, muscles, etc..
God loves and uses material things, like bread and wine.
He loves matter. He Created it
But why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world?
Why is He not landing in force, invading it?
Is He not strong enough?
Yes, He is. God will invade.
But when He does, it will be very different.
When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.
Are you ready?
Have you chosen the right side - His side?
Now is the time for choosing.
God is holding back to give us that chance - It will not last forever.
The C.S. Lewis Catechism
Q1. Why does man need God?
A1. Because God made man to run on God Himself
Q2. Why did God give free will to man allowing evil to come into the picture?
A2. Because free will is the only thing that makes possibly any love or goodness
or joy worth having.
Q3. What did God do to restore / redeem man?
A3. God Himself becomes man to save man from the
disapproval of God.
Q4. What is formula of Christianity?
A4. That Christ was killed for us, that His death washed out our sins, and that by
dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is
what has to be believed.
Q1 - says in a less elegant way what Augustine said 1500 years ago. "Though hast created us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until
they find their rest in you."
Q2 - Lewis leaned more to the semi-pelagian or Arminian side of things on free will than he did of the classiscal reformers (e.g. Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin). They all would agree on free will before he Fall, but Lewis held to the idea of free will after the Fall.
Re point three, he seems to operate with the Anselmina view of the atonement, which is held to by Calvinists, Lutherans, and most
evangelicals.
The C.S. Lewis Catechism
Q5. Is salvation by God's predestination or by human choice?
A4. "I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. But I feel
my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this
affair. I was decided upon... I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the
opposite."
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
What is Morality?
Rules to stop us having fun
Rules for running the human machine
Moral Ideals vs Moral Rules
Moral Idealism vs Moral Obedience
Ways The Human Machine Goes Wrong
Individuals drift apart
from one another - collide
Different parts within an
individual drift apart or interfere
with one another
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Morality is concerned with three things
Fair play between individuals
What man was made for
Tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual
The behavior of the human machine is related to the
understanding of its origin and destination
To whom we belong to?
How long are we going to live?
Morality : Three Departments
Relations between
man to man
Relations inside
each man
Relations between man and
the power that made him
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
The Cardinal (Pivotal - Essential) Virtues
Prudence
Temperance
Justice
Fortitude
Common Sense
Child’s Heart
Grown-up Head
Going the right length and no further
From drinking to reading
Fairness
Honesty
Truthfulness
Keeping Promises
Guts
Christianity requires the whole of us, brains, and all.
One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an
education itself. This is why, an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that
astonished the whole world.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Virtue
Quality
Not a particular Action
Important Observations
1. The right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build character called virtue
2. God does not want obedience to a set of rules - He is interested in a people of a
particular sort
3. In heaven we may not need to practice the cardinal virtues, but there will be every
occasion for being the sort of people that we can become only as a result of doing such
acts here. ...if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside of them,
then no possible external conditions could make a “Heaven” for them - that is, could make
them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intended for us.
Galatians 6: 1-10
(Let us not become weary in doing good)
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
When Christianity tells you to feed the hungry it does not give you
lessons in cookery.
If our charities to do not at all pinch us or hamper us, I should say
they are too small.
Every time we make a choice we are turning the central part of us either
into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Social Morality
1
Golden Rule:
Do as you would be done by
2
Christianity has, and does not profess to have a
detailed political program for applying ‘Do as you
would be done by’
When it tells you to feed the
hungry it does not give you
lessons in cookery
When it tells you to read the
Scriptures it does not give you
lessons in Hebrew or Greek
It was never intended to replace the ordinary human arts and science: it is a director which will
set them all to the right jobs, if only they will put themselves at its disposal.
Life is Religion
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
The job is really on us, on the laymen, not the Church.
The application of Christian principles, say to trade unionism or education, must come from
Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from
Christian novelists and dramatics - from from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to
write plays and novels in their spare time.
The New Testament tell us:
1. There is no passengers or parasites
2 . Leftist - and Obedient
3. Cheerful society
Economy = Socialist
Code of manners = Aristocratic
Modern Economy - Based on lending money at interest
Christian Economist are needed here.
The concept applies to all professions.
To All of Life
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
The Question of Giving - Charity
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give
more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc..,
is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving
too little. If our charities to do not at all pinch us or hamper us, I should say they are too small.
A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us want it.
And we are not going to want it until we become fully Christians.
But I cannot do it until I love my neighbor as myself.
And I am not going learn to love my neighbor until I learn to love God
and I cannot learn to love God until I obey Him.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Morality and Psychoanalysis
Christian Specification for the human machine
Moral Choices Involve:
1. Choosing
2. Feelings, Impulses (raw material of his choice)
Natural and Perverted Desires
Bad psychological material is not sin but a disease
God does not judge man on the raw material at all but on what he does with it.
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part, the part of you that chooses, into
something a little different from what it was before ... turning this central part either into a heavenly
creature or into a hellish creature.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Sexual Morality
The Christian Rule: Virtue of Chastity
Chastity should not be confused with social
rule of modesty, propriety or decency
The Christian Rule is:
Either Marriage with complete faithfulness to your partner, or
else total abstinence
This rule is so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either
Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct has gone wrong.
The biological purpose of sex is children.
Please discuss the following definition:
Sex was made for the ultimate intimate enjoyment within the bounds of
marriage in which children can be an additional blessing.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Sexual Appetite
Food strip-tease (sexual starvation or perversion)
Why are lies about sex so powerful?
Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion.
What is the view of the Film and TV industry on sexual morality?
Every civilized man must have some set of principles by which he
chooses to reject some of his desires and and to permit others.
Christian Principles
Hygienic Principles
Sociological Principles
Perfect Chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely
human efforts.
Sex: The Center of Christian Morality is Not Here.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Christian Marriage
Marriage is for Life
Keeping Promises: A Basic Moral Principle
The important difference between:
Being in Love with someone or
Loving someone
Love is an evolving process - ever improving and deepening
The Question of Divorce
The Question of Man’s Headship
Constitution, Natural Psychology
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Forgiveness
If we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.
The most unpopular virtue.
Do you agree with this statement?
Think of someone you find difficult to forgive.
Let us ask God to help us and forgive us!
Love your neighbor as yourself!
Discuss what does this mean to you.
How do we love ourselves?
Do we need to like what we love?
Capital punishment.
How do we respond to it?
When killing is not a murder?
Never enjoy punishing - Discuss.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Charity
Three Theological Virtues
Faith - Hope - Charity
Discuss the following topics related to charity:
Giving to the poor.
Love is not a state of the feeling but of the will.
Liking conflicts with charity.
The rule is: Do not waste your time bothering ...
Giving and show off.
Good and evil both increase at compound interest.
Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor;
act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Hope
Looking forward to the eternal world.
No escapism wishful thinking.
Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth
and you will get neither.
The Hope for Heaven led the Christians throughout the ages to
do things that changed history.
(The Apostles, the great men of the middle ages, The Reformers,
The English Evangelicals, The Civil Rights Movement, etc.)
Dealing with the inconsolable longing.
The Fool’s Way
The Way of Disillusioned Sensible Man
The Christian Way
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.
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Faith
Is faith a moral virtue or
a statement to be accepted as good or bad?
At what point of the Christian life does faith come into the
picture?
What is the problem with faith and emotion?
Romans 7:14-20, Genesis 4:7
Why is faith a necessary virtue?
1st: Recognize the fact that your moods change.
2nd: Remind yourself daily of what you believe.
“It is not reason that is taking away my faith, but my imagination and
my emotions.”
Book 4 - Beyond Personality
Making and Begetting
A discussion about life and how it relates to God.
Theology: As a Map
Less Real, But Essential
Christians: We are all Missionaries and Theologians
Religious Experience Based on
Emotions (Charismatic)
Feelings (New Age)
Popular Understanding (Nominalism)
Christianity (Integral Religion) is Based on
Faith
Reason
Experience
Emotions, Feelings
Book 4 - Beyond Personality
Making and Begetting
Christ is the Son of God
Those who give Him their confidence can also become Sons of God
His death saved us from our sins
Before all worlds Christ is begotten, not created.
Man as Pictures or Statues of God
Material versus Spiritual
This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there
is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day
going to come to life.
Book 4 - Beyond Personality
The Three-Personal God
A discussion of the divine personality, it's qualities, and how it works in our lives.
God beyond Personality
The Wrong idea - God as something impersonal
The Christian Idea - God as Super-Personal / Three-Personal Life
Father
is
is not
is not
God
is
Son
is not
is
Spirit
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"Right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality
or character called a "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really
matters."
"There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which
all you 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."
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will
be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that
are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps,
you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in
the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But
presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not
seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a
different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an
extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be
made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it
Himself."
"...in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of
reality was senseless - I found that I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely,
my idea of justice - was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. 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. Dark would be without meaning.”
"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of
man he is..."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"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."
"Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self..."
"Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not
obvious, not what you expect."
“The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep
for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.”
"They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves.
What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit
tying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what
would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."
"But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for
us does not."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
" ...badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good.
Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness . . . Evil is a parasite, not an
original thing."
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
"Never, never pin your whole faith on a human being...there are lots of nice things you can
do with sand; but do not try building a house on it."
"If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable
explanation is that I was made for another world."
"The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God."
“Free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give [creatures] 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.”
“The happiness God desires for His creatures is...ecstasy of love...And for that they must be
free.”
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
“Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not
think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a
rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the
rebel....Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.”
The better stuff a creature is made of—the cleverer and stronger and freer it is—
then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes
wrong.
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.
"Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and
Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"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 God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free
will...then we may take it it is worth paying."
"Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self..."
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we
should never have found out that it has no meaning..."
"When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that
makes you able to argue at all."
"You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because
he believed there were no mice in the house."
"There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails...If God is
like the Moral Law, then He is not soft."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution,
classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find
something other than God which will make him happy."
"The natural life in each of us is something self-centered, something that wants
to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole
universe."
"[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its selfcenteredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and
nail to avoid that."
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is the hand over your whole self-all your wishes and precautions--to Christ."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"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 show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak,
why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent
reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a
water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of
justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that,
then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying
that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my
private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other
words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that
one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently
atheism turns out to be too simple. 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.
Dark would be without meaning."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But the map is based on the
experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences
compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you or I are likely to get on our own
way are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further,
you must use the map... [This] is just why a vague religion--all about feeling God in
nature, and so on--is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves
from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way,
and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or
music. 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."
"If you do not listen to Theology, that will mean that you have no ideas about God. It will
mean that you have a lot of wrong ones--bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great
many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones
which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion
of modern England is retrogression--like believing the earth is flat."
"Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks
who do that... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time
after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If
you keep a lot of rules, I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do
not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that 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, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly
turning this central thing into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature: either into
a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or
else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow
creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy,
and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy,
rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to
the one state or the other."
"What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not
God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the
sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of
the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God."
More Quotes From Mere Christianity
"Faith... is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of
your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I
know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the
whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which
Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real
self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you
teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or
even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really
dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion."
"... As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in
intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves' but also
'as wise as serpents.' He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head."
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up
yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you
will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and
favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the
end submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find
eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given
away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will
ever be raised from the dead. 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.
Reflections on the Psalms
I have often, on my knees, been shocked to find what sort of
thoughts I have, for a moment, been addressing to God; what
infantile placations I was really offering, what claims I have
really made, even what absurd adjustments or compromises I
was, half-consciously, proposing. There is a Pagan, savage
heart in me somewhere. For unfortunately the folly and idiotcunning of Paganism seem to have far more power of surviving
than its innocent or even beautiful elements. It is easy, once you
have power, to silence the pipes, still the dances, disfigure the
statues, and forget the stories; but not easy to kill the savage,
the greedy, frightened creature now cringing, now blustering in
one's soul.
Miracles
If the [Incarnation] happened, it was the central event in the
history of the Earth -- the very thing that the whole story has
been about. Since it happened only once, it is by Hume's
standards infinitely improbable. But then, the whole history of
the Earth has also happened only once: is it therefore
incredible? Hence the difficulty, which weighs upon Christian
and atheist alike, of estimating the probability of the
Incarnation. It is like asking whether the existence of nature
herself is intrinsically probable. That is why it is easier to argue,
on historical grounds, that the Incarnation actually occurred
than to show, on philosophical grounds, the probability of its
occurrence.