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Mere Christianity, Day 21: Making and Begetting

1/21/2015

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Today's post begins the fourth and final section of Mere Christianity: "Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity." Lewis uses this section to examine and explain some of the Theological aspects of Christianity and move us into the doctrines and the "science of God" so that our thoughts about Him can be as clear and accurate as possible.
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Lewis somewhat understands the objections to Theology that people often have. He tells about a man who once took issue with him during one of his presentations because he had a problem with all the doctrine and dogma and neat little formulas about God. The man had personally met God and felt His presence out alone in a desert, and he believed that his experience was the real thing, the thing that mattered. All the Theology stuff was just petty and unreal.

It is true that we have these real experiences with God, and when we turn to Theology, we are turning to something less real. Sailing the Atlantic ocean is a different and much more real experience than looking at a map of the Atlantic, but there are two things we ought to remember about the map:
  1. The map was put together from what the "hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic." So it is an accumulation and collection of all those different people's real experiences which were just as real as your single experience.
  2. If you want to actually go anywhere specific, "the map is absolutely necessary."

Theology is similar to the map. The doctrines are less real and maybe less exciting, and they are not God, but they are based on the multiple experiences of others who have had real encounters with God and which may help make sense of the elementary or confusing experiences we may have on our own. Additionally, Theology is necessary if we want to actually go anywhere with God:
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The popular idea of Christianity, the vague elementary philosophy, is that Jesus taught some wonderful moral principles, and if we would just follow his advice we would all be at peace and have perfect social order. This is not necessarily untrue, but it is also not the whole truth of Christianity, and really there are plenty of other great philosophers and moral teachers whose advice we could follow and achieve the same results. "If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference."
So if we want to find the entire truth, we must look at the whole of what Christianity claims; we must examine the Theology. And in that Theology, we find Christianity says that...
  • Jesus is the Son of God
  • Those who place their faith in Jesus can also become sons of God
  • Jesus' death saves us from our sins

Lewis says the most shocking statement of Christian Theology is the claim that man can become a son of God by attaching himself to Christ, but in order to really understand this, we must first understand the difference between 'begetting' and 'making'.

To "beget" is to bring into existence something of the same kind as yourself:
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To "make" is to create something different from yourself:
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So what God begets (Jesus) is God, and what God creates (man) is not God. "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. A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way, man has... the 'shape' or likeness of God, but he has not got the kind of life God has... in his natural condition, has not got, [the] Spiritual life - the higher and different sort of life that exists in God."
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 20: Faith (parts 1 and 2)

1/20/2015

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The last two chapters of Book Three deal with the third Theological virtue, Faith. I'll summarize both of these chapters here in one post (in order to stay in the 31-day framework) so forgive me if this one is a little longer than some of the others, but hang in there because it's all worth reading!

Faith: Part One
Lewis says that the virtue of Faith seems to have two senses about it, or two different levels. The first level is merely Belief, accepting or recognizing the doctrines of Christianity as true. But, you may ask, how can simply believing in something be considered a virtue? 
"Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid."
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So if, generally, we believe a thing because it has been shown to be true, why would we consider Belief anything more than a reasonable response to the evidence provided? Yes, belief is related to reason (because why would we really believe in something if it wasn't reasonable?), but there is another component of the human mind that must be taken into consideration. We are not ruled by reason at all times; we are also under the influence of our emotions and imagination. Lewis gives the example of having to go under anesthesia for a surgery: "My reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics." So our imaginations and our emotions often battle against our faith and our reason and call into question what we know to be true, what we have believed to be certain.

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This is where the virtue of Faith comes in. We will have moods when the Christian faith seems improbable; even as an atheist, Lewis admits that he experienced many occasions where he thought atheism seemed unlikely. Our emotions and our imagination can shift our moods and cause us to doubt, so we must have something stronger than those moods that teaches them how far they are allowed to take us. Otherwise, "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."

So how do we strengthen this virtue? How do we train our Faith?
  • Step One: Acknowledge and be aware that your moods will change. It is part of the human experience and doesn't necessarily prove or disprove anything about a view.
  • Step Two: If you are a Christian, commit to be diligent in those practices that strengthen your faith (prayer, reading God's word, attending church, educating yourself about Christianity and how to defend it). In essence, feed your Faith; nourish it, and it will grow.
Approaching the second level of Faith (in chapter twelve), Lewis wants to preface by saying that this higher level or sense of the virtue does not come into play until a man has tried and really done all he could to be a "good man," tried to fix the machine on his own, tried to keep and practice the Christian virtues and found himself failing at all of the above. It is also necessary that the man begins to realize that anything he tries to give to God, anything he might try to do for God is really like a child asking his father for a dollar to buy him a present. The father will probably give the child the money and will probably delight in the gift the child gives him, "but only an idiot would think that the father is [a dollar richer] on the transaction." 

So once a man is aware of these two realities, that is when the second level of Faith begins.
Faith: Part Two
Before Lewis begins discussing the next level of Faith, he makes this statement: 
"If this chapter means nothing to you, if it seems to be trying to answer questions you never asked, drop it at once. Do not bother about it at all. There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside, before you have become a Christian. But there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road."
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Having said this, he reiterates that before a man can experience or understand this second level of Faith, he must first realize his bankrupt standing before God. We have to get the idea out of our heads that there is some sort of give-and-take relationship we have with God, some sort of exam we only have to pass, or some type of scorecard He keeps on us. This is not a right understanding of ourselves, of God, or of our relationship to Him. "We cannot get into the right relation until [we have] discovered the fact of our bankruptcy." And not 'discovering' in the sense that we merely repeat back what we have been taught, but 'discovering' it by really experiencing it and finding it to be true.

It is only by trying our very hardest to keep the moral law that we realize we really cannot ever succeed in doing so. At this point, or after this gradual process of really seeing our inadequacy, we come to the realization that we need someone who will lend us His perfect obedience and fill up our deficiencies and make us like Himself - which is where Christ comes in. "Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing." We come to a point where we see that all of our own efforts cannot save us, so we stop trying to save ourselves and hand it over to Christ. This handing over of ourselves then leads to our trying to do all that He says, trying to obey:

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This Faith in Christ and our good works go hand in hand. We work out that salvation, for it is God who works in us. The two cannot really be separated or compartmentalized, and we cannot try to break it down into "what exactly God does and what man does when the two are working together." It is likely that, with our human minds, we will never be able to fully understand the relationship between Faith and works or be able to express it with our human language, so Lewis says this is as far as he will go on the topic.

In closing the chapter on Faith and the final chapter of Book Three, he has this to say:
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 19: Hope

1/19/2015

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The second of the Theological virtues is Hope.
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Some people believe that the Christian virtue of hope, or the expectation of a future eternal home in Heaven, is "a form of escapism or wishful thinking," but it is actually a virtue that is meant to move the Christian forward to action. "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven." So we ought to expect that the man who truly knows the meaning of Hope and is motivated by its truth will do much more in and for this present life than the man who has no Hope. 
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There are reasons, though, that we humans find it difficult to really want Heaven:
  1. We have not been taught or trained to do so. The entire focus of our education and development centers around this world and sets our minds mostly on what we see and know here on Earth.
  2. We don't always recognize the longing for heaven, even when it is present within our hearts. "Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise."
Even the best possible relationship, career, adventure, health, or financial situation still leaves us slightly unsatisfied, never completely fulfilled, like perfect contentment is always just beyond our reach. We enjoy them for a time and think that maybe we have found what our hearts were searching for, but then that joy or excitement fades away into reality once again. Lewis says when this happens, there are two wrong ways of dealing with it:
  • The Fool's Way: "He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are all after... always thinking that the latest is 'the Real Thing' at last, and always disappointed."
  • The Way of the Disillusioned 'Sensible Man': He convinces himself that the whole pursuit of satisfaction or joy was just an exercise in futility, just something young people do until they settle down and learn to expect less. This is not necessarily a bad path and would be the best one to take if man did not have eternity to look forward to, "But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow's end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed 'common sense' we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it."
There is one other way of dealing with the disappointment and discontentment that life seems to bring... The Christian Way. The Christian believes that we "are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists." For each biological or natural desire we feel, there is some corresponding thing or act that will quench that desire and fulfill the need we have. Like the examples in the diagram to the right, we find that the desires we have point us to the things that will satisfy them. Which leads to this famous quote of Lewis's: 
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The reason nothing in this world or on this earth can permanently sustain and satisfy our deepest desires is because the things in this world were never meant to do so. The pleasures we experience here weren't meant to be the real thing, but rather the things that awaken us to the Real Thing, pointing us forward in Hope.

So we should never take for granted or despise the earthly pleasures and blessings we have, but we should also never allow them to distract us or turn us away from the real goal:
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 18: Charity

1/18/2015

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CS Lewis uses the last four chapters of book three to discuss the Theological virtues that he mentioned earlier in the book. Those three virtues are Love (or Charity), Hope, and Faith.
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When we think of the word Charity now, we think of giving to the poor, but really it has a much broader meaning, and Lewis refers to it as, "Love, in the Christian sense," not an emotion or feeling, but a state of the will. In the chapter on Forgiveness, he pointed out that loving someone is not always the same as liking someone. In the chapter on Marriage, he discussed how love is about action, not feelings, because actions are the things that we can really commit to. We cannot promise to go on feeling a certain way forever, but we can promise to always act in love and give love and show love, even when we don't feel loving. Even when we don't like someone. We are capable of doing this because this is actually how we treat our own selves.

We always love ourselves, even when we do not like what we do. Loving ourselves simply means that we want good for ourselves, we want to see ourselves succeed and do well. Even when we are frustrated at our mistakes or saddened by our shortcomings and failures, we still want to see things turn around for ourselves. This is the same kind of love we ought to have for others. Some people are easier to like than others, and we often have a natural fondness or affection toward certain types of individuals. Lewis says there is nothing wrong with this, just like there is nothing wrong with having certain foods that we like and dislike. The problem comes from what we do with those natural likes and dislikes, how we treat people because of them.

Liking someone, of course, makes it easier to be charitable toward them, and it is fine to encourage affection toward people, but "it would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings."

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At first, this may sound somewhat cold or forced, like you are faking it or being disingenuous. We are accustomed to associating love with sentimentality and affectionate feelings, but the interesting thing is that loving others from the will and not just from an emotional state tends to be more sustainable and actually leads to affectionate feelings. "The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning."

The same is true in the opposite direction too. The more you injure someone you do not like, the more you treat them unkindly or think or speak badly about them, the more you will come to dislike them until your hate for them and your cruelty toward them become a vicious cycle that feeds itself. This is why Lewis says we must be careful about every little decision we make. The smallest kindness, the smallest loving act we do 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." And the seemingly trivial indulgence in hatefulness or anger or lust today can open up the gates and make one vulnerable to attacks later on that would have otherwise been impossible.

Lewis makes one final point about the virtue of Love when it is between us and God. Really, the same principle applies here that applies between us and our fellow man:
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 17: The Great Sin

1/17/2015

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This chapter introduces what is possibly the most problematic area for the human machine: Pride. Lewis says Pride is the thing that "leads to every other vice, [and it is] the complete anti-God state of mind." Pride is essentially self-conceit, the inward part of a man that sustains itself through comparison and competitiveness. Pride is fed by being better, stronger, smarter, richer, etc. than someone else and is starved by taking away the competition. The ultimate goal of Pride is power, and the opposite of Pride is Humility.
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Pride is the one sin that will always bring divisions and create opposition and hostility, not only with other people but also with God. Pride pushes us to want more and to be better than everyone else, and as long as there is someone we have not beaten, our Pride will compare and compete until it has the pleasure of being above all the rest. But in God, we find a fundamental problem for our Pride. God is the one Being who will always be superior to us in every way. Even if a man surpassed every human on Earth in every way imaginable, he would still come up short when he compares himself to the Divine Creator. Since Pride would never allow us to acknowledge our inferiority or admit that we cannot be the winner and that something or someone cannot be beaten, we find that Pride actually prevents us from knowing God at all. There are really only two solutions that will protect our Pride: 
  1. We deny that this God even exists and convince ourselves it is all nonsense and fairy tale, so there really is no threat to our Pride at all.
                            
    < OR >
  2. We turn this God into something that can be beaten, something that is much more suitable to our Pride and much easier to compete against.
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One might ask, at this point, how is it possible then that there are so many very religious people who say they know God but seem to be consumed with Pride? This is related to number 2 above, but Lewis also says this: "I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men."

Pride is so dangerous because we are usually unaware of its presence, and it is often used to cure our other evils; we overcome some vices by learning to see them as beneath our dignity. So we become self-controlled and wise and courageous, while all along we fan the flames of self-conceit. And Lewis says this is all perfectly fine and pleasing to the devil because he would much rather see us fall prey to the cancer of Pride than the ulcer of lust.

Before he closes the topic of Pride, Lewis wants to mention just a few things in order to prevent or clear up any potential misunderstandings:
  • "Pleasure in being praised is not Pride." Finding delight in the compliments or praises of others is a good thing so long as the delight comes not from what you are but from the fact that you were able to please another person (or even God). "The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.'"
  • Being 'proud of' something, like one's child or one's achievements, is not Pride so long as we are using the term to refer to a warm-hearted admiration or happiness we may feel. But it moves toward Pride when we allow those things to puff us up and make us think more of ourselves than we ought.
  • Pride is not forbidden by God because it offends Him but because it separates us from Him...
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  • And finally, on the topic of humility, a humble person is not one who walks around with his head hung low, telling everyone what a nobody he is. When we really find ourselves in the presence of a humble person, we will probably find that "he will not be thinking about humility; he will not be thinking about himself at all."

*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 16: Forgiveness

1/16/2015

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In the chapter on Sexual Morality, Lewis said that Chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues, but upon reflection he is not sure that he was correct. It may actually be that Forgiveness is the least popular.
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The command to 'Love thy neighbor as thyself' is all fine until we realize that 'thy neighbor' includes 'thy enemy,' "and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies." People naturally want to give an immediate objection and take it to the extreme with a question like:
"How would you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or Jew?"
Of course, this would probably be incredibly difficult, and Lewis admits that he doesn't truly know what he would be able to do in that scenario. But then, this book is not about what he could or would do; it's about what Christianity is. Lewis didn't invent it, but right there in the middle of it all, we find, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." So what are we to do about that?

Two things that may make "Forgiveness" easier:
   A.     Start with the simpler stuff.
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"When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children... for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment." 
   B.     Figure out exactly what 'love your neighbor as yourself' really means.
"I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."
  • So loving our enemies does not mean we are required to think fondly of them or minimize the bad things they have done. We ought to hate the evil that they do while all along, we keep hoping that the person, their soul, might be changed and redeemed and made good. 
  • Loving our enemies also does not mean that they automatically escape punishment for their wrongs. "We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible. Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not."

Loving your neighbor as yourself, forgiving your enemies - these may sometimes seem impossible or too difficult to bear. How does one love the unlovable? How does one forgive the unforgivable? How do we let go of hate and bitterness toward the people who wrong us?
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 15: Christian Marriage

1/15/2015

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The last chapter examined all that was wrong with man's sexual impulse, but now Lewis turns to look at that impulse when it is exercised properly, in the context of Christian marriage.

The Christian idea of marriage is based on the biblical description of man and woman becoming one flesh - a unified, single organism. It is not meant to be mere sentiment or a beautiful expression, but rather a fact about the human nature. Just as "a lock and its key are one mechanism, or a violin and a bow are one musical instrument, the inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined."

The Christian views sexual union as a part of the whole union that man and woman experience together, so to isolate the sexual part from the rest is just as strange and unnatural as if someone isolated the pleasure of tasting foods from the entire process of eating and digesting them. This is also why divorce is such a problem for the Christian because it is more like surgically cutting up and dividing a unified organism than merely a change of partners or readjusting spouses when someone falls out of love. 

The marriage contract or promise is meant to help us take seriously the passions of love and the excitement of being 'in love'. 
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Some may object here and ask why you would force two people to stay together if they were no longer in love. There are significant socioeconomic reasons we could respond with, but Lewis says we also ought to look at 'being in love' in a different light. We like to view everything as good or bad and place them into neat categories, but sometimes it is more helpful to see things as good, better, and best (or conversely, bad, worse, and worst). 
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So if we shift our understanding of love, we find that it is not that being 'in love' is good and anything else is bad, but rather that B is better than C and A is better than both. In this case, "A" is a deeper sense of love, a "unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God." 
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Lewis says part of the problem is that we have spent too much time hearing messages about love and marriage from books, from the theater, from music, and poetry. We have been given an invalid perception of what real, lasting love looks like and it has negatively affected our own love lives.
We have learned from books and movies that...
  1. ...if we simply marry the right person, we will go on being 'in love' forever. And when that turns out not to be the case, we think we have made a mistake.
    But the thrill we have at the beginning when we are 'in love' is meant to give way to a quieter, more sustainable and meaningful kind of interest. "I
    f you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy."
  2. ...falling in love is something we can't resist, something involuntary that just happens to us, "like measles." So if we are attracted to someone new, we feel this must mean we ought to throw in the towel on our marriage.
    But while we ought to admire things like beauty and kindness and intelligence when we find them in others, and while it is perfectly fine to love those good qualities when we see them, isn't it "very largely in our own choice whether this love shall, or shall not, turn into what we call 'being in love'?"
Lewis closes this chapter with two other points: One, on how far Christians ought to be able to force their personal religious views of marriage and divorce on the entire population, and two, on the subject of male headship. I am going to share his first point in a quote. I think the second point is also best read in his own original words, but it is too lengthy to put here, so go and read it for yourself sometime. (Remember, here is a free pdf of the book that I included in the intro post). 

But on the first point, which actually once again has a great deal of relevance to our contemporary American culture, Lewis says this:
"A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for everyone. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own embers. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."

*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 14: Sexual Morality

1/14/2015

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Just a side note before I start the summary: It was interesting to me that this chapter and the next chapter on Christian marriage are actually two of the longest chapters in the whole book. It was difficult to pick out the highlights of this chapter, not only because of its length but also because of the richness of the content. The more of these posts I make, the more I hope that anyone following along is actually reading the book for themselves as well because you are really missing out if you only get the small sampling of C.S. Lewis' great mind that I am able to provide here. 

To begin the section on sexual morality, Lewis wants to clarify that there is a difference between chastity and modesty/decency/propriety, and the two ideas should not be confused with one another.
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Propriety, or modesty, deals with how an individual should dress, how much of the body should be seen, what topics are appropriate to discuss, and what words should be used in discussing them. So Chastity, to the Christian, is the same at all times, but Propriety is more related to the social customs and cultures of a specific time period and society, like etiquette.

For example, a woman who lives in the Hawaiian islands in the 21st century and a woman who lived in Victorian England would have much different understandings of propriety, yet the island woman wearing hardly any clothes and the Victorian woman showing hardly any skin could be considered equally modest and proper, according to the standards of their different societies, and we really would not be able to tell just from external appearances whether the women were chaste or not.

Lewis then gives three reasons that people might break the rule of propriety:
  1. To excite or encourage lust (either in themselves or in others) - This is also related to the area of chastity and would be an offense against it.
  2. Out of ignorance or carelessness - This would merely mean they are guilty of bad manners. 
  3. Out of defiance, to shock or embarrass (the most common reason) - This simply reveals that they are being uncharitable toward their fellow man "for it is uncharitable to take pleasure in making other people uncomfortable."

It's also important to note that a strict rule of propriety does not prove or even help individuals to be chaste, so relaxing the rule is sometimes a good thing. Lewis' society had begun to do this, as has our modern society, and while it can be a positive change, he notes this:

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After explaining what propriety is and how it is a completely different concept from chastity, Lewis goes on to discuss chastity. He defines it in the Christian sense as, "Marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else, total abstinence," and says it is probably the least popular of all the virtues. It is so unpopular because it is not only extremely difficult but also not at all compatible with the instincts we feel. This begs the question, Is Christianity wrong, or have our instincts gone wrong? Of course, Lewis says it is our instincts that have gone wrong, but he goes on to give practical explanations of why this seems to be the case.
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Some may suggest that a place where people were so obsessed with food would indicate that the people were starved and experiencing famine. Lewis says that this is a valid suggestion, but we would then want to test that hypothesis and find out whether or not the people are, in fact, starving. Similarly, our culture has led us to believe that our obsessions with sex are because we have been sexually starved. We are constantly being told that sexual desire is just as normal and natural as any of our other biological drives and that the problem is that we have been trying to stifle that desire too long. If this were the problem, however, the ventilation of those desires that we have seen over the past 40 to 50 years ought to have set the problem straight. But in fact, sexual appetites, obsessions, and perversions only seem to have increased. "Starving men may think much about food, but so do the gluttons."

Christianity, on the other hand, promotes and celebrates sex and holds it as something very wonderful when experienced and expressed in its proper context. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure," but there is much to be ashamed of at the way we have distorted and misused and even indulged the sexual instinct. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips."

So the human sexual instinct has become diseased and needs to be cured. But the problem is that "before we can be cured, we must want to be cured." And there are at least three things that make it difficult for us to desire (much less achieve) chastity:
  1. Our corrupted natures, the tempters, and all the advertisements and selling of lust "make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural,' so 'healthy,' and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them."
    Response: The idea that sexual indulgence is healthy, natural, youthful, and normal is a lie based on the truth that sex was created to be all those good things, but it has been perverted and distorted and taken out of its proper context. The lie is that any sexual urge you feel at any given moment is perfectly fine, and you can act on those urges as long as they are mutually agreed upon and no one is injured or harmed. "
    Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense. Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humor, and frankness."
  2. We often assume, without even attempting it, that chastity is impossible.
    Response: It is certainly no easy task, but when we begin to view something as a requirement and not an option, we may be surprised at what we can achieve. But also, we ought to understand (as the Christian does) that we really cannot achieve it on our own steam, by our own willpower. We are given power and strength by the Divine Creator, who is the very author of our sexuality.
  3. We have misunderstood what psychology means by 'repression'.
    Response: There is a difference between suppressing a desire and the technical psychological act of repression, which is a defense mechanism of the mind to protect itself from harmful, damaged material. 
One final point he makes after remaining so long on the topic of sexuality is this:
"I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the center of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 13: Morality and Psychoanalysis

1/13/2015

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These next few chapters will explore the questions:
What is the Christian idea of a "Good" man?
(and)
How do we go about putting the human machine right, making it good again?
But before he gets into those details, Lewis has two more general points:
A.)   Christian morality and Psychoanalysis (another technique that claims to put the human machine right) are related to each other in some ways.
   *It's important to distinguish between psychoanalysis as a medical field and psychoanalysis as merely philosophical theory because the philosophical/theoretical additions (like those by Sigmund Freud) generally stand in direct contradiction with Christianity, but the medical field of psychoanalysis actually overlaps with Christianity, and it is useful for us to find out how.
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Lewis breaks it down like this diagram. Any moral choice we make actually consists of two things: The act of making the choice, and the various internal feelings, experiences, and impulses that lead us to that decision. Now those feelings/experiences/thoughts/impulses can be normal and healthy and valid or they can be unnatural, irregular, unhealthy, and false. Psychoanalysis aims to fix the abnormal aspects of this second area in order to improve the person's ability to do a better job in the first area, choosing the right option when it comes to a moral decision. Morality, on the other hand, is concerned only with the first area, the actual act of choosing. Because "however much you improve the man's raw material, you have still got something else: the real, free choice of man, on the material presented to him, either to put his own advantage first or to put it last."

Morality is concerned with the act of choosing and what we do with the raw material we are given. The bad psychological material that exists inside a person - the feelings, experiences, impulses, temperaments, inclinations we each may have - are not sin that needs to be repented of but disease that needs to be cured. We judge each other by our external actions, but God only judges the moral choice because all the rest is not our fault and often beyond our control. "We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it." 

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So psychoanalysis can help with the raw material and does not stand in opposition to Christianity when it seeks to do these things, but the real heart of the matter is what choices the individual actually makes, which leads us to the second point Lewis wanted to express...

B.)   Christianity is often seen as a negotiation humans have with God where we keep all the rules in order to be rewarded, or we are punished if we break any of those rules. But Lewis has this to say about it:
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"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 either into a heavenly 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.
This is how the Christian can view a mere sinful thought as something of extreme importance and grave concern but then turn around and say a murderer only needs to repent and he will be forgiven. It is not the outward action we ought to be concerned with, but the mark left on the central self by that action; the direction that action and that mark are moving us toward, in light of eternity. 
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*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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Mere Christianity, Day 12: Social Morality

1/12/2015

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Before diving into the content of this chapter, Lewis says there are two things to get clear about the topic of Social Morality:
  1. This area of Christian morality that deals with relationships between individuals is not meant to be anything new. The Golden Rule that Jesus and Moses spoke about is just "a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right."
  2. Christianity does not claim to have a particular plan for living out the 'Golden Rule' for each specific society or time period. It was and is meant to be a general framework that makes itself suitable and applicable for all societies and all time periods. "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 and Greek, or even in English grammar. It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal."
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Even without a detailed political program, the New Testament does give us a description of what a fully Christian society would look like:
  • There would be no passengers or parasites
  • Everyone would work and everyone's work would produce something good
  • There would be no putting on airs
  • Obedience and outward marks of respect would always be present
  • It would be a cheerful society, full of singing and rejoicing
  • Worry and anxiety would be badly regarded
  • Everyone would be courteous, and no one would be a busybody

After listing out these descriptions, Lewis admits that it is probably the case that most everyone would like some parts of this ideal society, but very few of us would like all of it. You would think that a perfect society would be desirable and appealing to every person. But the reason an ideal Christian society would be unattractive to us in some ways is because we have all departed from the total plan that Christianity has for humanity, and we each modify it in ways that suit us: "Everyone is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest." 
Lewis then has a couple of additional things to say regarding Christian morality and what its principles would look like if all of society followed them, particularly in the area of economics and charity. Referring back to the part of the ideal society where everyone would be required to work, he says the reason given by the New Testament is so that each person will have something to give to those in need, to those who have less, even though they are also working. "Charity is an essential part of Christian morality." And as far as giving goes, he has these convicting words to say:
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At the close of the chapter, Lewis notes that many will be angry with him about this section, either because it goes too far in the "Leftist" (socialist/communist) direction or because it does not go far enough. So he cautions against using Christianity simply to advance our own agendas or political parties. We cannot talk, govern, or even legislate people into a perfect, charitable, Utopian society. The existence of a Christian society will only come from the inner desires and personal motivation of the individuals who make up the society, from individuals loving God and then loving their fellow man, working together for each other's good and for the advancement of that perfect society. Interestingly enough, his words of caution for the European political parties of 1945 hold just as much weight for our contemporary American political parties of 2015.

*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
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