So it has been a LONG time since I’ve posted. I am a teacher and summer should allow me a lot more free time, but somehow it seemed to actually get busier this summer! I taught summer school and took two courses for my license renewal. And then I always try to spend extra time with friends and family and….well, somehow summer has already come and gone. But, I am hoping with a more consistent schedule with being back to work full time and the kids back to school; I will get back to blogging a few time a month.
So, I have thought for a while that I would like to give a very clear view of my beliefs and the essentials of Christianity. But, whenever I try to do so, I feel that I am not very clear or I leave something important out. Then, I got to thinking about C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.” This book was originally a series of radio broadcasts done in the 1940’s by Lewis and then compiled into 3 separate books and finally brought together into one book known as “Mere Christianity,” divided into three sections: Book 1: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, Book 2: What Christians Believe, Book 3: Christian Behavior, and Book 4: Beyond Personality: Or the First Steps in Understanding the Trinity.
In this book, Lewis builds block upon block to explain good reason to believe that there is a God, then that that God is the Christian God, what exactly Christians believe and finally how Christians should strive to behave. And knowing that Lewis does a far better job of clearly laying all of this out, I have decided to use my next several blogs to summarize Mere Christianity as best I can.
While I know I am not an expert, I have compiled outline notes on the book and taught it to an adult Sunday School class over a period of almost a year. In addition, I am re-reading (or more accurately re-listening) to the book now as I complete these summaries for the blog. My hope is that these blogs might inspire some who are already Christ-followers to feel more confident in their faith as they see that there is sound reason to believe in the Christian faith and that some who have never made the decision to make Jesus their Lord and Savior would see that it is truly the most reasonable and sound decision you could make when seeking out the truth of what this life and this universe is all about.
So, without any further introduction, I will begin my summary with Book 1.
Mere Christianity Summarized, Part 1 (Book 1 : Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe)
I want to begin with one of my favorite quotes from the book. “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”
How do we get to this place? A place where we are in an enemy camp and God is on the opposite side? And how do we change camps and become right with the Lord?
Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with The Law of Human nature. The law of human nature, the law of right and wrong, moral law; this law that all people seem to intrinsically have.
While at first you may say to yourself, I’m not so sure if all people, or even if anyone, has this law inside of them, I believe that there is much reason to show that all humans have the choice to obey or disobey these laws.
Throughout history and different civilizations there seems to be a basic moral law known by all, even if there are some differences in how it seems each civilization puts it into practice.
For example, think of what a completely opposite type of morality would be: a society where people are admired for running away in battle, or for a man who felt proud of double crossing others who showed kindness to him. This is of course almost impossible to imagine, because inside each one of us is the moral law telling us how wrong these things are.
And this law is much more than just herd instinct. Imagine you hear a man cry for help and see him struggling to stay above the water, due to the herd instinct, you will want to help and feel instinctively that you should help. But due to the self-preservation instinct, you’ll want to not help. You will feel the instinct to get away from the danger.
But then you feel a third thing…and this is the human nature. You will feel that it is the right thing to do and you ought to help the person who is crying out and could drown. You see this human nature is judging between the two instincts and deciding which one is right.
It is also something much greater than just morals taught by a teacher or parent. For if it were just this, then all such teachings would have to be looked at as equal. We would not be able to look at Christian morality as any better than Nazi morality. It would be to each his own. However, this is not the case. We feel that one is better than the other. Why? The reason you lean more one way than the other is because there seems to be some ultimate moral law that you are weighing the choices against in the first place.
So, if we can agree that there is a law of nature, it must be pointed out that none of us are really keeping the law of nature. We all fail to practice from time to time the type of behavior we expect from others.
We always have great excuses when we do this: I lost my temper because of the bad day I had at work, when I operate in the not so up and up business it was when we were on really hard times, when I promised to do that it was before I realized all that was involved….But we would not except those excuses from somebody else.
It’s not that we don’t believe in the law of nature. It’s that we believe in it so much that when we don’t meet it we shift the responsibility to someone or something else. Anything to keep from admitting that we didn’t meet it.
However, when we practice the moral law and show kindness or love to others, we pat ourselves on the back and say, “that’s who I really am. Look what I did.” Because again we do believe in human nature and want to show when we follow it.
An important distinction to make is that the law of human nature is different than a scientific law. For example, the law of gravity tells you what a rock ought to do and does every time; if you drop it, the rock will fall. But, the law of human nature tells you what humans ought to do, but don’t do. In the case of the rock and gravity, you just have the facts. You drop the rock it falls. Law of gravity.
In the law of human nature, you have the facts plus something else. The facts of how humans actually behave. And then something else, human nature, how they should behave. For example, if you are getting onto the subway and someone accidentally trips you, you might be mad for a moment, but once you realize it was accident you won’t be mad anymore. Even though it might have hurt….But, if someone sticks out their foot to purposely try to trip you, even if you see it and walk around it, you will be upset. It goes beyond the facts of whether you were tripped or not tripped, hurt or not hurt, it goes to the fact of knowing that there was something right and something wrong.
What does this natural law tell us about the universe we live in?
One view is the Materialist view – pretty much the evolutionary view of how things came to be. This view becomes problematic though. Because in this view you either have to believe that there was some sort of matter that is eternal. Something that has always been existent. That eventually combined with the right something else to start a process that created our universe and eventually developed life. Or you must believe that the something came from nothing. That at one point in time there was absolutely nothing and spontaneously something formed out of that nothing to begin the evolutionary process.
The other view is the Religious view – The universe was created by a higher being, with some purposes unknown and some purposes known. That this higher being wished to create others like Himself, in the sense that they have a mind.
So, we would ask ourselves what is the best way to conclude if this higher being exists. Now simply observing the universe would certainly begin to point us in this direction. To see that there is some sort of master artist or painter behind all that we see. However, this would not shed too much light on who this higher being is. Just as the way an architect could not show himself within the staircase or wall of a house he built.
The beauty of the world the universe does put to the existence of a higher being, but not to what this higher being is like. The only way left for that higher being to show Himself is within ourselves. And that’s exactly what He does through the moral law. Now we must ask the question, “What does the moral law teach us about the character of the higher being?”
From the moral law we find out that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in fair conduct, right play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, truthfulness. Therefore we should agree with the account given by Christianity and some other religions that God is good.
Remember, not good in a soft way. Good in a hard as nails way. Because the moral law does not tell us to do the easy, soft thing. It tells us to do the right thing. Even when it’s hard or difficult.
So, on one hand we believe in this good God because we believe in this moral law and the things it says are right and wrong. On the other hand, we want this Higher Being to excuse us personally when we go against this moral. But, deep down we know that unless this higher being does not excuse, but is against all things that are done that are night right, then He truly couldn’t be called good.
It then gets really complicated, because that higher being would hate most of what goes on in this universe because most of what goes on is not good and does not follow the moral law. Without this higher being who is good, our case is hopeless because then the universe is not governed by this overarching goodness and moral law.
But, with this higher being, who is ultimately good, our case is hopeless again because daily we make ourselves more an enemy to this higher being because of the way we behave that does not match up with the goodness of the moral law that He put inside of us.
Christianity only matters after you have realized that there is a moral law and a power behind the moral law and that you’ve broken that law and put yourself wrong with the higher power. After all this, and not a moment sooner, is when Christianity begins to talk.
Christianity does end in comfort. But, starts in the dismay we’ve been describing. There is no point in going straight to the comfort until at first you go through this dismay that you need to be comforted from.
Victor Halitzka's Blog 