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Review Summary: An invitation to be transformed ... |
Date: 2008-09-07 |
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Details: Fitting, I think, to be reading what may arguably be one of C. S. Lewis's most important books, on a retreat during which one of my personal goals was to find a spiritual, if not religious, inner peace. Reading the work of C. S. Lewis is to meet a friend who reflects us and understands us--and helps us to understand.
Who of us has not asked these questions? Who of us has not prayed these prayers, even those of us who are atheists (which group has at times included me, and has also included C. S. Lewis), even if only praying to our void? Lewis takes on several of these questions that have held me captive since youth, when I first began to wonder about a God: who He might be, if indeed He is, and what might my relationship be with Him.
Before he has even cleared the pages of the preface, Lewis nabs me cold: "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 your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise." Then Lewis reminds us that this time of "waiting in the hall" is not a form of camping, but a time of rigorous seeking, questioning, praying even when we are not sure who we are praying to or if we are heard. "And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling."
Christianity, Lewis writes, is a way of life. An owner's manual, if you will. It is not meant to constrain us, but to fully free us. Following its doctrines means to "transform our lives in such a way that evil diminishes and good prevails." There is an innate law, he observes, that follows along the lines of human nature, a natural right and wrong, and in examining all religions, we find right and wrong, good and evil, are more or less defined along the same lines by all humanity, regardless of religious beliefs. This is our first clue that we have found an unchangeable truth. Even the atheist, Lewis says, has a sense of right and wrong, good and bad, and as soon as one realizes this, the next step is to understand the universal standard of morality. From where does this standard come if not from some higher ruling of the universe? It echoes inside each and every one of us. "The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard ..." which is what Lewis terms as "Real Morality."
The God Lewis has us see is not a kindly and bearded man sitting on a throne in some distant and ethereal place. He calls him a great artist, for the universe is a very beautiful place, but also a Being that is intensely interested in right conduct--in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. Insofar as all that, one can think of God as "good." But Lewis does not see Him as an easy master. "There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft."
From here, Lewis proceeds to tackle those common questions: how can God exist in such a cruel and unjust world? If God knows how the story of mankind ends, why did he create us and our story at all? If the future already exists in His eyes, what does that say about free will? How can we know that Christ wasn't simply a great moral teacher, but indeed the Son of God? And, why did Christ have to die, and so cruelly, for our sins to be forgiven? Why could we not just shake hands on it?
Lewis explores free will and how God understood, as we so often have not, that in giving us free will, He gave us the ability to love. It is only when we have to ability to choose, that we can love. Anything else would be forced bondage, slave bowing to master. If we have botched up our ability to choose, so very often throughout our history, then we cannot shake our fists at the heavens and blame God, but must look to ourselves and the choices we have made. Lewis urges us to return to the basics, the Law of Morality, for only in addressing that place where our mistakes were first made can we continue forward in a progressive manner. If we cannot ever achieve perfection, it does not mean we are ever off the hook in striving for it.
Time and what is beyond time, the concepts of heaven and hell, the need to be a part of an active Christian community, what was meant by being formed in the likeness of God (no, we are not his mirror images), the true meaning of charity (far more than the occasional giving of alms to the poor), the meaning of faith and why it should not be blind, what it means to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (and this section made me laugh, perhaps in relief, as Lewis explains that to love our neighbors as ourselves does not mean we have to like our neighbors or even always to be kind to them, no more than we always like ourselves or are kind to ourselves), so Lewis covers all the basics.
There is a very real cost to being a Christian, Lewis teaches. Make no mistake, it is not a small pittance. But it is one that, if we do not pay it, will cost us far more in the long run, and not only after our lives on earth have ended. All that we do, all that we are, here on earth, already comes back to us, with our free will choices following their own natural law of returns.
"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy," Lewis writes. We are not talking about mere improvement, but transformation. One that we choose to either retreat from, and pay the resulting price, or embrace, and pay that price. To find our own true selves, however, Lewis sums up, can be done only by submitting fully. To let go, and let God.
"The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires ... I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call `me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up ... that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."
Lewis has invited us to enter into this transformation, and he helps us to do so in a manner that is far from blind.
~Abridged from Zinta's Reviews, on blogspot.com, and The Smoking Poet, Fall 2008
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Review Summary: Wow. What a life changer |
Date: 2008-08-16 |
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Details: I truly recommend this book to anyone who wants to walk in a manner worth of the Lord.
I tend to be very hard on myself in my walk with God. This book helps me to put my walk with God in a proper perspective. I plan on reading this book once a year to remind myself of the principles that Mr. Lewis has taught me. |
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Review Summary: Mere Christianity |
Date: 2008-07-25 |
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Details: I've been a Christian basically all my life, and had up to this point, never read anything by C. S. Lewis. Now having read "Mere Christianity", I'm completely baffled as to why I waited so long. C. S. Lewis' style is very conversational, intelligent, and spiritually moving. His argument for Christianity is convincing, and his passion and love for Christ come through in his words. I've read other Christian books, mostly through the Sunday school at church, and they all pale in comparison to the wit and passion of C. S. Lewis. Pick up this wonderful book, your life could very well be changed by it.
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Review Summary: "Simply the best..." |
Date: 2008-07-19 |
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Details: This book is the best book on Christianity written since the Bible.
Every Christian should read this book after having read the Bible thoroughly. |
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Review Summary: Nothing "Mere" About It! |
Date: 2008-07-13 |
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Details: Mere Chistianity is divided into 4 books: 1. Right & Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, 2. What Christians Believe, 3. Christian Behavior, and 4. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.
In Book 1, Lewis strikes an early, direct blow against relativistic thinking: "If anyone will take the time to compare the moral teaching of, say the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinesese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own" (p. 6). There are basic, universal moral standards: "men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey" (p.23). "I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way" (p. 25). Who but God wrote this law on my heart?
Personally, I've never met anyone who denied that Jesus was a great moral teacher. Yet, in one way or another, plenty of people try to deny His Divinity. In Book 2, Lewis tries "to prevent the really foolish thing that people often say about Him. `I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God'....A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic [sic]...or else he would be the Devil of Hell" (p. 52). Along these very same lines, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli present the options as "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar." "Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest of death and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy creatures. This means something much more than our trying to follow His teaching" (p. 60).
In contrast to any notion that God's law is intrusive, oppressive, or stifling, Lewis starts 1943's Book 3 with the reminder that "moral rules are directions for running the human machine" (p. 69). Explaining the "cardinal virtues" (i.e., prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance), he notes that "a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of a `virtue'" (p. 80). Book 3 closes with chapters devoted to forgiveness and pride, as well as the "theological virtues" of faith, hope, and charity.
Considering that Lewis was a member of the Church of England, which had approved limited contraceptive use in 1930, much of his commentary on sexual morality is prophetic: "Contraceptives have made sexual indulgence far less costly in marriage and far safer outside it than ever before, and public opinion is less hostile to illicit unions and even to perversion than it has been since Pagan times....Christianity is almost [sic] the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven....Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion: and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once" (pp. 97, 98). "We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help....those who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality than anyone else....Virtue - even attempted virtue - brings light; indulgence brings fog" (pp. 101, 102).
I say that "much of his commentary on sexual morality is prophetic," because Lewis also offered some well-intentioned, yet poorly thought out, comments on marriage and sexuality:
* "If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than they should make vows that they do not mean to keep" (p. 106).
* "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 members" (p. 112).
I am among those who believe that, had Lewis lived longer, he would have embraced the fullness of the Truth which resides in Catholicism. How much his works would have been enhanced, were they informed by our generation's Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Compendium of the Catechism!
In book 4, Lewis acknowledges the attraction of "a vague religion - all about feeling God in nature, and so on" (p. 155). He warns that such touchy-feely, pseudo-religion cannot lead to "eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music....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" (p. 155). "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact." "The more we get what we now call `ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become....It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own....How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints....submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life" (pp. 225 - 227).
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out of 449 Reviews
