On
one person complaining about another: He “is not merely saying that the other
man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of
standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the
other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he
tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the
standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse…It looks, in fact,
very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play
or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which
they really agreed…Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a
real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment
later…complaining ‘It's not fair’." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book
1, Chapter 1)
“I do not
succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me
I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as
your arm…we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so— that we cannot bear to face
the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the
responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we
find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to
being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter 1)
“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, saying that one of them conforms to that
standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things
is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with
some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right,
independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to
that real Right than others.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter
2)
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you
want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not
get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about
turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns
back soonest is the most progressive man.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book
1, Chapter 5)
“We have two
bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made...have to conclude that He was
a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He
is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous
and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has
put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other,
because it is inside information…Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude
that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct —in
fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness."
(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter 5)
"The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking that God is
"good" in the sense of being indulgent, or soft, or sympathetic.
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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter 5)
“For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with
His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him
to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you
know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably
detests that sort of behavior, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we
know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we
do. That is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an
absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it
is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and we are
not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless
again. We cannot do without it. and we cannot do with it. God is the only
comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we
most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made
ourselves His enemies.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter 5)
“It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power
behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with
that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity
begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When
you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to
understand what the Christians are talking about…Of course, I quite agree that
the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But
it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing,
and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going
through that dismay.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 1, Chapter5)
“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…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…” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2, Chapter 1)
“How can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power? But
anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with
your will in one way and not in another…[Comparing it to a mother with her
children] She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it
is her will which has left the children free to be untidy…You make a thing
voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed,
but your will has made it possible.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2,
Chapter 3)
On Jesus and his
claim to forgive sins: “Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so
preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences
against himself…But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and
untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's
toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description
we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that
their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom
their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the
party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This
makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love
is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these
words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled
by any other character in history.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2,
Chapter 3)
“I am trying
here to prevent anyone saying 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." That is the one thing we must not say.
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—on a level with the man who
says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make
your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or
something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill
Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let
us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity; Book 2, Chapter 3)
On Jesus being
punished instead of us: “What possible point could there be in punishing an
innocent person instead? None at all that I can see, if you are thinking of
punishment in the police-court sense. On the other hand, if you think of a
debt, there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on
behalf of someone who has not…’footing the bill’.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity; Book 2, Chapter 4)
“Fallen man is
not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must
lay down his arms.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2, Chapter 4)
“Is it not
frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have
heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not
told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no
man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know
Him can be saved through Him.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2, Chapter
5)
“I wonder
whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite
realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of
the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going
to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then,
when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something
else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in;
something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us
will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise;
something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or
irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose
your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become
impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the
time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it
before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.
God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must
take it or leave it.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 2, Chapter 5)
“Morality raises
in a good many people's minds: something that interferes, something that stops
you having a good time. In reality, moral rules are directions for running the
human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain,
or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first
seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.” (C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 1)
“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. He wants us to be simple,
single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also
wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in
first-class fighting trim. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of
any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you
are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and
all. But, fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly
trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened…Christianity
is an education itself.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 2)
“It is a mistake
to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not
Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a
particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain
from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all
without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor,
or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness…One of the marks
of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without
wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 2)
“Most of us are
not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says:
we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the
views of our own party. We are looking for an ally where we are offered either
a Master or—a Judge.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 3)
“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.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 4)
“They tell you
sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years
it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is
still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation
would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way around. I
think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.”
(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 5)
“Christianity is
almost 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 human
body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is
going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 5)
“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. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is
going to be necessary…” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 5)
“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…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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3,
Chapter 5)
“The Christian
idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be
regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words "one flesh"
would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this
He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a
fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that 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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 6)
“The monstrosity
of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are
trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of
union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The
Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual
pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must
not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought
to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by
chewing things and spitting them out again.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity;
Book 3, Chapter 6)
Justice “includes
the keeping of promises. Now everyone who has been married in a church has made
a public, solemn promise to stick to his (or her) partner till death…To this
someone may reply that he regarded the promise made in church as a mere
formality and never intended to keep it. Whom, then, was he trying to deceive
when he made it? God? That was really very unwise. Himself? That was not very
much wiser. The bride, or bridegroom, or the ‘in-laws’? That was treacherous.
Most often, I think, the couple (or one of them) hoped to deceive the public.
They wanted the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending
to pay the price: that is, they were imposters, they cheated…If people do not
believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live
together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep. It
is true that by living together without marriage they will be guilty (in
Christian eyes) of fornication. But one fault is not mended by adding another:
unchastity is not improved by adding perjury.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity;
Book 3, Chapter 6)
“The idea that ‘being
in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for
marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the
promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made.
The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love,
know this better than those who talk about love…those who are in love have a
natural inclination to bind themselves by promises…The Christian law is not
forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion's
own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which
their passion of itself impels them to do. And, of course, the promise, made
when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long
as I live, commits one to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise
must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on
feeling in a certain way.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 6)
“What we call ‘being
in love’ is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us. It helps to
make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of
the beloved but to all beauty, and it subordinates (especially at first) our
merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust…far
better than either common sensuality or cold self-centeredness…a good thing,
but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are
also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble
feeling, but it is still a feeling…Knowledge can last, principles can last,
habits can last; but feelings come and go…of course, ceasing to be "in
love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as
distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep
unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit;
reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and
receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments
when they do not like each other…’Being in love’ first moved them to promise
fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this
love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that
started it.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 6)
“People get from
books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go
on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they
think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change…In this
department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not
last…if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be
compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest…meet new thrills
in some quite different direction…This is, I think, one little part of what
Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies.
It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing
you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of
death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow…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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3,
Chapter6)
“…how far
Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force
their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the
divorce laws. 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…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.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 6)
“The need for
some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent…when there is a real
disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming
they have done that and still failed to reach agreement What do they do next?
They cannot decide by a majority vote…either they must separate and go their
own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote. If marriage is
permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of
deciding the family policy.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 6)
“Everyone says
forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive…” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 7)
“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…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. Consequently, Christianity does not
want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We
ought to hate them…But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we
hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such
things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime,
somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 7)
“There is one
vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes
when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except
Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves…I do not think I have
ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at
the same time, I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who
showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man
more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And
the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am
talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in
Christian morals, is called Humility.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3,
Chapter 8)
“it is Pride
which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since
the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find
good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people.
But Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and
man, but enmity to God. In God you come up against something which is in every
respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and,
therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison— you do not know God at all.
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking
down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you
cannot see something that is above you.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book
3, Chapter 8)
“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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 9)
“Good and evil
both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I
make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act 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. An apparently trivial
indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead
from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.” (C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 9)
On two false
ways and one true way to “hope”: “(1) 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. (2)
The Way of the Disillusioned ‘Sensible Man’: He learns not to expect too much…on
the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably…But supposing infinite happiness
really is there, waiting for us?... would be a pity to find out too late that
by our supposed ‘common sense’ we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of
enjoying it. (3) The Christian Way: The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born
with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists…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 none of my earthly
pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.
Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse
it, to suggest the real thing’.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3,
Chapter 10)
On “faith”: “We
have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any
other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a
matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in
Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned
out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 11)
“No man knows
how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current
that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie.
Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…A man who gives
in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have
been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little
about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never
find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it…” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 11)
“Christ offers
something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the
whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer. But the
difficulty is to reach the point of recognizing that all we have done and can
do is nothing. What we should have liked would be for God to count our good
points and ignore our bad ones…And, in yet another sense, handing everything
over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him
means, of course, trying to do all that He says…But trying in a new way, a less
worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has
begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your
actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint
gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 3,
Chapter 12)
“Christians have
often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or
Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question,
but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most
necessary…There are two parodies of the truth which different sets of
Christians have, in the past, been accused by other Christians of believing…One
set were accused of saying, ‘Good actions are all that matters.’ [But good
actions]…done with the idea that Heaven can be bought, would not be good
actions at all, but only commercial speculations. The other set were accused of
saying, ‘Faith is all that matters.’ [But]…if what you call your ‘faith’ in
Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is
not Faith at all—not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of
some theory about Him…you will find that even those who insist most strongly on
the importance of good actions tell you you need Faith; and even those who
insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 12)
“They all say ‘the
ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.’ I
have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool.
Theology means "the science of God," and I think any man who wants to
think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas
about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated
like children?” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 1)
“If a man has
once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of
the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less
real: turning from real waves to a bit of colored paper. But…there are two
things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what
hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic…In
the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary.
As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far
more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks
on the beach if you want to get to America. Now, Theology is like the map…Doctrines
are not God: they are only a kind of map…that 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. In other words, Theology is practical…if
you do not listen to Theology, that will not 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.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 1)
“When you come
to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself,
nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much
more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favorites, but
because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and
character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no
favorites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one…God
can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to
men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body,
loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that
is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in
one body. Consequently, the one really adequate instrument for learning about
God, is the whole Christian community…” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4,
Chapter 2)
“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. Of course anyone can be simple if he
has no facts to bother about.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter
2)
“All sorts of
people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love,’ But
they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning
unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has
for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made,
He was not love.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 4)
“Once a man is
united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God,
what can he do but wither and die?” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4,
Chapter 4)
“The two kinds
of life are now not only different but actually opposed. 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. And
especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything
better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small.
It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world…And in a sense it is
quite right It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its
self-centeredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight
tooth and nail to avoid that. Did you ever think, when you were a child, what
fun it would be if your toys could come to life?...suppose the tin soldier did
not like it He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being
spoilt.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 5)
“…there are two
kinds of pretending. There is a bad kind, where the pretense is there instead
of the real thing…But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to
the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you
ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly
manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a
few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than
you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start
behaving as if you had it already.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4,
Chapter 7)
“…a real Person,
Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is
doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand
years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much
God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with
your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the
kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods.
Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of
thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the
same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and
eternity.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 7)
“Surely what a
man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a
man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is
the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you
go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only
prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation
does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man
I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and
noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently
the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my
soul.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 7)
“The Christian
way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says "Give me All. I don't
want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I
want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it…I will
give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall
become yours… The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over
your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier
than what we are all trying to do instead." (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 8)
“Teachers will
tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the
end…six months later, when they are preparing for an exam., that lazy boy is
doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy
understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work
in the long run.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 8)
“When I was a
child I often had toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would
give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to
sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least, not till the pain became very
bad. And the reason I did not go was this. I did not doubt she would give me the
aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else. I knew she would take me
to the dentist next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without
getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from
pain: but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And
I knew those dentists; I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of
other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. They would not let sleeping dogs
lie; if you gave them an inch they took an ell. Now, if I may put it that way,
Our Lord is like the dentists…He will cure it all right: but He will not stop
there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you
the full treatment.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 9)
“You have free
will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away,
understand that I am going to see this job through…I will never rest, nor let
you rest, until you are literally perfect…And yet—this is the other and equally
important side of it— this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with
nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first
feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. As a great
Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the
baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less
than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, ‘God
is easy to please, but hard to satisfy’." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity;
Book 4, Chapter 9)
“God is forcing
him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will
have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever
dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we
have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make
of us…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.” (C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 9)
On the question
of “If Christianity is true why are not all Christians obviously nicer than all
non-Christians?” (part 1): “If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement
in a man's outward actions…then I think we must suspect that his
"conversion" was largely imaginary…In that sense the outer world is
quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by
results. A tree is known by its fruit…When we Christians behave badly, or fail
to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world…we
give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of
Christianity itself.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
On the question of “If Christianity is true why are not all Christians
obviously nicer than all non-Christians?” (part 2): “But there is another way
of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may
demand not merely that each man's life should improve if he becomes a
Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they
should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps —Christian and
non-Christian—and that all the people in the first camp at any given moment
should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is
unreasonable on several grounds…If Christianity is true then it ought to follow
(a) That any Christian will be nicer than the same person would be if he were
not a Christian. (b) That any man who becomes a Christian will be nicer than he
was before. Just in the same way, if the advertisements of White-smile's
toothpaste are true it ought to follow (a) That anyone who uses it will have
better teeth than the same person would have if he did not use it. (b) That if
anyone begins to use it his teeth will improve.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“You cannot
expect God to look at Dick's placid temper and friendly disposition exactly as
we do. They result from natural causes which God Himself creates…The niceness,
in fact, is God's gift to Dick, not Dick's gift to God. In the same way, God
has allowed natural causes, working in a world spoiled by centuries of sin, to
produce in Miss Bates the narrow mind and jangled nerves which account for most
of her nastiness. He intends, in His own good time, to set that part of her
right…There is a paradox here. As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks
his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own.
It is when Dick realizes that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God,
and when he offers it back to God— it is just then that it begins to be really
his own.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“We must, therefore, not be surprised if we find among the Christians some
people who are still nasty. There is even, when you come to think it over, a
reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers
than nice ones. That was what people objected to about Christ during His life
on earth: He seemed to attract ‘such awful people’…If everything seems to come
simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally
dependent on God. Now quite plainly, natural gifts carry with them a similar
danger…You are quite likely to believe dial all this niceness is your own
doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness.
Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to
recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness
lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is
hard for those who are "rich" in this sense to enter the Kingdom.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“If you are a
poor creature—poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar
jealousies and senseless quarrels—saddled, by no choice of your own, with some
loathsome sexual perversion—nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex
that makes you snap at your best friends—do not despair. He knows all about it.
You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you
are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another
world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap-heap and
give you a new one.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“God became man
to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind
but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump
better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.” (C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“If what you
want is an argument against Christianity (and I well remember how eagerly I
looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true) you can easily
find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian…only evading the issue. What can
you ever really know of other people's souls—of their temptations, their
opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and
it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you
are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about
your next door neighbors…” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 10)
“Already the new
men are dotted here and there all over the earth…Their very voices and faces
are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin
where most of us leave off…They will not be very like the idea of ‘religious
people’ which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw
attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when
they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but
they need you less. They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will
wonder where it comes from. When you have recognized one of them, you will
recognize the next one much more easily…In that way, to become holy is rather
like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great
fun.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 11)
“But you must
not imagine that the new men are, in the ordinary sense, all alike…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…Until you have given up yourself to Him you
will not have a real self…How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and
conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.”
(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Book 4, Chapter 11)
