Lewis on Liberalism

Liberal Christianity can only supply an ineffectual echo to the massive chorus of agreed and admitted unbelief. Don’t be deceived by the fact that this echo so often “hits the headlines.” That is because attacks on Christian doctrine which would pass unnoticed if they were launched (as they are daily launched) by anyone else, become News when the attacker is a clergyman; just as a very commonplace protest against make-up would be News if it came from a film star.

By the way, did you ever meet, or hear of, anyone who was converted from scepticism to a “liberal” or “demythologised” Christianity? I think that when unbelievers come in at all, they come in a good deal further.

C. S. Lewis, from Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. 

"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"

   It's one of my favorite movie lines, from the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger. It resonates with me because it is so matter-of-fact. And it also has meaning because it sums up an important spiritual truth.

   So many Christians live tiresome, defeated lives because of one basic reason: they are trying to live a tireless, victorious life. Yet whether you try for a week, a year, or a lifetime, you'll never do it.

   The reason is simple, albeit easily avoidable. No one can please God all the time. Or even most of the time.

   But isn't that what God expects? Isn't the whole point of the Bible, from the Ten Commandments to the Beatitudes, that we should behave and operate in a way that will please God? Isn't that why we're punished by God sometimes for doing wrong, and rewarded for doing right? Shouldn't we, like Agent 007, be asking, "Do you expect me to always do good, to be kind to animals, read my Bible and brush my teeth?"

    The answer to that question, if properly asked of God, is as jarring and as final as Goldfinger's answer to Mr. Bond. And that's because it is the same answer:

"No, I expect you to die."

  
For that is the secret to living a life that pleases God. It is exchanging our soiled, pitiful life for that of the spotless, powerful Savior. It is to surrender (something Bond would never do, I agree) in order to win. As Matthew quotes Jesus:

"He who has found his life will lose it, and

he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."

 
   So what does God expect of us? Good choices? Living right? Nope. He expects us to die. Every day. Every moment. To give all we are aware of that is ours to Him.

 
   Why?

   To please Him? No. Who is pleased by being given what they deserve?

   To get into heaven? No. That ticket requires a different payment, and has already been paid anyway.

   To make life easier here? No, although it should make your life more meaningful.

   Allow me to offer an answer in the words of the always thoughtful C. S. Lewis:

"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 know 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!"

—Wayne S. C. S. Lewis quote is from Mere Christianity.

The real point of Easter

   The logic, for want of a better term, of Christ dying for our sins is lost on most unbelievers for several reasons. One, they do not see themselves as sinful enough to warrant a sacrifice on their behalf. Two, they cannot fathom why Jesus dying counts, or what it counts for. And they refuse to use the word sacrifice accurately.





In Romans 5, Paul tells us this: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—“ (v. 12). Paul is making a fundamental statement: everyone is a sinner. It wasn’t a new idea; King David said in Psalm 51:5: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” This concept of Original Sin (the belief that Adam’s original sin has been passed down to all his offspring, i.e., you and me) has a strong Biblical basis, as well as a practically observable one. G. K. Chesterton once remarked: “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” You may have trouble with it emotionally, and even cognitively, but if you have lived past the age of two, when you first told your parents “No!” then you have your own sin, and the point is moot.



This pervasiveness and egalitarianism of sin not only escapes modern man; it sometimes even escapes modern Christianity. Think of it this way: Next time someone asks you what your church is like, tell them it is a wonderful community made up of murderers, adulterers and thieves. Strong words but true. Most likely, the differences between me and Ted Haggard, the recent president of the National Association of Evangelicals who had to step down because of sexual impropriety, are more ones of action than attitude. As C. S. Lewis discovered, “For the first time I examined myself with a serious practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.” He perfectly describes what faces those earnestly seeking forgiveness and restoration:

“When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor…. 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…dismay.”

This is our dilemma. Sin has destroyed our relationships with one another, our relationship with the natural world, our relationship with ourselves and, most importantly, our relationship with God. I find it curious that most, if not all, of the humanitarian programs and activist groups around the world, from Greenpeace to the Red Cross and even the PTA, are all seeking to heal these fractures. Yet all but a few ignore the root cause. And the thing to remember is it isn’t whether we feel guilty or not: we are guilty. Is there a remedy, a relief from this hopelessness and helplessness?



A few verses later in Romans 5, Paul gives us the answer:

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. (vs. 18-21).

Most of us know and believe this: that Jesus died on the cross, taking our sin guiltiness with Him, and healed the separation between God and man. And hopefully, that healing leads to other healings—within us between our spirits and our bodies and minds; between husbands and wives, parents and children, one nation and another; even between man and the environment.



But here is where I think many believers stumble: they think somehow that, having accepted Christ’s atoning sacrifice for their sin, they are better than those who have not. This is a deadly notion—deadly not only to those you are trying to reach who have not yet come to faith, but deadly to your own humility and usefulness. In his first letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul, obviously a devoted, informed and thoroughly saved Christian, said, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.” (1:15)



Notice the tense: “I am.”



Charles Spurgeon suggests that you can never experience the fullness of forgiveness until you realize the fullness of your sinfulness: “There never was a man yet who was in a state of grace who did not know himself, in himself, to be in a state of ruin, a state of depravity and condemnation.” Again, C. S. Lewis strikes just the right tone when, in writing to Sheldon Vanauken, he said, “Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice." We are not better than anyone else. We are still as helpless and sinful as ever; we are simply forgiven, and expect God to better us. We cannot do it ourselves. Without Christ, we can do nothing.





I love the terms “lost” and “saved.” We’ve twisted them a bit, made them religious words, but in their primary uses, they illustrate so well what grace truly is.



Picture this: You take a small sailboat out into the Gulf of Mexico. What started out as a lovely morning turns nasty. There is a terrible squall, and the boat is torn in half. You survive the storm, but are left adrift, clinging to a decreasingly buoyant piece of flotsam. You have no idea which way is shore, and no way to summon help.



Just as you are about to surrender to the darkening sky and cold water, a deep-sea fishing boat comes by and hauls you to safety. Soon you are on dry land.



You are incredibly grateful to your rescuers. You are exhilarated. You were facing sure death, and someone snatched you to safety.



A year later you hear of another weekend sailor who has become lost in the Gulf. The circumstances are eerily similar. But now that you are on solid ground, what do you think: That you are a better sailor? That you always knew which way the shore waited?



If you’re wise, you’ll realize the only difference between you and the lost mariner (and you and a lost soul) is that you know where you are. It is place you could not find on your own, and could not reach on your own. And you still can’t. The only thing for sure is that you will not ever again risk death at sea. But if you have a heart at all, you’ll aid in the search for all those who are still lost at sea.





It is no small thing to have your sins forgiven. What love it is to be spared an eternity of suffering and separation (and no doubt much in our earthly lifetimes as well). And you can be freed from that constant wondering of whether you are “good enough” to please God. But don’t think you can take credit for it. And don’t think it makes you better than anyone else. If you do, even a little bit, you don’t understand grace. All of what is good and true for us is true and good only because Jesus died in our place, to pay the price we owed. Those who haven’t figured this out are not stupid but, as you once were, merely ignorant. They do not know what they do not know.



In 1981, Harold Kushner, a Reformed Jewish rabbi, published a very popular book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The premise was that that God has arranged the universe in such a way that even He cannot solve all of its dilemmas, but that He also, due to his caring nature, suffers along with his creatures.



While I’m sure the book brought comfort to many, it seems to me that it must be a sentimental comfort, not a real one. More important than God suffering along with His creatures is the truth that he suffered for His creatures. That’s the point of Easter.



Why do bad things happen to good people? With apologies to Rabbi Kushner, it is both to our sorrow and our gladness that, in fact, they don’t.



Well, once.



—W. S.

C. S. Lewis on how even neediness can cause contentment

  Christ said it was difficult for ‘the rich’ to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, referring, no doubt, to ‘riches’ in the ordinary sense. But I think it really covers riches in every sense—good fortune, health, popularity, and all the things one wants to have. All these things tend—just as money tends—to make you feel independent of God, because if you have them you are happy already and contented in this life. You don’t want to turn away to anything more, and so you try to rest in a shadowy happiness as if it could last for ever. But God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness. Consequently He may have to take all these ‘riches’ away from you: if He doesn’t, you will go on relying on them. It sounds cruel, doesn’t it? But I am beginning to find out that what people call the cruel doctrines are really the kindest ones in the long run. I used to think it was a ‘cruel’ doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were ‘punishments’. But I find in practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a ‘punishment’, it becomes easier to bear. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable; think of it as a place of training and correction, and it’s not so bad.

   Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.

--C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock

C. S. Lewis on WWJD

It depends, of course, on what you mean by ‘practising Christian’. If you mean one who has practised Christianity in every respect at every moment of his life, then there is only One on record—Christ Himself. In that sense there are no practising Christians, but only Christians who, in varying degrees try to practise it and fail in varying degrees and then start again. A perfect practise of Christianity would, of course, consist in a perfect imitation of the life of Christ—I mean, in so far as it was applicable in one’s own particular circumstances. Not in an idiotic sense—it doesn’t mean that every Christian should grow a beard, or be a bachelor, or become a travelling preacher. It means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God. It means looking at everything as something that comes from Him, and always looking to Him and asking His will first, and saying, ‘How would He wish me to deal with this?’

--C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock

Editor's note: One thing that bugs me to no end is when writers—or at least smart people—put the period or comma outside the quotation marks. This is never, under any circumstance, to be done... unless you are a British writer, as Mr. Lewis was. If English-speaking Europeans are your market, then you may do so. That is why it is such in the quote above. And why s is substituted for z or c in many words.

The Four Loves

What does it mean to love?



   Of all the words in the English language (currently estimated at around a million), one lone four-letter word seems destined to carry a weight far beyond its size. The word love can mean many things by definition—there are five in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary—and even more by emotion. Yet there is only one word for them all. Thus we are left to say that we love our spouse and we love chocolate, and hope for the best.

   The Greeks had it better. They had at least four words for love: phileo, storge (a hard g, pronounced store-gay), eros and agape (uh-gah-PAY), which describe, respectively, brotherly (or familial) love, affection, erotic love and charity (what Lewis calls God’s love). And while most of us have heard this, perhaps even listened to sermons about it or read books about it, leave it to C. S. Lewis, in his slim volume, The Four Loves, to bring it to us in his fresh and inimitable way.

   Published in 1960 (fittingly by his wife, his one true love, whom he had married only three years before, and who would die of cancer weeks after publication), The Four Loves does much more than explore love between two people. Lewis peers into the issues of love between parents and children, men for other men and women for each other. Also discussed are the questions of sex, possessiveness, jealousy, pride, false sentimentality, manners and love, and even the humor of love.

   How better to pique your curiosity than a few quotes:

   On Affection:

[A]ffection has its own criteria. Its objects have to be familiar. We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in love or began a new friendship. I doubt if we ever catch Affection beginning.

…Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move.

   On Friendship:

Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has the least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart together from the herd.

…Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You, too? I thought I was the only one.”

…The mark of perfect Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (or course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.

   On Eros:

Sexuality may operate without Eros or as part of Eros… . I am not at all subscribing to the popular notion that it is the absence or presence of Eros which makes the sexual act “impure” or “pure,” degraded or fine, unlawful or lawful. If all who lay together without being in the state of Eros were abominable, we all come of tainted stock.

…Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself. Eros wants the Beloved.

….It is not for nothing that every language and literature in the world is full of jokes about sex… . Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess.

On Charity:

God is love… We begin at the real beginning, with love as the Divine energy. This primal love is Gift-love. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that needs to give.

…[D]ivine Gift-love—love Himself working in a man—…desires what is simply best for the beloved…Divine Gift-love in the man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior and the sneering. Finally, by a high paradox, God enables men to have a Gift-love towards Himself.

Love is not always easy, as Lewis reminds us:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

The Four Loves is classic Lewis, and should be read by all Christians. At the same time, it is a great book for anyone who is interested in how God interacts with human emotion—or someone who wants to understand better the mystery of love.

—Wayne S.

C. S. Lewis on "Hate the sin, love the sinner."

You are told to love your neighbor as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself. In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don't cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to be hanged. You may even think that you ought to go to the police and own up and be hanged. Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

--C. S. Lewis from God in the Dock

God or gods?

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals. —Mohandas Gandhi, in Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings Centenary Edition (Cambridge Texts in Modern Politics)

There are more idols in the world than there are realities. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols

While it lasts, the religion of worshipping one's self is the best. — C. S. Lewis, in God in the Dock



I think God is all things. So, you're God. This table is God. My children, the flower. For heaven's sakes,  that flower's God. The sound of that saw, that's God. See, I went from religion to then studying physics and string theory and those things. You study, you get into string theory and all that, quarks and the  time continuum. And you really start realizing God. -- Melissa Ethridge, in The God Factor.

   These four, from very different perspectives, seem to all be saying the same thing: It is easiest to have a god who is most like you, or perhaps even you. We want a god who makes us feel right, who justifies our goodness.

   In the 21st century, we may laugh or scoff at the ancient religions (and several current ones) who had a god for everything--sex, food, war; the list is endless. Yet do we not sometimes do the very same thing?

   The premier moral code for modern society is the Decalogue--the Old Testament Ten Commandments. It is no accident the first one reads:

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..." (Exodus 20: 3-5).

   Correct me if I am wrong, but God seems to rule out everything as idol material, as gods to be worshipped and served. He wants us to worship Him alone--the wily, inscrutable, all-powerful, all-loving God of the Universe.

   And how do we know if we worship the real God? I like Tim Keller's advice:

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

—Wayne S.



(Tim Keller quote from The Reason for God)

C. S. Lewis on Christ as Myth

You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man's own invention--Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn't understand--thunder, pestilence, snakes, etc: what more natural  than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices, etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being(s) were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as old gods; and when man became more refined he pretended  that these spirits were good as well as powerful.

   Thus religion, that is to say mythology, grew up. Often, too, great men were regarded as gods after their death--such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahweh-worship, and so Christianity came into being--one mythology among many, but the one we happened to have been brought up in...

--C. S. Lewis, on October 12, 1916 age 17.

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call "real things". Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a "description" of God (that no finite man could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The "doctrines" we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that wh[ich] God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly almost certain that it happened...

--C. S. Lewis, on October 18, 1931, age 32, around the time of his conversion to Christianity.



Both quotes are from Letters of C. S. Lewis edited by Walter Hooper and W. H. Lewis

The faith of last resort

Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

—C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves

Jack, Aldous and Jack

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. — John F. Kennedy*  

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. — Aldous Huxley  

Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. — C. S. Lewis*  

Kennedy, Huxley and Lewis all died on the same day, November 22, 1963. This interesting factoid prompted a great book by Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley.  Kreeft says in the foreword: 

"It would be part of “The Great Conversation” that has been going on for millennia. For these three men represented the three most influential philosophies of life in our human history: ancient Western theism (Lewis), modern Western humanism (Kennedy) and ancient Eastern pantheism (Huxley).

These three men also represented the three most influential versions of Christianity in our present culture: traditional, mainline or orthodox Christianity (what Lewis called “mere Christianity”), modernist or humanistic Christianity (Kennedy), and Orientalized or mystical Christianity (Huxley)."

*Both Kennedy and Lewis were called Jack by family and friends.

The faith of last resort

There is no inherent superiority in being a Christian. C. S. Lewis was once asked, “Which religion is the best?” He replied, “While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is the best.” The point I think Lewis was making was this: Christianity is the faith of last resort. It is one you choose when all the others have proved inadequate. It is the one you choose when you have run out of choices that allow you to run the show.

And the reason it is the last choice is simple—it expects all of us. Properly devoted to, it requires us to die.

-- W. S.

C. S. Lewis quote from God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

I want what he wants

"I want God, not my idea of God; I want my neighbour, not my idea of my neighbour; I want myself, not my idea of myself -- C. S. Lewis.