The Screwtape Letters: Chapter 1

Each week I will summarize a chapter from The Screwtape Letters, a book by CS Lewis in which a senior demon named Screwtape is writing to his nephew, Wormwood, giving him advice on leading a man to damnation.

In Chapter 1, the message Lewis is trying to convey is clear - we need to fill our minds with higher things, and constantly be challenging ourselves. If we stand still in life and be content with the "ordinary," we are susceptible to a fall. Lewis writes:

"You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things." (10)

The world that we live in is quite extraordinary. We seem to have lost that sense of wonder, and regard almost everything that we come across as being ordinary. We are content to live our little lives, and never challenge our brain to learn and grow, never try to see things in new ways.

Last week, I was on a flight... and there I was, flying above the clouds, looking down on the Earth... WOW! It just struck me how amazing, how incredible it was, that we can fly to different places around the world. We have the technology to build an airplane and fly it around the world safely. It blows my mind. Looking down on the clouds rather than looking up at them... how can that not fill you with wonder?

We should constantly be trying to learn more about the world in which we live in and try to see it and understand it in new ways. After all, since God created the world we live in, when we understand that better (and the things that happen in it better), we can understand Him better.

When are content with ordinariness, we are missing the point... we are missing the grandeur that is all around us, and we can even begin to miss God.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Recap

I finished writing my series on Lessons for Mere Christianity... and here is a brief recap, or all of the links...

Introduction
Mere Christianity Quotes

- Charity
- Creating a Christian Society
- Help From Others
- Judging Others
- Living A Perfect Life
- Love
- Pride
- Self-Improvement
- Trust In God
- Turning It Over to God
- Using Our Gifts
- Virtue

Take a look and let me know what you think! If you haven't already, read the book!

"Mere Christianity" Quotes By CS Lewis

In following with my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity, here are quotes from Mere Christianity.

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- "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." (28)

- "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.' This 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 be either a lunatic - on a level of a 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (52)

- "But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die." (57-58)

- "The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no 'unfair' advantage), it would not get on very quickly." (58-59)

- "But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man." (58)

- "There is a different between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man." (79)

- "But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a 'virtue,' and it is this quality or character that really matters." (80)

- "When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

- "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 partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

- "A Christian society is not going to really arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to fully want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward - driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home."

- "If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditures excludes them." (86)

- "That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the result;s which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it." (91)

- "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-state of mind." (122)

- "Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride." (123)

- "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." (124)

- "Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." (128)

- "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." (131)

- "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." (132)

- "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." (134)

- "Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." (134)

- "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." (136)

- "All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this. I can't.'" (146)

- "Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

- "When you are not feeling particularly friendly, but you 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 all have noticed, you will be feeling really 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." (188)

- "If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways, not only through what we think our 'religious life.'" (190)

- "But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." (193)

- "The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

- "For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do." (197-198)

- "When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199)

- "In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

- "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 mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... 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. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

- "I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

- "We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

- "That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because 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." (204-205)

- "Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that 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." (214)

- "If you are a nice person - if virtue comes easily to you - beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contended with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an Archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above a chimpanzee." (215)

- "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 or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that matter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?" (217)

- "The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more ourselves we truly become." (225)

- "Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishesevery day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (226)

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Do any of them speak to you?

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Living A Perfect Life

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

This will be the last post in the series, and it involves what I think is the most important lesson in the book, as well as one of Lewis' main themes from the book. That lesson is living a perfect life, or, perhaps more accurately, seeking to be like Christ and to follow His example in all things that we do.

Lewis says that this is the purpose of Christianity - sharing in the life of Christ. The way that we can do that is by doing the will of God, and following His example in all things, no matter how difficult.

"Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be Sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has - by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." (177)

Of course, we know that achieving such perfection is an impossible task in our earthly life. We will, no matter how holy we become, no matter how hard we try, fail to live up to the perfect standard of Jesus at some point in our life. However, that should not stop us from trying.

"But when a thing has to be be attemped, one must never think about the possibility or impossibility. Faced with an option question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question, one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very perfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone." (101)

We may also be intimidated by the enormity of the task, and feel like if (and) when we fail, we will be letting God down. However, it is of course not how many times you fall, but how many you get back up. If you are a great sinner, God is especially pleased with you when you repent and seek perfection, for He knows how far You have come. He can see in your heart - even if you fail, God will know if You are trying to do His will.

"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 mmake tomorrow to do the simplest duty... 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. 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." (202-203)

In my life, I find that I simply focus on trying to be "good," and hopefully it won't interfere with the things I really want to do and the things I really want to accomplish in my life. It seems to me that my natural way of thinking is that these things are in opposition somehow - who God wants me to be and who I think I am meant to be. Of course, this could not be further from the truth. God wants us to become the best that we can be and fulfill our purpose in life. If we find what we think our purpose in life is to be at odds with what direction God is pulling us in, well, chances are He is not the one that is confused. We must give up this way of thinking, that we will do God's will just enough to be "good," and then keep the rest for ourselves. In the end, that doesn't work.

"The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience with demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, 'live for others,' but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr or yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish." (197)

"For what we are trying to do is remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. (197-198)"

No matter how much progress we make, we are still going to encounter hardships and troubles in our quest for heaven. However, we should not let that get us down or discourage us or think that God is displeased with us and our feeble efforts. He may be merely calling us to a higher level, to a change and holiness we may have never thought possible.

"That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would not be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because 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." (204-205)

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Most people don't really take that literally, or they skip over that passage, but it is vitally important.

"When he said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hardly but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible... May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else." (198-199

"In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (199)

This leads us to the final, overriding theme of this... we should seek perfection and to be Saints. Striving for anything else is not what God intends for us, it is not a proper use of our gifts. I will let Lewis say it, because I believe these are some of his most powerful, most challenging, most poignant lines in the entire book.

"I think many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one of two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say 'I never expected to be saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.' And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble." (203)

"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania, it is obedience." (204)

This will never be an easy task... we will always experience difficulties. But if we always strive for sainthood and to perfectly do the will of God, we can't help but became closer to Him and grow in holiness. If we can do this, we can enjoy eternal life with Him.

Amen.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Turning It Over to God

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

Most people strive to be independent (to some degree), to have their own identity, to be individuals. This also applies when they have problems or concerns about something... often (if they are personal problems) they try to handle this themselves and do not seek out help from others, thinking it would be a weakness if they needed help from somebody else.

I know I have been guilty of this.

This can apply to our thoughts on God too. We might think that if we let God too much into our lives, it will take away our individuality. CS Lewis says just the opposite:

"The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more ourselves we truly become." (225)

He is saying, of course, that by allowing God to enter our lives and the more that we turn ourselves over to Him, He does not take away our personality or individuality, but rather He allows it to truly shine.

When we look only to serve ourselves and to get "ours," we ultimately become selfish people, and selfishness does not lead to greatness nor does it lead to a fulfilling life, but rather one that is rooted in jealousy and loneliness. However, when we seek Christ, when we seek to define who we are through our relationship with Christ, that is when we shine, when the best of us comes out. Lewis says as much in the final words of the entire book, and also some of the best:

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishesevery day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." (226)

What are you keeping back from Christ?

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Jesus

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

CS Lewis talks a lot about Jesus in Mere Christianity, as you would imagine based on the book's title and topic (it would be strange to have a Christian book and not talk about Jesus). Included is one of the most oft-quoted literary passages about Jesus, which talks about how me must view Jesus, or, how we cannot view Jesus.

"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.' This 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 be either a lunatic - on a level of a 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (52)

This, of course, is often cited as the liar/lunatic/Lord theory.

Next, I am sure the question has been asked many times, if Jesus is the Son of God, why did he have to die? The human race was suffering and in need of saving, but why did God choose this manner of saving us, as opposed to any other manner (as he is omnipotent). Lewis tackles this topic.

"But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die." (57-58)

Lewis goes on to say that we need God's help more than ever, but in God's normal nature and state of being, how can He show us? Because we are with sin and He is not, it is very unnatural for Him.

"But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man." (58)

God became man to show us the way to Him. By being fully God and fully man, He is able to experience all of the temptation that we face, but He is able to show us how to resist them, by placing full trust and surrending to God's will.

Of course, this will lead some people to wonder if Jesus is really any help to us. Since he is God, is He really a model that we can legitimately follow?

"The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no 'unfair' advantage), it would not get on very quickly." (58-59)

Jesus, I Trust In You

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Heaven

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

Hopefully, our biggest goal is to have eternal life with God in Heaven. This is a broad goal, and yet a goal that would not be more specific. CS Lewis offers some insight on the road there.

Some people may see heaven as a far off notion, something to be worried about later. Life on earth is busy enough, who has time to worry about heaven? Of course, it should come as no surprise that our priorities should be the exact opposite.

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." (134)

Lewis says that we have become enamored about success in this world, and if that is our focus, ultimately we get neither heaven nor the joy that earth can provide.

"Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." (134)

Many of us seem to go through our lives always searching for the next big thing, or believing that the next thing, next idea, new job, new relationship, etc. would make us happy. But ultimately, we will continue to find that nothing in this world will make us perfectly happy, that will always be that little extra we are searching for.

If you do not feel completely fulfilled in this life, there is nothing wrong with you. There is a reason you feel this way.

"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." (136)

Of course, one of the easiest ways to get bogged down in this life is to constantly compare ourselves to others, to judge others, and constantly focus our mind and attention on the things of this world. But when we come face to face with God, certainly none of that will matter one bit.

"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 or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that matter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?" (217)

Are you focused on Heaven?

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Using Our Gifts

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

We tend not to focus enough of our thoughts on the gifts that we have, and the best ways that we can use them to be a better person and to impact others. We focus on what we do wrong, or how we can get better... but is it important to use the gifts that God has given us.

If you have been given great gifts, we must be careful not to attribute our good qualities as being of our own doing, but as given to us by God.

"Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them. You are quite likely to believe that 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." (214)

I think this is one of the most hard-hitting and also scary parts of the whole book. For those who are talented, of a friendly disposition, of whom things come easily... there is no less need for God. We do not need God less if we are more talented or if more people like us... it just makes it harder to recognize that need.

Without God, you would have no talents, no gifts. A total self-reliance is needed more than ever.

Lewis goes on to talk about how the fall could be greater for those with great talents.

"If you are a nice person - if virtue comes easily to you - beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contended with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an Archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above a chimpanzee." (215)

I think there are two main things that I take away from this:

- We need always strive to be perfect. There is no such thing as good enough (well unless you have made it to heaven, in which case you hardly have need to read my feeble writings). If you have been given great gifts, do not judge yourself in comparison to others (especially those to whom lesser gifts have been given)... much is expected from those to whom much is given.

- Your actions do not affect just you. He writes that your bad example will be more disastrous. Again, for those popular people, friendly, etc... they will likely have more people watching them, and more people that will be influenced by what they do and who they are. Each bad action is seen by others, who in turn think that that action is acceptable and encouraged. When you do something to turn your back to God, you are not only affecting yourself, but all of those around you.

God Bless!

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Self-Improvement

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

All of the writings in the world would do us no good if we didn't take them to heart, become closer to God, and thereby become a better person. But sometimes we need a little direction on how to overcome our faults and become better people. Lewis offers some good advice, including some of my favorite advice ever. A couple related quotes:

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." (131)

"When you are not feeling particularly friendly, but you 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 all have noticed, you will be feeling really 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." (188)

This falls under the 'fake it 'til you make it' line of thinking, and I think it is one that works very well, even in situations that you might not think it would. For the longest time, I was terrible at flossing... I rarely did it, and my dentists yelled at me every time I went in. Nothing could motivate me to floss though. Then, I thought, why don't I just pretend that I care about flossing, and that it is very important to me. So I tried it... and now I floss twice a day, almost without fail (this is a true story).

This I believe would hold true for almost any virtue or habit. If you are a bad public speaker, you would get better in time by pretending that you are actually a good public speaker. This would give you more confidence (slowly, at first, but then more and more), which would then give you the courage to public speak (and practice it), and soon you would be better at it. I believe the same goes for courage (pretend you're brave, and you will be brave), faithfulness, anything.

If anyone was looking to overcome a fault or something that they wanted to change in their life, this is probably the first advice that I would give them.

But what if you are headed down the wrong path? In such cases, there might be no quick fix to your situation. But that does not mean to keep trodding the same path. Once again, sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home.

"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." (28)

If you are stuck in a bad situation, bad relationship, bad habit... there is nothing progressive or admirable about trying to stick it out. In short, progress, becoming a better person, and improving your life means turning away from it, however hard and difficult it may be. You might not realize the benefits in the short term, but it will pay off greatly in the long run.

Finally, we must always keep in mind that no deed, no act, is too small. The little things are where we build our character. If we are not faithful in small matters, then how could we possibly expect to be faithful in large matters?

"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." (132)

As Aristotle famously wrote, excellence is a habit. And one that we need to practice in all decisions, big or small, if we hope to acquire it.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Pride

This is a post from my series called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

If you asked people their biggest weakness, you would get a variety of answers. However, one you probably would not hear very often is pride. CS Lewis, however, feels it is a much greater sin and greater problem than most people believe. He writes:

"Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-state of mind." (122)

On the next page he says:

"Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride." (123)

Deep within people, there tends to be a desire to be better than everyone else. In itself, I don't think this is bad, to be the best you can be. But when you measure yourself in any way solely as against another person, the tendency for pride to sink in is enormous. As Lewis writes in another passage, pride takes pleasure not in having something, but in having more of it than others.

For example, if everyone was equally rich smart, or equally good looking, or an equal amount of anything, then you would not have pride in it. It would simply be another characteristic, another part of yourself. There is pride in being better than someone else, and that pride can cause you to look down on them, and make them your enemy.

If drawn to its logical conclusion, a prideful person wants to be better than everyone else at everything. That hits a bit of a snag when it comes to God, and indeed can place us in direct opposition of God. Lewis writes:

"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." (124)

The flip side is humility. The ability to see yourself as nothing, to forget about self and live for God and for others. A humble person knows that God is the master of his life, and that he is nothing without God. All of his graces, talents, knowledge, it all comes from God. No work is beneath him, nobody is too inconsequential to help.

Lewis describes such a person in this way:

"Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." (128)

That is the type of person I strive to be, and I believe everyone should strive to be. I am far from there (not even close, really)... but imagine what a world we would live in if we were not so afflicted by pride.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Love

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

Today I would like to look at something we all strive for... something we all hope to have and show for others, something we hope to be shown from others. Something that causes us to strive to be the best person that we can be, indeed to be better even than we thought we could, I am talking, of course, about love. CS Lewis addresses a couple different kinds of love (and goes much deeper into it in a separate book - The Four Loves - but that is another story for another time).

In the first sense, he talks about it with regards to having love for your fellow man, especially those with whom we do not agree with or see as our best friends. He begins with an analogy of Christianity as a house, and those in the hallways are still sorting out what they believe, and what is really true. Those in the rooms are those that belong to a certain branch of Christianity... some more right than others, but all containing some truth. Lewis says those in a room:

"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

We have a tendency to look down on those of different beliefs and values as ourselves, and this does not do anyone any good. Whether you think they are wrong or right, you are called to love them.

This does not mean that you must stray into relativism, and many inevitably would take this line of thinking. By all means, if someone has a varying opinion from you, especially in regards to God, then you should think that they are wrong and you are right. Otherwise, what would be the point in believing what you do? But you are still called to love them, and to share your life with them, and to pray for them.

Lewis then talks about the love that most people think of when they hear the word... a relationship-type love between two people. Specifically, he talks about the difference between being in love and loving. He says:

"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 partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

I think if you would ask any happily married couple, anyone that has ever loved anyone else... they would verify the truth of this statement. Love does not mean that at every moment you are falling over yourself for the other person (even though that is what most romantic comedies would want me to believe)... it means that even when you are not, you are still willing to sacrifice for that person, to will the good of that person, even above your own happiness and desires. This is love.

Love and marriage (I am merely speculating on the latter, I am not married) is based on sacrifice, and being willing to die for the other person... not only literally, but in the small things of everyday life.

What a beautiful thing to experience.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Trust in God

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

Many times, we seem to think we can do things without God. I mean, He will still be there if we might need Him, but really, we've got it all covered. Of course, as probably most people could attest to, when we stop relying on God and start relying on ourselves, that is when things go terribly wrong.

CS Lewis says that often times when we fail or struggle to live up to the people that we can be, our first reaction is to try harder and harder, believing that next time we will be better, or resist the temptation to fall. However, the greatest effort in the world isn't going to achieve anything. CS Lewis writes:

"All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this. I can't.'" (146)

Similarly, Lewis talks about when want to do things with unselfish and pure motives. No matter how much we try, we cannot achieve the results that we want all on our own, it is simply not going to work.

"But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." (193)

If we put all of our trust in ourselves, we will find out what everyone realizes... that we are merely human, prone to making mistakes, bad decisions, and falls. But if we place our trust in God, suddenly the impossible becomes possible, our weaknesses become strength.

If you are having trouble in some aspect of your life, make this your prayer: "Lord, I am not strong enough. You do it for me."

Easy To Please, Hard To Satisfy

A few weeks ago, I realized something about myself... as I told Hannah, I am easy to please, but hard to please (fortunately, it made sense to her). What I mean is this... it is not hard at all for me to like something (in this particular case, we were talking about restaurants), but it is hard for me to LOVE something. With food, activities, events... chances are good that I will like whatever it is. But it will be hard to find something that I really love.

Anyway, I mention this because in a roundabout way, I think God is the same way. He is easy to please, but hard to please. Or, put another way, he is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.

He is easy to please in the sense that He loves all of our efforts, however feeble and often unsuccessful, to love Him and to try and follow His path for us. At the same time, He is never going to be satisfied until we are perfect, fully united with Him. Until that time, no matter how often we succeed, we will still fail, we will always be pushed harder.

CS Lewis explains this thought well, and though like I will go over it again at some point in my Mere Christianity series, it is worth mentioning here.

"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."

Then he makes an analogy which I like, in part because analogies help me really be able to grasp concepts and have them hit home in a very practical way, which this one does for me:

"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.

The two key points from all of this writambling, I believe, are this:
1) Every small action done for the will of God overjoys God.
2) There is no such thing as good enough. We are all called to be perfect, nothing less.

God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy. I tend to like that aspect about Him.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Virtue

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

In writing about virtue (and more specifically, virtuous actions), CS Lewis makes an interesting distinction between the things that we do and the person that we actually are. He writes:

"There is a different between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man." (79)

That is an interesting thought. I think this is also another reason why we cannot judge others. We generally will judge a person based on their actions, but that does not always speak to their character, and the type of person that they really are. At the same time, be careful not to become prideful if you perform a benevolent action, for to God the most important thing is the type of person we are.

In the same vein, we must be sure that we are doing things for the right reasons. Lewis writes:

"But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a 'virtue,' and it is this quality or character that really matters." (80)

The popular phrase is "fake it 'til you make it," and I fully endorse this strategy. However, it only works if you work on actually making it. That is, if you work on actually acquiring the virtue rather than continuing to fake it.

Let's take an example. Let's say that you only help out old ladies at the grocery store when there is someone around to see the good that you are doing. On the one hand, it is good to help old ladies at the grocery store, and so this is a positive thing, even though you are only doing it for the attention. Now, let's say you never moved onto helping old ladies in the grocery store because it was the right thing to do, and simply only did it when there was someone there to witness it, would you be better off as a person, and would you be a person of higher character because you helped when others were watching? I would argue no.

In short, if we truly want to become the best that we can be, we must perform the just and temperate actions, but we must also pray for a full conversion of the heart to be a virtuous person. If we do not put both parts together, all of our efforts will eventually be futile. Fake it 'til you make, but be certain that you are actually working to make it in the end.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Help From Others

Here is a post from my series called "Lessons From Mere Christianity."

In our lives, it can sometimes be difficult to recognize the work of God in our life, and the ways that He is affecting us, as it is often disguised. One of those ways is through the help of others. We may see it as simply being helped by another human being, but we must always remember that it is God working through that person (in the same way that He works through us). CS Lewis writes:

"If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways, not only through what we think our 'religious life.'" (190)

Another thing that is clear to me from reading this is that we need to seek the advice and friendship of others, especially those that are like-minded in the faith. This is essential for a healthy faith.

It seems to me as if many people see faith and religion as a very personal, private thing. On the one hand, this is quite right. If you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and a personal devotion, than you don't really have a faith. An aspect of faith is very personal, there is no doubt about that.

On the other hand, this way of thinking is very wrong indeed. If Christ is present in all of us (and I believe He is, and He told us as much), then the last thing we should do is thing of religion as a private, personal thing. We have much to learn from others, we have much to share, much to live. We can be helped by others in our faith journey, and certainly we have the power to help others in theirs.

Turning to others for help and support is still turning to God for help and support, because God puts those types of people in our lives for this very reason. Never think that turning toward a friend is turning your back on God, indeed, it is quite the opposite.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Judging Others

This is a post from my series called "Lessons From Mere Christianity."

From my experience and from my own life, it is very easy to fall into the habit of judging others. For me, whenever I see someone do something wrong, or do something that I disapprove of, or even say something that I disapprove of (such as the f word!), my first reaction is to judge them, and I have to work really hard not to.

We are told specifically not to judge, lest we be judged. CS Lewis gives us one reason why we need to follow this rule:

"That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the result;s which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it." (91)

When we judge others, we judge them as if everyone has had the same upbringing and the same experiences as we have had. That is not the case. We do not know what they have gone through, and Lewis says this is just another reason why we should not judge them.

Now, you may think I am slowly broaching relativism, but I assure you this is not the case. A bad thing is a bad thing is a bad thing - however, it is senseless, counterproductive, and unholy to judge the person for the bad thing they are doing. As the saying goes, hate the sin but love the sinner.

When we judge someone, we do not love them. Indeed, think of someone that made a bad first impression, and you instantly judged them based on that. How hard is it for you to change that first impression that you have? By judging, we do not even really give them a chance.

Be on guard. It is so easy to judge someone in your mind, you must actively fight it and pray for the ability not to judge. If you are able to reach that point, to not judge and simply love others as they are, then how much more joyful our lives would be and how much more we could lift up those around us.

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Creating a Christian Society

This is a post in my series of Lessons From Mere Christianity.

If you are like me, there are a lot of things that you find wrong about our society. Some of the things that are acceptable (or unacceptable) and encouraged, some of the things talked about, and some of the things done by people that are "normal" are sometimes hard to believe.

But how do we change it? We generally focus on society as a whole, and want to make big, sweeping changes. However, CS Lewis tells us that the changes must first come from ourselves.

"A Christian society is not going to really arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to fully want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward - driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home."

The last line is one of my favorites from the whole book. When you consider the ways to change our society, we initially think of large changes and quick actions. To focus merely on loving your neighbor and obeying God would seem to be a long, tedious process, would it not?

However, there is no other way. There is no other way to change the hearts of others and by virtue the whole of society. The longest way round is the shortest way home. Indeed, it is the only way home.

The way to create a Christian society is, simply put, to love your neighbor as yourself, and to share everything about your life with those around you. As St. Luke writes, "The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common." (Acts 4:32)

As Mother Teresa would say, "Do you know your next door neighbor?"

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Charity

This is a post in my series of Lessons From Mere Christianity.

For many people, tithing and giving (both time and money) to charity is something that they don't really think about or worry about it. For most of my life, I was the same way. It is very easy to convince yourself that you simply cannot afford to give away money to charity (with bills, school, etc), and you assure yourself that later in life you will be able to afford it better.

However, I am here to tell you that if you do not get into the habit of giving of what you have when it's more difficult to do so, you probably won't start when you get settled. That mythical time when you are "secure" will likely not come - there will always be bills, always be something else to save for, and always be something else that you will want. Generally, this is how life works.

So, if you have established that you need to give, how much? The common reaction will be to give a tiny bit... enough so that you are giving something, but not enough so that it is really actually have an effect on your life. However, CS Lewis writes:

"If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditures excludes them." (86)

If we are only giving of our excess and of the things that we do not need, then we are not really sacrificing at all. A big part of charity and giving is recognizing that even if we give more than we think we can afford to give, we know and trust that God will take care of us. By giving back, we recognize that everything we have already came from God anyway, and if He provided things in the first place, then surely He will provide more than enough with our generous charity.

As Mother Teresa would say, we must "give until it hurts."

Lessons From Mere Christianity Series

One of the most influential books of my lifetime was "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis. I read it at a time when I was just turning my life around to walk with Jesus, and it was very powerful for me.

For the most part, it is a pretty simple book and written for someone who is really beginning their walk. For many people, that is perfect, as it puts things in easy to understand examples and explanations, and challenges them to live a better life, and to realize that they are made for more than the doldrums that most of us face on a daily basis.

Personally, I learn very well by analogies, and so that is a reason I love Mere Christianity... as I said, it makes things easy to understand, and if you are new to the faith or just learning in depth for the first time, you could have several a-ha moments.

Anyway, I decided that there are a lot of quotes and points that he makes that would make great posts, or learning tools. So, I read the book, and broke down a lot of my favorite quotes and put them into different topics. Anyway, the moral of all of this is that I will intermittently (I just wanted to say the word intermittently) be posting this as a "Lessons From Mere Christianity," so look for it coming to a theater near you! :)