"All have sinned" Thoughts on Mere Christianity

I find it interesting how Lewis can use logic to prove a biblical truth.  Sometimes I wonder how one could defend the faith without the use of the bible but when I read Lewis I realize how logic can be used to support a biblical principle.  In the first chapter of Mere Christianity Lewis supports two simple statements and expounds upon them.  He explains that there is the existence of a Moral Law, a natural law defining what is right and what is wrong.  He also shows that we all try to hold others up to this Moral standard but cannot keep it ourselves.  This is the basis for the argument that man is fallen and needs a savior for redemption.

It is easy for a Christian to explain the need for a savior.  All he needs to do is to visit certain passages as Romans 3:23 or Romans 3:10.  All we need to do is see that we cannot keep the law set before us by God.  We cannot possibly keep every law in the Old Testament and therefore have not lived up to God’s standard.  God had mercy on us and sent his son to die for us so that we could have a relationship with our creator.  For one who reads and believes the book of John, all this comes very easy.  It is stated simply in the bible.  Although it may be hard come to terms with the content involved in the gospel message, it is still stated clearly.  What is more difficult is to prove, without the bible, that there is indeed a law that has been broken making us imperfect and sinners.

Lewis explains that the Moral Law is similar to the laws of the universe.  Just as the law of gravity determines that a ball will drop, the Moral Law determines right and wrong.  The presence of this Moral Law is embedded into each and every one of us.  We feel guilt when we do something wrong and thus know we have broken the Natural Law governing our morals.  Now, some may say that these feelings of guilt are byproducts of social training.  That our parents and teachers taught us that things such as stealing, murder, rape, were bad things.  Thus we should feel guilt after committing such acts.  Some may also continue by saying that other people have different definitions of what is good.  For example, Hitler and the Nazi’s were trying to improve the world by ridding it of Jewish blood.  This argument can be refuted through the idea of progress.

The Natural Moral Law is much like the law of mathematics, they improve with time and truth will eventually be determined.  Throughout the ages mathematicians have come up with different theorems and laws, some were wrong and some were right.  As time went on the incorrect ideas were discarded in favor of the ones that were determined to be true.  In the same way, many different cultures have had different definitions of what is morally wrong but the simple fact is that every culture has believe theft, murder, rape and other such things to be wrong.  Thus, moral ideas progress, the good ones are kept while the bad ones, such as genocide, are discarded.  Although there are occasional times where society believe certain evils to be tolerable, the same Moral Laws prevail.

Based on the Law of progress we have certain timeless moral laws which we must follow, as fallen creatures, however, we cannot help but break them.  Although we expect others to live up to the same laws, we realize that we ourselves break them.  We break them through the simplest things as a selfish act, a petty lie, or sometimes the bigger things such as rape and murder.  As the violators of a Moral law we are helplessly imperfect.  And that is why we have a need for Jesus Christ.

            

“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one”

Lewis makes a very important observation when speaking through the senior demon Screwtape.  Often, we as Christians, fall into an apathetic lifestyle where we go to church, hang out with our friends, and leave our spiritual walk at that.  We easily forget that in another world there is a constant spiritual battle for our souls.  The tragic mistake that can be made is to forget about this war and fall asleep to God’s will.

Screwtape warns his nephew Wormwood, as a tempter, that one of the most dangerous things he could do is cause his human to commit some horrible sin.  Although it brings the most glory and recognition to a junior demon to bring a human to commit a great sin, it might awaken the human from apathy.  Screwtape writes “Murder is no better than cards if cards do the trick.”  He says that the best way to bring a human to hell is sometimes to do absolutely nothing.  The human’s own mind will distract him from his prayers, and studies.  Eventually this will bring such a disinterest in Godly things that the human will search for other things to do, anything, rather than focus on what he should do.  He may not have committed murder, lied, or stolen anything.  But the easiest way to his is to do nothing.

            This is an awakening in my own life where I often tell myself that I can pray to God later or study his word later.  Sometimes my motive for going to church isn’t to worship God but to see my friends.  This, I realize, is exactly what Satan wants me to do.  He wants me to corrupt good habits and become spiritually lazy.  He wants me to push Christ out of my mind and focus on playing my guitar, watching movies, hanging with friends, anything to disrupt God’s work in my life.  Thus, I must maintain discipline.              Not only remember to pray and spend time with God but to actually do it.  Not to think about going to church, but to really attend, and not to attend reluctantly, but with passion for the Lord.  The safest road to hell is indeed the gradual one and so we must be diligent in our walk, encouraging one another for the glory of God.

Chapter 2: Engaging God's World

In Chapter 2 of Engaging God’s World Plantinga continues to explain the Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration theme of Reformed belief.  God created the world perfectly and saw that it was good, the Fall, however, tainted out essence and we fell into sin.  And thus the gospel message comes into play.  We are creatures tainted by sin and need a savior to heal our sickness.  That savior is Jesus Christ.

Although Plantiga’s chapter was about the perfect creation of the Universe, we cannot, it seems, discuss the Creation without the fall.  Our society, and world, has been so affected by our sin that we cannot separate it from anything.  We are completely and totally depraved.  Although beauty still exists and can be found in many things, it is only out of God’s grace that we are able to experience magnificence. 

 

The Weight of Glory

Love pushes us to put our fellow man before ourselves.  It commands us, even compels us, to respect our neighbor.  Biblically this is quite evident as Christ commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Lewis, however, finds a logical way to support the Christian ideal that love is the greatest virtue.  He continues the same logic by finally concluding that not only are we required to love, but also that we are far too easily pleased with small worldly things instead of looking forward to eternal glory.

            Lewis argues that our natural desires for happiness support the existence of heaven.  He writes that “A mans physical hunger does not prove that he will get any bread” but it does “prove that he comes of a race which repairs it’s body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.”  Just as the existence of hunger points to the existence of sustenance so the existence of a desire “which no natural happiness will satisfy” points to a supernatural comfort, such as heaven.   

This conclusion may cause doubt in the power of Christianity since the religion seems to teach as much as a mind could already reason; that heaven existed.  Lewis however explains that we as Christians are like schoolboys learning Greek.  The Greek is often painful, hard, and boring to learn but it is rewarding in the end when one masters the language enough to read Sophocles.  At first, the boy might want to enjoy the novels and literature of his own time instead of the “dull and cold” Sophocles.  Once he is skilled enough in Greek to understand Sophocles he will appreciate it and realize that it actually enhances his knowledge and understanding of present literature.  In the same way Christians may find certain parts of faith, and the bible, to be boring or difficult.  Instead of running away from those questions, Lewis encourages them to address them for “it will be precisely the puzzling or repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.”

            Therefore, two ideas are presented.  The first is that we are creatures created for an eternal and supernatural life.  Our earnest and unquenchable desire for something that cannot be fulfilled by worldly things proves that we we’re created for such a life.   Consequently, everyone we come into contact with and everything we do echoes in eternity.  Knowing that one day our neighbor might be bathed in glory pushes us to love him.  Our common destination should unify us for a common purpose as Christians.  Second, we must delve deep into our faith, as Christians, to understand our God better.  We are as Lewis wrote “too easily pleased” like the schoolboy and his novels.   We must love our God and bring glory to Him by seeking and knowing Him intimately.  In this way, love is the greatest virtue.

The Oxford English Syllabus

The Oxford English Syllabus states that humanity, when not referring to human kindness, is the “realization of the human identity” where the goal of life is to pursue the “leisured activities of thought, art, literature, and conversation”.  In this definition of humanity a difference can be drawn between education and learning, which results in the separation of three types of people:  those that work to live, those that live to work, and those who don’t bother to work. 

The person that works to live is the learner.  It is this personality that uses education to learn.  Although education is a structured system used by teachers to inject digested information into a student’s brain the learner works through this to focus on gaining knowledge.  He recognizes the need to support himself in a career but does not use his education to earn a diploma and thus a good job.  Instead his education is merely a means by which he can acquire a career by which the can continue living and learning.  Basically the knowledge gained from his education is much more important than the education or diploma itself. 

All people seem to start out with the learning mentality as children.  We all had vividly wild imaginations and some of us can still remember the excitement of learning something even anything new.  A tragedy happens, however, between high school and college where we cease to focus on knowledge and instead work to succeed.   We become those that live to work and pursue the good grades, diploma, and job in an impossible attempt to satisfy our needs.  Our education thus becomes vocational training “for slaves” as the Oxford English Syllabus puts so tenderly and archaically.   However harsh and old the statement seems, it is true that those pursuing education for the sake of a job and diploma become enslaved.  They are enslaved to their ever-unsatisfied want for more material wealth.

The third type of person, the sloth, is the most despicable.  While one that lives to work can be redeemed at any time in his or her life simply through switching the focus to a learning mentality, the sloth cannot.  He is an animal because he is content with always learning processed information like the cow, which is compelled to eat grass, chew cud, and sleep.   The animal makes no effort to go beyond his teacher’s instructions and will not problem solve on his own.  It is not that he does not have the ability to learn but that he has become so lazy that he will not learn.  He is a waste of a mind.

There are three types of people, the learners- those that work to live, the educated – those that live to work, and the animals- those that are too lazy to even think.  Although all are forced, by nature, to work for survival, each approaches his work in a different way.  The learners relish the knowledge and will prize the truth above all other things even in the pursuit of their vocation.  The educated recognize the importance of truth but focus upon knowledge as a means to acquire a job.   The animals inflict mental mediocrity on themselves, always accept whatever is spoon fed to them, and become too dumb to recognize the truth if it slapped them in the face. 

We Have No Right to Happiness

I recall a discussion I had two years ago with a good friend of mine from high school. Since I come from a conservative evangelical background and he from a more liberal and atheist family we would disagree on almost every subject that would surface in our discussions.  One particular day we discussed the prospect of sexual relations before marriage.  I, of course, argued the biblical perspective that marriage is a sacred thing to be kept between a husband and wife.  I said the bible states that we should not commit adultery in the Ten Commandments and that fornication is mentioned to be wrong in a myriad of places.   This being an oversimplification of what I actually said.  He responded by asking why we can’t act upon impulses instilled naturally to us as long as they are not damaging to others.  I returned his statement with a twofold argument.  First, I argued that a sexual relationship does hurt others when outside of marriage because it causes two people to open each other up in ways not meant to happen without a special commitment required in marriage.  Second, I said that just because the impulses are natural doesn’t necessarily mean they are good because we are fallen creatures with evil desires.  Now since these both relied on the Bible in their reasoning I felt that I had failed in my argument.  My friend did not believe that the Bible was a book that could be taken seriously in an argument on ethics, as it was just a bunch of spiritual nonsense.

            Lewis’s logic, however, seems to make as much sense from a biblical perspective as it does from any other.  He argues that we have a Natural Law allowing us to have happiness given that it does not cause harm to others.  He focuses on the aspect that the absolute right to sexual happiness is not only damaging to individual people but also to society as a whole.  He writes that certain natural impulses such as murder, rape, robbery, treason, and fraud are obviously damaging to society and thus must be illegalized. In this way, certain people must be limited in their right to happiness.  He goes further by comparing the argument that humans have an absolute right to happiness when it comes to multiple sexual partners or marriages to stealing fruit.  He writes:  “It’s like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong – unless you steal nectarines.”  As a society we obviously cannot allow certain peoples impulses to be fulfilled for the sake of their happiness because often those impulses are incredibly damaging.   By allowing absolute sexual freedom we are creating an exception to an important rule which preserves society.  Lewis argues that creating exceptions such as these will lead to an eventual breakdown in society.  I failed in reasoning this to my friend two years ago, but Lewis effectively and logically argued the dangers of an absolute right to happiness.

Longing and Hope

Plantiga effectively explains the longing Christians have for the hope of salvation and renewal in a fallen world.  He constructs a logical argument where he first uses a given that all humans long for something.  We, as humans, need something to keep us alive.  It may be family, friends, God, or our own self love, but every human has an innate desire for something.  As agents of renewal, Plantinga argues that we have a longing for hope.  This hope is not in other people, political systems, or even on our own strength.  Instead it is a hope in Jesus Christ and the prospect of Shalom.  This idea of shalom where everything is as it should be is very important to Plantiga’s argument.  Shalomj is not simply “peace”.  It is utter perfection through Jesus Christ.  We as Christians have a longing for shalom and so we hope for the coming of Jesus Christ at which point perfection will be evident.

Although Plantinga’s content is excellent, his delivery is poor.  After reading the writings of C.S Lewis, a giant of an author, Plantiga’s book is more than a step down.  Plantinga uses too many quotes and idea’s from other great minds that it seems as if he is not putting forth his own thoughts.  He uses so many outside references that the writing becomes exegetical and boring.  Although Plantinga is a very skilled author his book is comparable to that of a top chef cooking a meal with very powerful spices.  Each spice the cook uses is a quote by C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, or T.S Eliot.  Although each spice can make a certain meal delicious, too many powerful spices can confuse the taste of the meal and actually damage the flavor that the chef was trying to achieve.  Similarly, Plantinga uses many excellent quotes to drive home his point of longing.  He unfortunately bred confusion in his writing by using too much of a good thing.

C.S. Lewis seems to attract the reader in almost everything he writes.  Although much of his writing contains very hard to understand concepts and logic he manages to maintain interest.  This is because he seems to follow a similar structure in his essays and stories.  He starts with one metaphor, example, or story and then continues the theme throughout the piece.  Platinga started with comparing a human’s sense of longing to the feelings of Gene Forrester in A Separate Peace but also compared the same longing to multiple different stories and quotes.  He chose to maintain his content as a theme instead of merging his content with his initial example through the entire chapter.  Plantinga wrote a doctrinally solid essay on our longing for Christ and Shalom in a fallen world but he failed at keeping my interest in a book on Engaging God’s World.