Mere Christianity

If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are, in the long run, hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possibly ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger- according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken the law and put yourself in the wrong with that Power- that Christianity begins to talk.

To be bad, one must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence, and will are in themselves good. Therefore one must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad one must borrow or steal from an opponent. And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given by its goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things- resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself.

The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first- wanting to be the center- wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan, and that was the sin he taught the human race. What he put into our heads was the idea that we can be like gods- can set up our own as if we had created ourselves- be our own masters- invent some sort of happiness for ourselves outside and apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history- money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery- the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it. We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. THAT is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.

If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back, 'No, it's not fair! You have an advantage! You're keeping one foot on the bank?' That advantage is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?

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

When a man makes a moral choice two things are involved. One is the act of choosing. The other is the various feelings, impulses, and so on which his psychological outfit presents him with, and which are the raw material of his choice. But in the end, human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good; a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

The idea that 'being in love' is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. Those who are truly in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion's own nature; rather, it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.

'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.

God loves us not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find pleasure in so many odd, wrong things.

Each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, of good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. Once the element of competition is gone, pride has gone. Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, contentment, and common sense.

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find the strength of an army by fighting against it, not giving in. You find the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why people people know very little about badness. They have lived sheltered lives by always giving in. And Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means. But the main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail.

We cannot discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder the next time we shall succeed in being completely good. It is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God.

God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another.

God has infinite time to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for YOU individually.

The idea that the whole human race is one thing, must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that certain people are somehow less important that collective things like classes, races, and so forth. Indeed the two ideas are opposites. Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different from one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike; my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life.

-Brilliant words from C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity"