Christianity,  Nonfiction

Mere Christianity

Somehow, I’ve never been able to read this book before. I’ve tried a few times but never gotten beyond the first few pages.

Recently I tried again with the help of an audiobook version from the library. It worked, helping me to gain some momentum and push through the spot where I’ve run aground in the past.

I found Mere Christianity to be a timely, clarifying, and inspiring read. It was timely, because I need reminding of the big picture of the Christian faith and what this life is supposed to be working toward. I enjoyed listening with my daughters, too, so we could discuss some of the concepts and the strategies Lewis uses to explain them. The book is a treasure chest for anyone with questions about the Christian faith.

The illustrations Lewis uses to demonstrate theological ideas are unfailingly clear, narrated in accessible language. And no wonder. The original audience (from 1942-44) was the British public, to whom Lewis had been invited to address a series of radio talks on the Christian faith. (Think of it: an era when Christianity would be recognized as a topic worth hearing about by mainstream westerners. Can you imagine it? Neither can I.) Without dumbing it down, Lewis manages to tackle such subjects as the Trinity, moral law, the Incarnation, Redemption, time and eternity, free will, prayer, and the transformative process by which God takes fallen humanity and offers holiness.

With his characteristic wit to keep his listeners engaged, Lewis takes the stance of a friend walking alongside rather than one speaking from on high, systematically and thoroughly peeling away misunderstandings and revealing the shining heart. Here, for instance, is a passage I have heard snippets from but enjoyed hearing in context. It uses banking and war imagery and establishes Lewis’s solidarity with the audience with its reference to “you and I”:

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

Lewis is not perfect, of course. Gifted thinker though he is, he is also a product of his time. I noticed this in his attitude toward women. For instance,

There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it… The relations of a family to the outer world — what might be called its foreign policy — must depend, in the last resort, on the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders.

This is basically Alexander Pope’s line of reasoning when he says, “Whatever is, is right.” Did the fact that many Christian slaveholders did not feel shame mean that slavery was right? Is a man “ruling over” his wife any better than the reverse, given Jesus’s model of servant leadership? Is either party a subject to be ruled over by the other in Christian marriage? Lewis looks at his neighbors and assumes that at that time, in that place, in that social configuration, what he sees reflects the universal ideal for the sexes.  He paints men and women with an embarrassingly broad brush, stereotyping women as irrational protectors and men as the judicious and reasonable sex. I see no such generalities; men can be irrational protectors, women can be judicious and reasonable. These are individual personality traits, not gender traits. No wonder Dorothy Sayers, a friend of Lewis and fellow author, commented that where women were concerned he had “a complete blank in his mind.”

But this is a tiny morsel of an otherwise highly nourishing book. I would add that more than once I was struck not by Lewis’s insensitivity, but his compassion, for readers of all kinds. Here is an example from a discussion on the difference between “niceness” and God’s ultimate goals for Christian personality:

There is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us. If you are a nice person — if virtue comes easily to you — beware! Much is expected from those to whom much has been given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God’s gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented 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 those of a chimpanzee.

But if you are a poor creature — poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in a house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels — saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion — nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends — do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all — not least yourself; for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)

I think it’s the steady undercurrent of confidence in God’s meaningful and loving work in the Christian, however difficult life may be, that did me the most good. The logic and clarity are wonderful, and the pictures of eternal realities are worth remembering. But sometimes it’s simply the experience of being steeped in an author’s faith that can buoy us up by the time we reach the last page.

God is making us into something — something other, something grander, than we would be in our flesh. This is the point made over and over in Mere Christianity. God’s purpose is not to clear away difficulty, but to forge new creations. I’m left wondering: what is he making me into? Am I cooperating?

One Comment

  • Ruth

    Such a good review. Lewis is always so bracing. The last time I read this, I was struck by how dated it seemed to me, but you’re right that it still has much good to offer.