mere christiANNity
105. Based on the insights from this chapter, how might you be able to discern the help of Jesus Christ in your life this week?
As Lewis says after the first few steps in the Christain life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God, through this conclusion we know that Jesus is at the center of all the help we recieve this week, through our prayers, studies, and our interactions with others.
99. In what ways do you resist God's transformation from a tin soldier to a true human? In what ways do you welcome it?
As Lewis says, humanity is already 'saved' in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work - the bit we could not have done for ourselves - has been done for us. We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race. If we only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, He will do it in us for us. By accepting and working towards this we welcome this transformation, however by rejecting this idea we resist it.
109. What do you find difficult about Christianity? What do you find easy?
Christainity is diffcult because we must change and change at a very deep level before our goals can be reached. We must change everything. However it can be easy because Christ clearly states what it is He wants from us, He wants our whole selves, He wants our entire self to be given to Him, so that He wants both our innocent and wicked desires, the whole outfit, so that He may give us a new one.
101. What benefits come from knowing both our spiritual unity with the rest of the human race and yet our personal distinctiveness?
Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body—different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else's troubles because they are 'no business of yours', remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organsim as you.
92. How might your life be different if you believed that you personally had God's full and undivided attention?
He has infinite attention 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 just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.
107. How does Lewis use the images of a grass field and eggs to explain how Christianity is both hard and easy?
If you are a field that contains grass seed, you can't produce wheat, and cutting the grass may keep it short; but the field will still only produce grass and not wheat. If the goal is to produce wheat a deeper change must happen at the root of the field, it must be ploughed up and re-sown. Similarily an egg may be able to turn into a bird, but it cannot learn to fly while remaining an egg, we are like the egg, we cannot remain an ordinary egg, we will either go bad or hatch. These images show us how Christainity is both hard and easy, it is hard because we must change and change at a very deep level before our goals can be reached. However it can be easy because Christ clearly states what it is He wants from us, He wants our whole selves, He wants our entire field to be given to him so that we may grow wheat, and He wants our entire egg given to him so we may hatch.
97. How does the analogy of the toy tin soldier explain God's agenda for the human race?
Imagine turning a toy soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh, and in the eyes of the soldier he sees tin being spoiled, he thinks you are killing him, and so he would do anything he can do to prevent the process. Similarly us humans do not always understand how God is trying to change us and give us life, so like the soldier we push Him away and try to avoid the process. Christ in turn became a real human Himself. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe became a fetus then a man. He was then killed and came to life again, and for the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier, just like the rest of us - had come fully and splendidly alive. The difference between these soldiers and humans however is that the tin soldiers are all separate and do not affect each other, however humans are not, they are connected. So when Christ became man, it was as if something which is always affecting the whole human mass begins, at one point, to affect the whole human mass in a new way. The effect then spreads through all mankind, to those who lived before and after Christ.
108. How can all the various religious activities of the church get in the way of the one central point of Christianity?
It is easy to think that the church has many different objects - education, building, missions, and services. But it is much simplier than that, the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If that goal is not being reached then all the services, missions, and buildings are all a waste of time.
91. How did the understanding that God is beyond time help Lewis understand the Incarnation?
Lewis was assuming that Christ's life as God was in time, and that Christ's life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a shorter period taken out of that time. We picture God living through a period when His human life was still in the future: then coming to a period when it was present: then going on to a period when He could look back on it as something in the past. However Lewis realized that, You cannot fit Christ's earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. And This human life of Christ is from our point of view a particular period in the history of our world (from the year A.D. one till the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of God's own existence. But God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it. Through Lewis' revelation about God being beyond time he was able to reason this.
86. The Christian God is not impersonal, like the "Force" in Star Wars. Why is this good news?
Many people view God as impersonal, something that is less than personal, but Christains believe in a God that is super-personal, something more than a person. And this super-personal God does not simply absorb our life into His as a drop of water slipping into the sea, making us cease to exist, instead we have the good news that our human lives can be taken into the life of God and yet remain ourselves, and in fact - be very much more ourselves than we were before.
90. It's a big idea, but how does Lewis think that understanding that God is beyond time address common concerns about prayer?
Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So the difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time. However, Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty—and every other moment from the beginning of the world—is always the Present for Him. He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass.
110. God's expectation for us is moral perfection. Why shouldn't we be discouraged when we repeatedly fail?
On the one hand, God's demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection. On the other hand, you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal.
93. What is the practical benefit that comes from understanding the eternal relationship between God the Father and God the Son?
People often say God is love, but this phrase has no meaning unless God contains at least 2 persons, because love is something that is shared, that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made He was not love, so what these people actually mean is that Love is God. They really mean: our feelings of love and affection are to be treated with great respect. But Christains believe God is love, they believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on forever and has created everything else.
103. How can we recognize the spiritual help of Christ in shaping our character?
Some people say that they have never felt any spirtual help given to them by an invisible Chirst, but they have often been helped by other human beings. However, 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." He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti Christian. But above all, He works on us through each other. Men are mirrors of Christ to other men, and this good infection can be carried by those who have not got it themselves.
113. What reservations might you have toward the Christian faith?
Some people seem to think Christ means that "Unless you are perfect, I will not help you"; and as we cannot be perfect, then, if He meant that, our position is hopeless. However Christ meant that "the only help I will give is help to become perfect." And nothing less.
104. What is our role and what is God's role in transforming our character?
The New Testament always talks about Christians "being born again"; it talks about them "putting on Christ", this means much more than Chirstains simply reading and abiding by what Christ has said, it means that a real person, Chirst, here and now is doing things to you. A living Chirst is really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has.
112. If being a Christian is so hard, why would anyone want to be- come one?
The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said that we were "gods" and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.
106. What is the difference between the ordinary idea of morality and that of Christian morality?
The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that "morality" has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by "being good" is giving in to those claims. But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance to get on with its own life and do what it likes. We are like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point. The Christian way is different: Christ says "Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own shall become yours."
98. Jesus Christ is not only God, but the true human—that which God intends for us all. According to Lewis, what difference will that make for you and me?
The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be:one man in whom the created life derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son. Thus in one instance humanity had passed into the life of Christ.
94. Lewis explains the Trinity in a practical way, like a dance. What personal benefits come to us through each person of the Trinity?
The whole dance, as Lewis puts it, is something that is very much alive, dynamic, and full of pulsating activity. The union between the Father and the Son is a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person, alike to the spirit of a family, club, or trade union. However this spirit among families is like a person but not a person, and that is a difference between God and us, what grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real person, and it is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.
87. According to Lewis, theology is very practical. What is the practical good of knowing that God is a tri-personal being?
Theology as Lewis says, is practical, and the whole purpose for which we exist is to be taken into the life of God, and wrong ideas about what that life is will make it harder, which is why knowing that God is a tri-personal being is practical, it makes it easier to understand what that life is.
83. Why does Lewis think it's important to devote this last "book" of Mere Christianity to theology?
Theology is practical, especially in today's world. When there was less discussion and education it was easy to get on with a few simple ideas about God, but today everyone hears things discussed. And if you do not listen to theology it does not mean that you will not have ideas about God, however you will have many wrong and out of date ideas. Many of the ideas about God thrown around today are real ones that theologians tried centuries ago and rejected, to believe in old and out of date ideas due to a lack of studying theology is retrogression, it is like believing the Earth is flat.
82. What comes to mind when you hear the word "theology"?
Theology is the science of God, it is like a map of Christain doctrines that are based upon collected experiences of people who really were in touch with God. And as Lewis says, any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him, and this is achieved through studying theology.
96. Getting to know God is like catching a good infection. What can you do to catch the divine infection?
To catch the divine infection, we must let God have His way, we must come to share in the life of Christ. 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. Every Christain is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christain is simply nothing else.
111. What does Lewis mean, Christians are in for a rough time?
Well, Christ says he will cure us but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full treatment. That is why he warned people to 'count the cost' before becoming Christians. 'Make no mistake,' He says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect—until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less."
89. What do you personally discover about God when you look inside yourself ?
When a Christian man is praying, God is, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life—what Lewis called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.
102. Why is choosing to act like Christ essential to becoming like Christ?
When choosing to act like Christ , you are dressing up as Christ, you are pretending. However there is a good kind of pretending as very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you already had it. It is similar to children pretending to be soliders, and playing shop. They are pretending, but they are really hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretence of being a grown up helps them to grow up in earnest. When we act like Christ, and pretend to be like Him, Christ is actually at your side and is already at the moment beginning to turn your pretence into a reality.
100. Why God "begot" one son—Jesus Christ—so that he might create many, is a great mystery; why bother thinking about it at all?
When you are talking about God, it is nonsensical to ask if it could have been otherwise. It is what it is and that is the end of the matter. Apart from this, it is difficult to comprehend the idea of the Father begetting many sons from all eternity because they would have to be different somehow from one to the other. When looking at two pennies the only reason they are two and different, is because they occupy different places and contain different atoms. The distinction between the Father and the Son however does not require the ideas of space or matter, because one begets the other and the other is begotten. However when trying to decipher the difference between these hypothetical many "begotten sons" the only difference would be their position in space and their matter, however this logic is futile because God is above both space and matter and can not be put into a universe He has created and preceded.
88. How does personal character help or hinder us in the knowledge of God?
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one. You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred—like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope.
95. Which person of the Trinity are you more inclined to connect with, the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit?
You are more inclined to connect with the Holy Spirit, this is because as Lewis says, you have to think of the third person (Holy Spirit) as something inside you, or behind you. Some people find it easier to begin with the third person (Holy Spirit) and work backwards. God is love, and that love works through men - it works through us, and especially through the whole community of Christains.