Mere Christianity

For the past month or so, I have been making my way through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. The book is compiled of radio broadcasts that he made to the British people during WWII. Once an atheist, he developed strong arguments to support his Christian faith. While I have grown up believing, and have formed my own slight reasonings, most of my belief has built purely on faith. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, and that faith is needed for belief, but sometimes it would be nice when talking to nonbelievers to be able to give more evidence of His existance and that His word is truth. When asked how I know for sure, I would have pointed to creatation and the stars in the sky. To me, that is the ultimate and has continuously given me comfort and reassurance through the years- I can not image how anyone, or anything, other than our inteligent, beautiful God could have created such things hung them shining for our delight and His glory. Of course, I also would have said that He lives in me, and I that I feel Him, His will and direction. But once again, these reasons are hard to explain to an unbeliever. But hey, that's why God gave us C.S. Lewis and his experience! It is interesting to see his reasoning for his belief in a one true God, developed out of faith and intense scholarship and thought. The book has really opened by eyes to things I have never thought of before. Overall, he seeks to put denominations aside and focus on what all Christians believe. What I love most about his writing is his metaphors. Here are some of the things that have stuck out the most to me so far:

"Enemy-occupied territory- that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends..."

I love this metaphor. I mean, who wouldn't want to be in a "great campaign of sabotage"?

"A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.
There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."



"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic- on a level with the 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 partronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."



"We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world."



"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 hat Christ was killed for us, that His deat has washed out our sins, and that by dying he disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity."



"...fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms."



"[Repentence] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years."



"...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 is God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man."
Genius explaination.