Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mere Christianity is one of my favorite books of all time. I was excited to have the opportunity to revisit it for this C.S. Lewis class. This review is going to go through a bunch of my favorite quotes and feelings, but to start off let me just say that it is so nice to have someone present a logical argument for Christianity. Nothing frustrates me more than this “modern” notion that having a belief in God means that you are an archaic-thinking, ridiculous moron. It seems so condescending too. Are we really that much brighter than all of civilization up to this point? Do we honestly think that no one gave a good look at religion back in the day and had to come to terms with it? Lewis helps bridge this gap. Not only is it the right thing to do, being a Christian is the sensible thing as well.

One of the initial arguments in this book after establishing that there is a Moral Law is that accepting Christ as a merely a moral teacher is seriously problematic. To accept Him as a moral teacher but not His claims does not even make sense. “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher” (52). Would you honestly want to follow someone’s advice (knowing that there has been plenty of good advice offered throughout the centuries) who was a lunatic and thought he was God? I wouldn’t. Either he is God or he is not. We don’t get half.

And to the perfectionist side of me? A Christian needs to realize that God doesn’t love us when we are good, “but that God will make us good because He loves us” (63). No matter who we are, God has an innate love for all of His children. Obviously works are still important, but he does not love us any more or less if we miss a few points on a midterm or think a selfish thought once in awhile.

Along with my initial thought, Christianity is supportive of using logic and reasoning. Faith and logic can coexist, and it should! We should be thinking about these things and studying our own religions. I like what he says about how we should have a “child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head” (77). Humility, submission, and obedience are all the positive characteristics we associate with children, but Lewis is right, acting like a two-year-old and not exercising the minds God blessed us with is not going to get us there. Lewis went so far as to say that “anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened” (78). I have seen this in my own life as I have studied. Obtaining more education, doing more traveling, and learning more about other religions has only strengthened my faith. That was mentioned earlier as well—“if you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions contain at least some hint of the truth” (35). This has certainly been my experience, even Eastern religions that seem to be so opposite at times to my own religious paradigm (Latter-day Saint).