Mere Christianity

I was picking a topic out of the figurative Topic Hat, because much as I'm sure you guys would like to hear trivial details of my personal life (except not) I hesitate to ramble too much. In any case, this conveniently rose to the surface of my mind. Perhaps because it had already been up there.

Anyway, for this youth Bible study semester, we are doing Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Little bit of history - it was adapted from a series of radio broadcasts in 1943, and originally appeared in three separate sections: The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality. Pretty sure Mere Christianity is considered a definitive work on Christian apologetics.

So, at Bible study we're through the first section of the book, which started out with a explanation of the existence of something called Moral Law. This, he explains, isn't a law like other laws - law of gravity, laws of thermodynamics, etc - because it is not scientifically predictable. When you drop something, it will always fall down. It will never fall up or sideways because the law of gravity makes it fall down. Moral Law, however, is different. It's something we're all born with, and it's essentially an inherent sense of right and wrong. Everybody uses the words 'right' and 'wrong'. If someone steals something from you, that's obviously wrong, and even if you aren't affiliated with any religion you'll still call it wrong.

So by calling it wrong, you imply that there was a different thing that should have happened that would have been right. If you believe that there is no inherent good or evil in the world, then you really have no cause to be upset, because if someone stole something from you - "That was wrong!" Well, there's no good or evil in the world, right? You believe that, so why are you still upset? So, Moral Law is something everyone is born with. You could probably call it a conscience (incidentally, I'm very curious as to why the word 'science' is in 'conscience'). You can ignore your conscience, but it never stops being there. In fact, a way to tell if you're doing something right or wrong is if you're trying to justify it to your conscience. If it's right, you shouldn't have to convince yourself that it's right.

That was the first section. The second section, which we started last night, is rather more complicated. The basic gist of it is that evil is a perversion of good. Nothing can be evil without the good being there, because without good, evil would not be considered evil. Which goes back to what I said before. If someone steals something from you, you instantly think, "that's wrong", meaning you're comparing it to what it should have been. Darkness is just the absence of light; cold is just the absence of heat. For all you LotR junkies - it's like Orcs and Elves, or Trolls and Ents if you're really hardcore. The Elves existed before the Orcs, because Orcs are twisted, mutilated Elves. Same with Ents/Trolls. Also, Lucifer was originally good before he became Satan (like Melkor, who was good before he defied the Song of Iluvatar and became Morgoth). He was, in fact, an angel - and although what he did was evil, it was through a desire to be like God that he did it; through a desire to be something good. Personally, I believe this answers a question frequently asked by either non-Christians or people who have experienced a loss - why did God let this happen? If God loves me, why did ____ happen? And it's because we live in a fallen world. We live in a world that is perverted by evil. If Eve had never eaten the apple, and if Adam and Eve had stayed forever in the Garden of Eden, they might have lived forever. Because with no evil, maybe there was no death - and no need for God to separate himself from us, either. But since Eve/Adam did, there is evil in the world, and that means death and misfortune happen.

Wow, that got long. But I'm REALLY intrigued by this book, it's absolutely fascinating. Lewis effectively converted HIMSELF to Christianity - he worked himself around to it logically. I feel really lucky that he decided to impart such brilliant logic to us :)

~Sil

"The first thing they said to him was: 'You can die skydiving.' And the second thing they said to him was: 'You can die skydiving.' And the third thing they said to him was, 'IF you die skydiving, you take that responsibility on yourself.'"