Mere Christianity

CS Lewis' Mere Christianity is one of those books that I never really cared to read but always felt like I should because well, I'm a Christian, and the title of the book is Mere Christianity and everybody's always quoting CS Lewis and shouldn't every "good" Christian read CS Lewis?

So as a result of my imagined peer pressure I attempted to read it one day in high school. I read a few pages, then realized I didn't get a thing he said in those pages but figured it was because the TV was on so my mind was distracted, so I started it again. I read a few paragraphs. I didn't comprehend a thing. I tried again. I focused all my brainpower. And then, about 3 pages into the book, I put it down, never to pick it up again. I did read several others of his works, but not Mere Christianity.

UNTIL just a few weeks ago. I decided to give it another shot. And I was amazed. I went into it expecting it to be like the first time - boring, obscure, too "deep" for my pea-brain, but instead, I was awed. I couldn't put it down. Everything just clicked. I suddenly understood why Mere Christianity is the quintessential Christian apologetic. I loved it.

He's deep, he's brutally honest, he's witty...

So I thought I would share with you just a few of my favorite quotes:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

"The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began...Pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God."

"There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps.' The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them."

"If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference."

"You will find several things going on in your mind which would not be going on there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them."

"That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."

""If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

"Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothin in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

That's all for now folks! If you've not read the book, go read it!

LB