Mere Christianity

                In the book Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis tries to give the basics on Christianity.  I found it interesting that he adamantly decides not to talk about the skirmishes between denominations.  I think that we far too often get caught up in trying to figure small misunderstandings between Christians that we forget that these discussions are not usually the ones that evangelize to non-Christians.  There is a time and a place for both, however, it must be balanced.  In our discussions of The Weight of Glory we talked about how important talking about the tough topics that we don’t understand or can separate churches is good.  Just like C.S. Lewis’ continual pursuit of understanding glory helped him grow in his faith and understand glories connection to the Christian promise, when we have good intentional discussions between Christians we can all learn from each other and grow in our knowledge of God.  However, Lewis notes that these discussions are usually just a deterrent for new Christians or non-Christians. 

                In the first chapter C.S. Lewis brings up the idea of the Law of Nature as a type of standard of how one should behave that did not need to be taught.  However, I am not sure if I completely agree with the idea that we aren’t taught the Law of Human Nature.  Although his example of the Nazis and how we couldn’t really judge them if they didn’t know that genocide was wrong made a lot of sense, I think there are a lot of reasons for us to believe that we aren’t simply born with the knowledge of what is socially acceptable.  For example, in our discussion Ben mentioned that is some cultures such as the Mayans being sacrificed was an honor.  Also as I thought about it, I realized that as a child I didn’t need to be taught to want to hit my brother when I was mad at him, but my parents did have to teach me that that wasn’t acceptable.  I already knew how to be bad, but my parents taught me how to make moral decisions and how to act in my society.  It was not only my parents that taught me this, however, but society as a whole.  It seems as though we are born with this because almost everyone grows up in some type of society or culture.  However, when we learned about feral children in my high school psychology class we learned that children who were abandoned at infancy and survived without human interaction could still be taught empathy, however, they didn’t seem to be born with it.  I do agree that most cultures have similar moralities.  In my religion class we talked about goodness and how as humans we compare things as more or less good.  I think this does show that in some ways we have innate idea of what is good.  In my class we talked about how in order to have a scale of goodness there must be an ultimate good in which we compare things too.  I think this is another way in which God reveals himself to us as being this ultimate good.   C.S. Lewis ends chapter 1 by saying “These, then are the two points I wanted to make.  First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way.  They know the Law of Nature; they break it.  These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.” I think this clearly summarizes that we do have a cultural law however; it is not exactly a law because we can break it. 

                I also thought the distinction between Moral law and instincts that Lewis makes in chapter 2 was interesting.  He notes the importance that Moral law helps us to decide which instinct will be used.  I thought the example of saving someone and the tension between herd instinct and the self-preservation instinct was a very insightful outlook on this topic.  This clashing of instincts reminded me of the Freudian theory or having a superego id and ego.  The id is our primary selfish instincts.  The id clashes then with the superego which is our rules of what is moral in our society.  Then the ego is what helps us to decide between the two opposing petitions.  Although Freud was inaccurate in most of his theories I think this clash of demands really helps to explain C.S. Lewis’s idea of how we make the decisions that we do. 

                C.S. Lewis continues on with many more well thought-out truths about Christianity.  I think its important that we sometime go back to the basics of Christianity and makes sure that we understand these concepts before we go deep into the theological issues that denominations often get wrapped up in.  We must remember that we are united in Christ and must world together as the body of Christ even when we have differing views of in depth theology.