Mere Christianity (1952) (edit title/settings)

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• C.S. Lewis: totally inspiring and encouraging for anyone in their walks with God.
• Jesus Christ: The Savior and Redeemer of all men, as recorded in the Bible. Christ also lives "in" us, as we surrender to the power of God and strive to live as He did

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• “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.”

  (Lewis 24)

• “As an atheist my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But, how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”

  (Lewis 45)

• “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”

  (Lewis 46)

• “For example, such silence need not mean that I myself am sitting on the fence. Sometimes I am. There are questions at issue between Christians to which I do no think we have been told the answer.”

  C.S. Lewis on his decision not to speak on certain disputed matters.

• “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.”

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• 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.

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• The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

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• Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.

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• But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

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• Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

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• Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

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• Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

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• They are PRUDENCE, TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE and FORTITUDE.

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• According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

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• You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

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Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. C. S. Lewis (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: BR123 .L484 1952
• Dewey: 230

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Theology › Apologetics
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Authors, A-Z › ( L ) › Lewis, C. S.
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Spirituality › Personal Transformation

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