How C.S. Lewis helped me to see Christianity for the joke that it is

cluless

Re How Sinclair Lewis helped me to see Christianity for the joke it is.

ELMER GANTRY.

BizzyBee

I read Mere Christianity.

As a foremost Christian apologist, I doubt that Lewis' intention was to portray Christianity as a joke.

So could you expand on this, nvr? I sense that your tongue is in-cheek.

P.S. I've not read this particular book, but have read several of Lewis' other books (not the children's books): A Grief Observed, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce, etc.

nvrgnbk

As a foremost Christian apologist, I doubt that Lewis' intention was to portray Christianity as a joke.
So could you expand on this, nvr?

Aware of his title as foremost Christian apologist of our time, I read the book expecting a lot more than what I found.

Here is a sample...

And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the sense of
right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some
of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded. Secondly,
He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories
scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes
to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men. Thirdly,
He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into
their heads the sort of God He was -that there was only one of Him and that
He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old
Testament gives an account of the hammering process.
Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a
man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He
says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the
end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians,
anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be
nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean
that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world
Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when
you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite
simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have
heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim
to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so
preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives
offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal
my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself
unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on
other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the
kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus
did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to
consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He
unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person
chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the
God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the
mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only
regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in
history.
Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when
they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and
conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble
and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man,
humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute
to some of His sayings.
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.

I sense that your tongue is in-cheek.

Not at all.

DanTheMan

At the Community College that I graduated from last spring, there is only one professor there that teaches the single philosophy class that is offered there.

He has C.S. Lewis quotes posted on his office door.

I'll leave it to your imagination as to how utterly crappy it was to have him as a Philosophy professor.

nvrgnbk

I'll leave it to your imagination as to how utterly crappy it was to have him as a Philosophy professor.

nvrgnbk

Here's more...

Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just
as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man
makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that
Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of
the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.
A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way,
man has (in a sense I am going to explain) the "shape" or likeness of God,
but he has not got the kind of life God has. Let us take the first point
(man's resemblance to God) first. Everything God has made has some likeness
to Himself. Space is like Him in its hugeness: not that the greatness of
space is the same kind of greatness as God's, but it is a sort of symbol of
it, or a translation of it into non-spiritual terms. Matter is like God in
having energy: though, again, of course, physical energy is a different kind
of thing from the power of God. The vegetable world is like Him because it
is alive, and He is the "living God." But life, in this biological sense, is
not the same as the life there is in God: it is only a kind of symbol or
shadow of it. When we come on to the animals, we find other kinds of
resemblance in addition to biological life. The intense activity and
fertility of the insects, for example, is a first dim resemblance to the
unceasing activity and the creativeness of God. In the higher mammals we get
the beginnings of instinctive affection. That is not the same thing as the
love that exists in God: but it is like it-rather in the way that a picture
drawn on a flat piece of paper can nevertheless be "like" a landscape. When
we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest
resemblance to God which we know of. (There may be creatures in other worlds
who are more like God than man is, but we do not know about them.) Man not
only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known
level in him.

What am I missing?

I doubt that he was ever really a true atheist or agnostic.

His every utterance is a crippled attempt to make Christianity fit reality.

cluless

Who was C.S. LEWIS.?

Why did you need C.S. Lewis to see" Christianity for the joke that It is"?

BizzyBee

I doubt that he was ever really a true atheist or agnostic.

Rhetorical question: Is anyone a true atheist? Lewis claimed to be, in his early years.

His every utterance is a crippled attempt to make Christianity fit reality.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that he struggled to be as intellectually honest as possible - he presented the 'opposing' views with more skill and brutal honesty than the opposing side. He grappled in a very personal, human way with life, death, doubt, need, and yes, God. He explored the nature of God in a philosophical and yet pragmatic way. He was disappointed in God, angry at God, but struggled to understand the great WHY?

His writings actually converted many to Christianity.

Bizzy (the agnostic who hates labels)

aSphereisnotaCircle

I tried to read that book on the recomendation of a therapists i had.

I opened the first page and started reading, but all I could see was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,......... the end.

The only thing I have ever read that was more mind-numbing, was the societys literature.

"The lion the Witch and the wardrobe" was pretty cool though.

How C.S. Lewis helped me to see Christianity for the joke that it is

Share this