Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

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As a pretty dedicated church goer myself, I must candidly say that unless the book is actual scripture itself, it might as well be one of those desperately snobbish self-help books full of zippy motivation quotes and the same principles you find in all other books of the same genre, just worded slightly differently.

He takes it a bit further to explain why some point in between atheism and Christianity (including other belief systems) won’t work for those who choose to follow Christ.The author is now firmly established as one of the most notable thinkers of this, or any generation, and the appearance of ‘Mere Christianity’ will be warmly welcomed. Mere Christianity’ is a revised and amplified edition, with a new Introduction, of C S Lewis’s three famous books, ‘Broadcast Talks’, ‘Christian Behaviour’ and ‘Beyond Personality’. The strains of applying mere Christianity to sex, marriage, the life of real faith and social morality remain real and if anything the tensions have increased since the 1940's.

Lewis also explains morality as being composed of three layers: relationships between man and man, the motivations and attitudes of the man himself, and contrasting worldviews. Mere Christianity has retained popularity among Christians from various denominations, and appeared in several lists of finest Christian books. As an atheist who has seen first hand all the good Christian values have brought to societies, I was expecting something that would bridge the gap between my thinking this was more out of the innate good in men and the impact of "god" in this outcome.

Then you would look at it with the lens of trying to figure out what is wrong in almost every step along the way? I also app Of course, this simplified paraphrase does not come close to the overall thought process that Lewis employs. If Moral Law is on par with gravity then we should not be able to ignore it, as it comes from this absolute moral law giver. The narrow view of Christianity continues in his pronouncement that "anyone who professes to teach Christian doctrine" will tell you to use all three - baptism, belief, and "Holy Communion.

It's interesting to me that he says that he's not pointing directly to a christian God, yet he seems to use the masculine term and a single being throughout the essay. The manner in which Lewis presents morality, how he views Christ and how he explains his faith is very interesting.He then equates the human struggle with "living behind enemy lines" or in the enemy camp - after aiding and abeding that enemy if one realizes he/she is on the wrong side what does one have to do? Other examples include Eve who thought that God was perhaps “pulling a fast one on her” an obvious “mistake of fact” in hindsight. He uses this pretense of “oh, I'm being objective because I get no personal comfort with Christianity being the real and my beliefs are based on evidence. As an aside, I personally did not become a Christian because of the 'scientific facts,' although I did assure myself that I wasn't committing intellectual suicide by doing so. I'm half way through the book, but so far I'm further convinced that Jesus is my savior and that Christianity is right for me.

However, far too often Churches end up preaching a confused gospel that states something like 'it's a little bit of faith and the rest is you doing stuff to make you good enough'. Societies that allow and even admire things like murder, rape, theft, that scorn compassion etc naturally fail to get together and become productive societies.The issues come when, as Lewis so clearly explains, you depend upon such things as a crutch to get you through life, where you have an unhealthy interest in them - that is temperance.