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Chapter 11: "The New Men"

In this chapter, Lewis uses the illustration of Evolutionary change. Of how man came to be (according to that theory), and the common views of "what's next" for humanity, according to Evolutionary extrapolation.

But what should we expect? We should expect something completely new, not something marginally new. Lewis makes the case that "the Next Step" is already upon us.... Christianity is the Next Step for humanity.

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Chapter 10: "Nice People or New Men"

Jesus is in the process of making Christians perfect, as He is perfect

• If so, can we expect all Christians to be nicer than all non-Christians?
• Not necessarily -- we have to start from where each Christian is
• A Christian should be becoming nicer than the person they were before they started following Christ (before He started his work in them)
• A tree is known by it's fruit
• When Christians fail to act Christian, we make Christianity unbelievable.
• Some people are just born with better dispositions than others...
• Christian is a process of transformation... some becoming more Christlike.... sadly, some becoming less... some confused and inconsistent

So, what of the individual?

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Chapter 9: "Counting the Cost"

Some people are bothered by the words, "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Some think that maybe it means that if we're not perfect, we fail as Christians. On the contrary, Lewis points out Jesus is working in us to make us perfect -- and will accept nothing less, even though we would.

Example of the child's toothache:

• the child only wants something now to make the pain go away now
• if he goes to his mother he will get that but...
• he will also go to the dentist the next morning...
• then the dentist will go messing with every other tooth that has problems
• and all the child really wanted was for that one tooth to stop hurting

(An 'ell' is about 45 inches, "It was derived from the length of the arm from the shoulder (or the elbow) to the wrist." wikipedia.com)

Jesus is the same way:

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Chapter 8: "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?"

Putting on Christ is not just one job that Christians have, it is the one job that Christians have.

• It's not something only a special class of Christians do, it's what Christianity is all about.
• This is completely different from any other idea of 'morality' or 'being good.'

The ordinary idea for young Christians, or non-Christians is

• We start with ourselves
• We admit that there 'morality' or 'decent behavior' or 'the good of society' has some claim on our lives
• Those claims interfere with our own desires
• We try to do all of the 'right' things and not do all of the 'wrong' things and have something of ourselves left over to pursue our own interests.
• Lewis likens it to paying taxes, and hoping we have something left over to live on.

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Chapter 7: "Let's Pretend"

Two pictures:

• Beauty and the Beast
• A masked man

This is a discussion about practice, the things we do as Christians.

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Chapter 6: "Two Notes"

Lewis felt compelled to append, as it were, two notes following the previous chaper:

1) If God wanted many sons instead of toy soldiers, why didn't he just beget many sons? This would have skipped the difficult and painful process of transforming the 'toy soldiers' into sons.

• The first part of the answer is fairly easy - the transformation from creature to son would not have been painful had not mankind rebelled against God. The rebellion was the fruit of Free Will. Free Will was the only way to have creatures capable of infinite love and hapiness.
• The second part is complicated by the way we see things from within creation. Two identical pennies, which are identical, but not the same vs. two organs of a body which are not alike, but part of the same organ. In the same way, people are organs, part of the organism of humanity.

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Chapter 5: "The Obstinate Toy Soldiers"

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.

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Chapter 4: "Good Infection"

• Example of the books and the relations between, then removing time... so the relationships existed as they appear without a time when the relationships didn't exist.
• This is an introduction to thinking about things outside of time.
• Uses the example of a cube being made up of six squares, but remaining a cube...

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Chapter 3: "Time and Beyond Time"

This chapter discusses Time as it relates to Prayer.

We live through time. In this reality, we flow in one direction with time. All that is behind us is lost to us, except in our memory. All that is before us is unknown to us. What Lewis is attempting to address here is, "How can God listen to everyone in the world praying at the same time?"

• God created time
• God exists beyond time ("outside and above")
• God is not restricted to time

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Chapter 2: "The Three-Personal God"

Lewis' example of begetting and making.

Personality and God: New Age, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. (hereafter shown as "NA/H/B"), believe "in a god that is beyond personal." Christians agree, but in a starkly contrasting way to those religions. The others believe in something impersonal... something that has "transcended" the personal. Christians (and only Christians) believe in something that is super-personal... the source that person/personal/personality flows (down) from.

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Chapter 1: "Making and Begetting"

Theology means 'the science of God,' and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?

Theology and doctrines are like a map. They give us an idea of what God is like, but they are not God and they are not, in truth, "real." Theology, though, gives us a much greater scope of the personality of God that we cannot get on our own.

But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.

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Chapter 12: "Faith"

This is Faith in the "second" or "higher" sense of the Christian term.

We discover this Faith when we have tried our hardest to be Christian, and we find that we cannot. We discover our bankruptcy, and discover what God really cares about:

• Not our actions
• He desires that we become "creatures of a certain kind or quality -- the kind of creatures he intended us to be -- creatures related to Himself in a certain way."
• that we become creatures that relate to each other in a way dictated by the statement above.

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Chapter 11: "Faith"

"Faith" in the first sense: Belief -- "accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity."

• Obviously, something should be accepted or rejected based on the facts about what seems to be true.
  • Being honestly wrong about something doesn't mean a person is 'bad,' only (possibly) 'not very clever.'
  • If a person thinks the evidence for something is bad, but he wills himself to believe it anyway, he's just stupid.

This assumes that we accept and reject things strictly on reason, which is not true.

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Chapter 10: "Hope"

Hope is one of the Theological virtues

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Chapter 9: "Charity"

We touched on Charity in chapter 7, Forgiveness, but this chapter goes deeper.

The modern meaning of 'Charity' is given to the poor, or 'alms.' The original meaning was much wider, and giving to the poor was a part of Charity. Charity is a 'state of the will.'

Charity means 'Love, in the Christian sense'. But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.

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Chapter 8: "The Great Sin"

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

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Chapter 7: "Forgiveness"

[Editor's note: this is one of the best treatments of forgiveness I've ever seen. I highly recommend John Eldridge's discussion in Wild At Heart to compliment the material that Lewis presents. Lewis gives us a complete 'why' for forgiveness, but Eldredge presents a fantastic 'how to' forgive.]

"Every one says forgiveness is a lovily idea, until they have something to forgive...."

"I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find, 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. Is is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. there are no two ways about it. What are we to do?"

• Start simple:
  • for give your sister, brother, wife, husband, parents, children, classmates or roommates for something they have done or said in the last week. (that should keep us busy for a little while.)
  • try to understand what loving our neighbor as yourself means. how do we love ourselves?

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Chapter 6: "Christian Marriage"

[Note: Many will try to criticize Lewis' authorship of this chapter on the basis that he had never been married at this point. That would be an ad hominim attack (attack on his character), with no relevance to the topic.]

• The Christian view of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and a woman, in marriage, are a single organism, "one flesh."
• This is viewed as a fact, not a sentiment. Analogous to a lock and key, a violin and a bow.
• This union goes beyond sex, to a total combination of the two.
• The scriptures do not in anyway disdain sexual pleasure. It only clarifies the context of sex to be within marriage.
• Christianity regards divorce as "something like cutting up a living body."
• Although different Churches have different doctrines surrounding divorce, "They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment."
• Anyone who enters into marriage without the intent for it to be permanent is a deceiver.

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Book Three – "Christian Behavior"

Chapter 5: "Sexual Morality"

• The Christian rule/virtue of chastity must not be confused with the societal rule of 'modesty.'
  • Modesty simply sets the rules for how much skin should be shown in different situations, and what topics are allowed in conversations.
  • the rules of modesty are different at different times and in different places and for different groups of people, even different situations.
  • chastity is always the same at all times for all Christians
  • Christian chastity is "Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence."

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