Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity Notes - Book 2, Chapter 1, "The Rival Concepts of God."

I've seen notes for Mere Christianity where the whole book was covered in four weeks. I've done a study with one group in which we took one chapter per week (which means it takes almost an entire year to get through the book once you figure in Holidays and other interruptions). I thought we could force the book through at a run in 8 weeks....

I just uploaded the Mere Christianity participant's handout for Book One. I've linked to it from the Mere Christianity Leader's Notes page. The document is an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Here's a direct link to it: Book I Discussion Handout

As always, your feedback is welcome!

I have the privilege of teaching Mere Christianity in a Sunday School class (School of Disciples) at Christ's Church in Roswell, NM. I'm excited. We'll start the class the first Sunday in November. We'll cram the 33 chapters of Mere Christianity into 8 weeks. It will be a fast pace, but it should be fun! (Yes, I know that many people have covered the whole book in 4 weeks -- but they aren't me.)

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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.

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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?

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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:

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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.

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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.

Parent: Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes Series

Buy a copy of Mere Christianity from Amazon.com

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.