Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 2, Chapter 1 "The Rival Concepts of God"

havoc — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:23:57 +0000

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

Mere Christianity in 8 weeks -- it's not enough time

havoc — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:17:04 +0000

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....

It's not working. There is too much good discussion. Too much relevance for each individual, to ram it through in 8 weeks. Now that we're half-way through, it's too late to extend it for another 8 weeks. We've decided to just slow it down and do the part we can do. It was a good experience to try, but I would discourage anyone who leads a discussion-based class like I do from trying it. 16 weeks might be too long, but 8 is definitely not enough.

Maybe if you are a lecturer you could do it in 4 or 6 weeks, but to me the joy is in the discussion.

Mere Christianity - Book One Discussion Handout now available!

havoc — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:00:38 +0000

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!

Mere Christianity for Sunday School!

havoc — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:23:30 +0000

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.)

Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 11

havoc — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 06:03:27 +0000

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Chapter 11: "The New Men"

Do NOT get all bent out of shape over Lewis' use of Evolution as an illustration. He uses it to very, very good effect, regardless of anyone's personal view of Evolution.

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.

It is not carried out through sexual reproduction.
In this Step, we get a choice -- we are free to reject the change.
Christ is not just the "First" of the new creature, Christ is the new creature. We get the transformation by direct contact with Him!
This Step happens at a different speed -- in a flash!
- We are still "the early Christians"
- our present wickedness, divisions, issues, corruptions and failures are the teething problems of our infancy
- The World keeps thinking we are dying or dead only to find us alive somewhere else
The stakes are high. It's not merely a matter of a life or species not living, if we fail in this step, everything is lost.

Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognisable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of 'religious people' which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need you less. (We must get over wanting to be needed: in some goodish people, specially women, that is the harder of all temptations to resist.) They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognised one of them, you will recognise the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.

These new men are not all alike.
In Christ, we are made wholly into the individuals God created us to be
The Light of God makes our individuality more apparent. The Salt of Christ brings out our unique flavors
If we go to him, clinging to our "selves" or seeking first our true selves, we won't get in.
We have to die to our selves and our desires. THEN, we are filled with the Light and Salt, and God forms us into the selves He intended for us to be.
There are no real Personalities outside of God. Everything outside of god can be explained away with genetics, personal history, opportunity... the trains of history.

At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' to so speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

The End

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Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 10

havoc — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:05:12 +0000

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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?

They should be better people than they would have been without Jesus
They should be becoming 'better' after accepting Jesus
The question is not Person A vs Person B, but Person A with Jesus compared to Person A without Jesus
The evidence will not be the same in every life, and is impossible to judge from the information we have available to us.

Improvements:

Illustration of two factories
The factory manager starting with an old run-down plant will have to make improvements, but must continue putting out the best possible product at the best possible rate (though low) available today.
The factory manager of the plant in good condition may very well put out a higher volume of product, but that does not mean it's the best possible for that plant or at the highest possible volume.
The run-down plant manager will make improvements, but it takes time to get resources available to do that.
We should expect to find some Christians who are "still nasty" people as God works on them

Natural causes:

A person with a placid temper, and friendly disposition is not in a better position than the wretched, insecure person
It is very likely the case that the person of good disposition may not be aware of the need for salvation
... while the "wretch" is painfully aware of their need for God's provision of salvation

God can help us, but He will not force us:

in giving us free will, God has chosen to allow us to choose freely
He will not force us

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Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 9

havoc — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:06:52 +0000

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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:

We are driven to him with help for some sin that's eating our lives
He will happily help us with those sins, but....
He will NOT stop there
He intends to set us right, all the way around. "...if once you call Him in, he will give you the full treatment."

This is why he warns us to count the cost before becoming a disciple.

He wants to make us perfect
He will accept nothing less
We do have free will and can push Him away
Whatever the cost, He wants to make us perfect.... like our heavenly Father is perfect

The other side:

Even though his desire is our perfection, He is thrilled with our first, feeble attempts at perfect, even though they all fail!
Just as every parent is thrilled with their child's first, fumbling steps, and yet are not satisfied until they have mastered a healthy, strong walk
God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.' - George MacDonald

We do not need to be discouraged by our failures. God will keep picking us up every time we try and fail
We are also the only power in the universe that can stop God from the transformational work
We imagine ourselves as humble when we say, "Oh, I'm no saint."
It is a fatal mistake to think that God is through with us before we reach perfection (which we won't in this life, but He will continue working on us through out this life)
We would always be content to stop where are are, but God has much greater plans for us
"To shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience."

Our own efforts will never get us anywhere
Without His help we are hopeless
No holiness or heroism ever witnessed is greater than what He desires to see fulfilled in our lives
"The job will not be completed in this life; but He means to get us as far as possible before death."

We should not be surprised if it's hard... a path of trouble:

After turning to Christ, about the time Jesus has conquered in us the sins we thought were the real problem, trouble comes
"illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation..."
"Because God is forcing [us] on, or up, to a higher level; putting [us] into situations where [we] will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than [we] ever dreamed of being before." (Our troubles come from God! Say it ain't so!)
It seems unnecessary to us, or that God is punishing us for some sin to others
This is just the fire and hammer of the forge forming us into something wonderful -- something we can not dream of

Illustration of the house:

minor fixes
then major renovations!
"You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. he intends to come and live in it Himself."

"The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas

nor is it impossible
He is transforming us into creatures that can do it
He says that we are 'gods,' then He sets out to make us 'gods.'

If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

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Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 8

havoc — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 06:04:00 +0000

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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.

Following this method of the 'Christian life' leads us to

Being very unhappy, because
- as we try to meet the demands of our conscious, more demands will be placed on us
- our natural life will be starved and frustrated, becoming increasingly angry
leading you to either give up
or become one of those unhappy, grumpy people who 'live for others,' and generally end up being a far greater greater pest than they would have been had they remained selfish

The Christian way is different -- harder and easier

Christ demands all of us
Not some of our time and some of our money and some of our work
ALL of us
Not to torture our natural self
but to kill it
Half measures are no acceptable
Not pruning a branch here and there
Cutting down the hole tree
He wants to whole self -- the good, the bad and the ugly
In it's place, he wants to give us a new self
He wants to give us Himself!
His will will become our own

Harder and easier than trying to do it on our own

One time he says, "Take up your Cross," "in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp."
The next minute he says, "My yoke is easy and my burden light."
He means both.

We can very often see that the lazy student takes shortcuts, but months later has to work much harder than the student who put the hard work in learning the principles earlier in the school year. The same is true in any craft for field.

The terrible, almost impossible thing is to hand over all of our wishes and fears to Christ

It's far easier for Him to do His work through our submitted lives than for us to try to do 'good' on our own
By trying to do it on our own, we are trying to be honest, chaste and humble, while letting our heart follow the desires of money, pleasure and success
Interestingly enough, Christ told us we couldn't serve two masters
Thorn bushes don't produce figs
Lewis' illustration of a grass field not producing wheat -- it has to go deeper than mowing the grass, it has to be plowed up (deep change) and resown

That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first

but in those moments His new life is spreading through us, because we are allowing him to work on the right parts of us
it's the difference between paint (which is on the surface), and die or stain, which soaks into the clothe or wood
He never talked idealistic gas
When he said, 'Be prefect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment.
It is hard, but the compromise we are asking for is impossible
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird : it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

This is what Christianity is all about

The Church is not object or programs: education, buildings, missions, services, etc.
The State is not armies, politicians, building, institutions, laws, police, economics, etc.
The Church exists to draw men into Christ, to make little Christs
If the Church is not doing that, everything else, even the Bible itself, [is] simply a waste of time

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Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 7

havoc — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 06:04:00 +0000

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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.

When we say "Father," we are pretending to be sons of God.
- We are 'dressing up' as Christ
- We find it absurd
- We also find that we are instructed to do this
Why pretend?
- We often find that when we pretend to be better than we are, we end up being better than we were
- Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.
- This is why children's games are important -- they forge the characteristics we want them to have as adults.
When we 'dress up as Christ,' when we pray...
- We will usually have some failure of our own come to mind
- If that failure is something we should be doing instead of praying, we should get up and go do it -- now
This is how God shapes us through our prayer life
- Our conscious would answer any question one way
- Our 'putting on Christ' will lead us to a different asnwer
- Attempting to 'put on Christ' leads us to "more like painting a portrait than like obeying a set of rules."
- "And the odd thing is that while in one way it is much harder than keeping rules, in another way it is far easier."
The real Son of God is at our side
- He is turning us into something like Himself
- He is 'injecting' his Zoe into us: the tin coming to life
- The part of us that does not like it is the part that is still 'tin'
Some people may feel like this "Jesus beside us" has never happened
- That other people have helped them, but not an invisible Christ
- Illustration of the woman who wasn't worried about a bread shortage because her family always ate toast!
- Christ very often helps us by helping other people help us
- "He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti-Christian."
- Mostly Christ works in us by working on us through each other
Men are 'mirrors' or 'carriers' of Christ to other men
- Sometimes unconsciously
- Sometimes unwittingly through unbelievers
- This is why the Church (the whole body of believers) is so important
It is natural for 'babies' and you believers to not see Christ working through the people who help them
- But we must not remain babies
- We must start to see the Real Helper/Giver
- If we don't realize that it is Christ helping us through others, we are heading for disaster
  - All people fail, stumble, die
  - We must be thankful for those God worked through in our lives, thank them, honor them, love them
  - "But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand: but do not try building a house on it."
Now we are starting to see what the New Testament is saying
- Christians are born again
- we 'put on Christ'
- Christ is 'formed in us'
- we should have the 'mind of Christ'
These are not fanciful words

Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out - as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity. And soon we make two other discoveries.

1) We begin to be alarmed at not only what we do, but what we are -- sinners
- We always have excuses for our failings
- Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.
- The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul.
- The cellar is our unconscious will
- While we have some control over our actions; we have no direct control over our temperament
- If what we are is more important than what we do, what we do is the evidence of what we are (!)
- So, the changes we need to make, or need made, are beyond our voluntary efforts...
- And this applies to my good actions too. How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally have led to some very bad act?
- But we can't give ourselves new motives
- After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.
2) Up untili now, Lewis has been speaking largely as if we did all of the doing
- In reality, God must do everything and anything
- We 'allow' it to be done to us (human responsibility meets divine sovereignty)
- In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending. The Three-Personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal. But He says `Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality.' God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does. We treat our dogs as if they were 'almost human': that is why they really become `almost human' in the end.

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Mere Christianity: Leaders' Notes - Book 4-Chapter 6

havoc — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:10:00 +0000

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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.

2) The whole human race is one organism.

individuals are unique, but not unrelated
- it is wrong when we try to make others identical to ourselves.
- it is equally wrong to dismiss others' problems because they are not our own.

I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

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