Mere Christianity

Text read: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Number of pages: 227

Number of reading days: 18

Why I read this book: I've been interested in reading some Lewis's work (besides the Narnia stories) for a long while. Finally settled down to read one.

Thoughts:
I appreciated how wonderfully logical this text was. While occasionally a bit dense, I loved Lewis's rational explanations combined with wit and intelligence and humility--his ability to say "I don't have all the answers."

I currently don't have the time or the ability (still thinking a lot about what I've read) to write up a decent review of Mere Christianity, so I will conclude with some of the passages I found to be most meaningful/interesting.

Favorite Passages & Quotes:

"And as for decent behaviour in ourselves, I suppose it is pretty obvious that it does not mean the behaviour that pays. It means things like being content with thirty shillings when you might have got three pounds, doing school work honestly when it would be easy to cheat, leaving a girl alone when you would like to make love to her, staying in dangerous places when you would rather go somewhere safer, keeping promises you would rather not keep, and telling the truth even when it makes you look a fool."

"He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not 'Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,' but 'Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as can.'"

"While this confusion [about sexual morality] lasts I think that old, or old-fashioned, people should be very careful not to assume that young or 'emancipated' people are corrupt whenever they are (by the old standard) improper; and, in return, that young people should not call their elders prudes or puritans because they do not easily adopt the new standard. A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems."

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last all all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called 'being in love' usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending 'They lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,' then it says what probably never as nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense--love as distinct from 'being in love'--is not merely a feeling."

On loving people as yourself:
"That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him [your enemy]: wishing him good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.
I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them. But then, has oneself anything lovable about it? You love it simply because it is yourself...Perhaps it is easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves."

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did."

"But God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him is is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For his life is Himself" (This reminded me of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey from Doctor Who...)

"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 of 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."

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For other books I'm reading this summer, see: Summer Reading List 2012