Mere Christianity -- Chap. 5

"We Have Cause to be Uneasy"

Lewis has something to say to those disappointed by his last answer that there is a "Something" or "Somebody" behind moral law.  They believe that Lewis is just giving an answer that is "religious jaw" -- religious talk -- that has been tried and didn't work.  So why go back to what doesn't work?

3 Things he wants to say:

1.  If a clock is wrong, you have to turn it back to set it right.  If you are traveling down the wrong road, there is nothing "progressive" about just keeping on when you know you are on the wrong road.  You need to turn back and get on the right road.

2.  What do we know about this "Something" or "Somebody," which is not the Christian God at this point?

a.  We can look at the universe he has made and see that he is both a great artist and also quite merciless and no friend to man.

b.  He has put the moral law into us, therefore he is intensely interested in right behavior.

From the moral law, this "something" must be a heavy taskmaster that demands that we do the right thing no matter how painful, dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

There is nothing in the moral law that tells us that this "something" will make allowances, any more than the multiplication table will make allowances when we get the wrong answer (pure impersonal mind).

If he is "good" he must require absolute goodness or else he is not good.  But since we aren't good then he must hate us because we do not do good (impersonal absolute goodness).

This is the terrible fix that we are in.

He is what we need most and what we want others to do to us (good) and at the same time the thing we must hide from most because we don't do the good ourselves.

3.  Christianity doesn't make sense until you understand all of this about God.  It is only when you realize that God is not "soft" or "tame" and therefore you are in a terrible condition that Christianity begins to talk and you are ready to hear.  Christianity does not begin in comfort but to bring you to despair.  Only then are your ready to understand the comfort of Christianity.