Mere Christianity -- Book 4, Chap. 7

Let’s Pretend

In order to begin pretending, Lewis begins by placing two stories before you:  Beauty and the Beast, about a girl who married a beast and she kissed him as if he were a real man and then suddenly he actually turned into a man.  The second story is about a man whose face was so ugly that he had to wear a mask for many years.  When he finally took it off he found that his face had actually grown into the mask and he was now very beautiful.  What had begun as a disguise had now become a reality.

Each of these stories describe Lewis’ view of salvation as “transformation,” which he talks about in this lesson.  Once we are “injected” with the “good infection” of the Zoe life or Christ life we slowly begin to transform into a new creature, until we are finally shaped into the image of Christ.  At the beginning we are ugly and disfigured because of sin, but through Christ’s life we are transformed into something beautiful.

NB:  While our view of salvation is different – we believe that salvation is already fully given to us at the moment of faith (i.e. justification) where we are declared fully righteous on account of Christ, it is true that now through faith-union with Christ we are being “transformed” into the image of Christ (i.e. sanctification).  We are “becoming” in reality, what we “already are” in Christ.

Up to this point, Lewis has been talking about what God is and what He has done for us – but now, Lewis wants to turn to ask, “What difference does all this make to our practical life?”

As an example of what God is now doing in you (transformation) let us look at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer:  Our Father.

What do those words now mean to us who are in Christ? 

That you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God.  To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ.  If you like, you are pretending.   

In a way, the Christian life is like a child who plays “dress-up” or the game of “pretend.”  As Christian’s you begin to think of yourself as being like Christ.  But soon you begin to realize that you are not like the true Son of God, whose “interests are at one with those of the Father.  Instead:

You are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death.  So, that, in a way, this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek.  But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it.  Why?

Even on the human level, there are two kinds of pretending:  a bad kind and a good kind.  The bad kind is where the pretence is present but the reality is not.  You actually think you are (or you present yourself to others as) someone else when you really aren’t – we call this a “hypocrite.”  The good kind is where the pretence eventually becomes the reality.  For instance, when you are not feeling friendly toward someone and so you begin to act in a friendly way and behave “as if you were a nicer person than you actually are.”  And before you know it, you begin to actually feel friendly toward them than you were.  “Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”

Now, when you begin to pretend “dressing up as Christ” you soon begin to realize how far you truly are from the reality.  You will begin to see things that shouldn’t be present in your life if you really were the Son of God – then stop doing them.  Or, you will begin to see things that you should be doing – go and do them. 

You see what is happening.  The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is man (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretence into a reality.

This is what I have called in the past as “sanctification by meditation.”  As you think on Christ, you begin to find that you are becoming more and more like Him.

Notice what you are doing – you aren’t simply sitting around thinking about right and wrong, you are “trying to catch the good infection from a Person.  This is a lot like what happens to children or teens who hang around their peers.  They are so easily impressionable that they very quickly begin to act and take on the manners of their peers.  In the same way, the more we “hang out” with Christ (meditating on His Word) we begin to be like our Savior.

How is this possible?  “The real Son of God is at your side” (through the agency of the Holy Spirit, we might add).  He is working to conform/transform you into the same kind of person as Himself.

He is beginning, so to speak, to “inject” His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man.  The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.   

But if we were really honest, most of us would admit that there are many times in our lives that we don’t truly sense that Christ is by our side, helping us to become what He is.  Rather, we see and feel other human beings help us but not the invisible Christ.  But that is to miss what He does in His sovereignty:  if there is “no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings.”

And Christ works through all sorts of things to help us along:  not only our Christian life, but also through Nature, our own bodies, through books, and even through what may seem to be anti-Christian.  But above all, Christ works on us through each other.

This is why the local church is so crucial to our Christian lives.  We cannot be sanctified very far as individuals.  We need each other – as iron sharpens iron.  Other Christians are “carriers” of Christ and the “good infection” is many times carried to us from others (maybe in by non-Christians – common grace). 

That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important.  You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.

But we need to quickly realize that – the good – that is being passed on to us is not ultimately human – the real Giver is Christ.  We do not ultimately rely upon other human beings.  The best Christian will make mistakes – all of them die.  Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being. 

Therefore, Christianity is NOT about moralism – simply reading what Christ said and then putting it into practice.  No!  There is a real Person, Christ, (the Holy Spirit) who is with you right now doing things in you to transform you into Christ. 

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.

At this point we need to add a quick note regarding the Word and sacraments.  God uses means to shape us into the image of Christ.  The Gospel of Christ preached and the sacraments rightly administered – through these means we are given the life of Christ through faith to shape us into the image of Christ.

When we begin to truly grasp what God is doing in us through Christ by His Spirit, we begin to realize two absolutely crucial lessons about the Christian life:

1.  “We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness.”  We begin to realize that we don’t simply do bad things – we are bad to the core of our being.  We don’t simply become alarmed at what we do but what we are.

Lewis provides a wonderful example:  Lewis says that when he confesses his sins at the end of the day he finds that 9 out of 10 times his most habitual sin is a lack of charity towards others.  However, he finds that he has many excuses for why he has mistreated others around him.  Maybe it was because he was provoked by others and suddenly he is caught off guard and snaps back.  Had he had time to stop and collect himself, he wouldn’t have responded in such a sinful way.

But Lewis adds:

On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is?  Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?

If there are rats in the basement (or cockroaches in the kitchen) you are most likely to see them when you come on them suddenly.  But the suddenness doesn’t create the rats – it only exposes what is already there.

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.

But how do you change your actual temperament or disposition of your very soul?  We might be able to control our behavior, but how do we change our heart?  And if what is really important is not simply our behavior but the bent of our hearts, then the really necessary change must be “heart-change,” or a “heart transplant” – a “change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about.”

And this applies to our good works as well.  We cannot change the motives for why we do good things either.  We might do good things with the wrong motives – to show off, fear of opinions of others, etc. 

After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.

Cf. Lewis discussion of true repentance in Book 2, Chap. 4 “The Perfect Pentitent,” where we don’t simply need “improvement” -- we need death and a whole new life.

2.  This now brings us to the second crucial lesson about the Christian life:  it is God who does everything – here Lewis sounds very much like a Calvinist!  But then he adds, “We, at most, allow it to be done to us.” – Oh, well!

How does God do this?  Well, we could say that God is truly the one who is pretending about us.  He looks at a “self-centered, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal” and 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.

This is certainly how we understand our justification as well.  God looks at us as if we were His Son and accepts us and rewards us with eternal life because of His work alone.  Now, He continues to look at us as if we were His Son and His Son is at work in us by the agency of His Spirit and through His Word and sacraments to conform us into the image of Christ.  We are becoming what we already are in Christ.