Mere Christianity -- Book 4, Chap. 8

Is Christianity Hard or Easy?

In the previous chapter we considered the “putting on” of Christ like a garment, or “dressing-up” (playing pretend) as son of God in order to become a “real” son (cf. Gal. 3:26-27).

Now Lewis wants to make clear in this chapter that being clothed in Christ is not merely tangential to the Christian life, it is the Christian life.  This is what the New Testament describes as our being “in Christ” or union with Christ.  This is not simply a “part” of the Christian life or even exclusively only for “serious” Christians.  This is the Christian life.  There is nothing else.  “It is the whole of Christianity.” 

This understanding of Christianity differs greatly from what one normally hears regarding the essence of the Christian faith, especially when most of us became Christians.  We hear a lot about the lifestyle or behavior of the believer – how it is different from the world – and we begin to think that Christianity is about “morality” or “being good.”

From someone entering the Christian faith for the first time, we normally begin looking at Christianity from our own “ordinary self with its various desires and interests.”  We then admit that we should be more “moral,” or we should have a “good behavior” for the “good of society.”  But what does that do to our desires and interests?

We must put “strictures” on our behavior, which cuts in on our fulfillment of our desires.  We have to stop doing all the “fun stuff.”  We have to give up what we want to do because it is not “being good.”  Those things which are “wrong” must be stopped.  Those things which are “right” must be done.  But at the end of the day, we are hoping against hope itself that we will have enough of our desires left to have a “little” fun along the way.

It’s like the man who pays all of his taxes and hopes and prays that after Uncle Sam gets his that the man will still have something left over for him to live on and perhaps doing something fun. 

But why do we think of “being good” in this way?  Because we are thinking about ourselves.  We are at the center of our world and we are taking as our starting point, ourselves.

When we think of our lives this way, we usually end up with one of two results:  either we become frustrated and simply give up trying to be “good” or else we become miserable “do-gooders,” who are afraid that the mere possibility of cracking a smile might cause heaven to fall down upon us. 

Why?  Because we can be sure of one thing – if we try to live up to all the demands of the law upon us we will have nothing left over for ourselves.   

The more and more we attempt to obey the law (or our conscience) the more it demands of us.  As your desires are hampered, starved and worried at every turn all you get is angrier and angrier or more and more guilty (cf. Rom. 7; Gal. 3:15-24). 

In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, “live for others” but always in a discontented, grumbling way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself.  And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.   

But the way of Christ (the gospel) is vastly different.  It is both harder and easier at the same time.  How?

Christ demands of all his disciples to:

Give me All.  I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work:  I want You.  I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.  No half-measures are any good.  I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down.  I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out.  Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit.  I will give you a new self instead.  In fact, I will give you Myself:  my own will shall become yours. 

See Rom. 6-7; 2 Cor. 4:7-18; Gal. 2:15-21; Phil. 3:4-11.

Christ’s call of discipleship is both harder and easier than what we were doing earlier through our own attempts at self-righteousness.  On the one hand, Jesus says to us, “Take up your Cross – in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp” (Matt. 10:37-39; Luke 9:23-27; 14:25-33).  But on the other hand, Jesus tells us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).  Jesus clearly means both!  How can this be?

Well, consider just how things work out naturally in our lives.  Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who will work the hardest in the end.  The diligent student will work hard at first to learn his lesson in the beginning.  But the lazy student will simply memorize what he has to know to get by and have fun for the moment.  But when the test comes, the diligent student can relax and enjoy his day because he has learned the material.  But the lazy student has to rush around and cram for the test, filled with anxiety about the day ahead.  Laziness means more work in the long run. 

The same is true in the Christian life.  The most frightening thing in all of life is to hand yourself over to another, and yet, Jesus calls us to loose our life for Him.  We are to hand over our whole lives – body and soul – into His hands.  We are trusting our eternal destiny to Him.  He wants all of us.  And he will take nothing less.

But what do we do?  We want to submit to Christ’s Lordship in piecemeal.  We still live like our old selves.  We give him a little here and a little there and then decide to keep a little for ourselves here and a little there.  From time to time we have to shuffle things around and give a little more over there and take back a little over here.  It is the only way we can be happy. 

For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves”, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be “good.”  We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centered on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.

What we are doing is that we are trying to remain in control of our lives.  It is not safe to give up everything.  What if we do, and we don’t have anymore fun?  But what are we thinking about?  What is driving us?  What are we trying to do?

But Christ will have none of that.  We are like:

A field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat.  Cutting the grass may keep it short:  but I shall still produce grass and no wheat.  If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface.  I must be ploughed up and re-sown.

When we simply switch behavior around – a little more here, a little more there – we have simply become “white-washed tombs.”  The change may be quick and dramatic but there is death inside.  And the only thing that will fix that is resurrection – rebirth.

What Lewis describes next is what we normally call “preaching the gospel to ourselves every morning.”  Early in the morning we begin to slip back into our old way of thinking.  We begin to think of the Christian life as “being good.”  We then try to do everything we can to be good, only to come to the end of the day in utter frustration.  We said things that we shouldn’t have said, we responded in ways we shouldn’t have, we did things that we know are wrong. 

But instead, we need to wake up and remind ourselves of the gospel.  Our life is no longer our own.  It is “in Christ” and therefore it belongs to Him now.  We have been bought with a precious price.  We remember that our righteousness before God belongs to Christ and we share it through faith alone.  His life is our life.  His strength is our strength.  His power is our power.  What begins to happen?  As we begin to think on Him, we begin to see that power, strength, life that belongs to Christ begin to work within us, producing a whole new sort of life. 

It is the difference between paint , which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain that soaks right through. 

But this is not only the whole of Christianity, it is the whole of the church as well.  We must be careful to not let the church become distracted from her mission.  We must be careful to not steal what belongs to another.  It belongs to the state to “promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life.”

A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden – that is what the State is there for.

It is the job of the state to “help to increase and prolong and protect such moments.” 

In the same way, the church also has her duty.  It exists:

For nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs . . . God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.  It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him.

What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ – can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father – that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him.  It is the only thing we were made for.  And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right.  The bad dream will be over:  it will be morning.