Mere Christianity is the best-known
apologetic work by Anglo-Irish author Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963). It was based on a series of radio lectures
Lewis did for the British Broadcasting Company during World War II. Lewis was the ideal choice for the program on
religion. He had spent time as an
atheist, he was a layman, and he was an academic. Seeking to provide a broad defense of the
Christian faith, Lewis consulted clergymen from several denominations in
preparing his manuscript.[1] Doing so allowed him to make as broad an
appeal as possible. He was trying to
explain what beliefs united all Christians to a hostile or curious world. He was searching for the basic tenets of the
faith—mere Christianity.
Lewis
begins by exploring the moral law of the universe. The existence of good and evil are proven by
ubiquity; there really isn’t anyone in creation who denies right and
wrong. He calls this a natural law. Natural law is different from the laws of
nature in science; those laws are universally followed. The moral law, however, is simply the law of
how men ought to behave, not
necessarily how they do behave. In other
words, moral law is the only thing in nature which can’t be established by
naked observation. It’s the only law
which can be broken. “The Moral Law, or
Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way
as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects
behave.”[2]
I
believe that this is the strongest basis upon which to start talking about
God. Human indignation about the actions
of others makes no sense in any other framework. We are reviled by evil. We behold what we perceive to be
injustice—especially injustice against ourselves—and we react with
outrage. There is no reason why we
should act as if something so metaphysical as justice existed unless there
really was something behind it.
“Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we
should never have found out that it has no meaning.”[3]
I
was left with more nuanced thoughts in book two chapter 3, “The Shocking
Alternative.” Here Lewis gives the free
will defense of evil. If God is all-good
and all-powerful, how can evil exist?
Lewis replies by saying that man has been given free will. God created beings with the ability to accept
or to reject evil. By creating beings
with the ability to choose freely, he also created the possibility of
evil. Love is not truly love, Lewis
says, if it is forced.[4] This defense is difficult to fit into
traditional Reformed thinking. After
all, isn’t the real answer to the problem of evil God’s sovereign rule over the
earth? Isn’t evil a thing he uses,
without being guilty of it, to bring about his plan? A lost friend I have once said that the free
will defense didn’t offer much solace to him.
He wasn’t sure that free will was worth the agony and abundance of
suffering in the world. Maybe it would
be better if people didn’t have freedom or love at all. For Lewis, God’s telling us free will is
worth it means it must be.[5] That isn’t true for my friend.
I
think the free will defense is adequate to explain the origins of evil. I am not sure it explains the persistence of
evil. After all, sin had entered the
world. Evil existed. God could have send Christ at the moment he
sent Adam and Eve out of the garden and accomplished the salvation of humanity
at that moment. Unlike some Reformed
thinkers, I am uncomfortable dwelling too frequently or deeply on God’s
purposes in evil. I would rather explain
evil—especially to those in the midst of suffering—as something which had to
exist because Adam had free will and because God intended to reveal himself as
redeemer. Because of the Fall, we know
God as redeemer; this greater knowledge of God is somehow worth it. Like Elihu in Job, man may never know why God
allows evil to persist. What we do know
is that he made sin possible, can’t be held guilty of committing it, and will
triumph over it.
Book
three chapter 5, “Sexual Morality”, makes an interesting point in relation to
sexual ethics. Lewis notes that many
sexual liberationists believe that the sexual drive is a natural appetite just
like hunger, thirst, or fatigue. Lewis
disagrees, claiming that the sexual appetite goes beyond its intended purpose. He believes that this is good evidence for
the continuing effects of the Fall. He
uses another humorous example: “Now suppose you come to a country where you
could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and
then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the
lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you
not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for
food?”[6] Why then, Lewis asks, do we not think
something quite wrong with our sexuality?
And would not a foreign observer think something was wrong with our view
of sexuality?
Most
people in Lewis’s day (and ours) thought that this was a reaction to sexual
starvation in the country. That
hypothesis would be bolstered if people really were sexually repressed. In reality, we see more sexuality than ever
in culture, society, and individual lives.
Lewis is right that sexuality is not like our other appetites, just as
the Bible distinguishes sexual sin as distinct from others.[7] Something really is different about sex. When taken out of its context, it perverts
and distorts all things to its consumption.
Like greed it uses people to satisfy a desire. Unlike greed, lust is internal rather than
external and causes one to sin against his own body.
