# Mere Christianity  ## Metadata - Author: [[C. S. Lewis]] - Full Title: Mere Christianity - Category: #books ## Highlights - When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian. ([Location 210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=210)) - Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; ([Location 248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=248)) - First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=300)) - The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys. ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=318)) - there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts. ([Location 335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=335)) - The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=338)) - Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=356)) - It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. ([Location 572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=572)) - In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. ([Location 582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=582)) - It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. ([Location 650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=650)) - If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple. ([Location 655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=655)) - But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. ([Location 690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=690)) - Note: Similar to the Socdatic idea of ethics: Those who do bad do not know enough - I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=695)) - Note: Is it possible for a person to aim at nothing but angering the Gods? Or is even that aim really disguised cry for acknowledgement or attention? - To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. ([Location 707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=707)) - Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. ([Location 739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=739)) - God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. ([Location 763](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=763)) - I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. ([Location 791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=791)) - Note: Jesus was a great teacher, meaning he had great teachings, but they cannot stand independent from his divinity. - The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. ([Location 812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=812)) - A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it. ([Location 832](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=832)) - Note: Faith as a precondition for understanding God. - We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. ([Location 833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=833)) - Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=850)) - a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out. ([Location 921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=921)) - the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; ([Location 925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=925)) - Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1000)) - You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual. ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1019)) - Note: In Romans, righteousness precedes the establishment of the law. Man cannot attain righteousness by law, but rightneous men would uphold the law. - Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary. He told us to be not only ‘as harmless as doves’, but also ‘as wise as serpents’. He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1059)) - Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. ([Location 1073](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1073)) - Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. ([Location 1223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1223)) - Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1257)) - 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. ([Location 1277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1277)) - a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance. ([Location 1326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1326)) - Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult. ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1327)) - Every sane and civilised man must have some set of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others. ([Location 1341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1341)) - The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection. ([Location 1358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1358)) - If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. ([Location 1413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1413)) - Love in this second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. ([Location 1441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1441)) - Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1514)) - what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. ([Location 1568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1568)) - Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. ([Location 1595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1595)) - Pleasure in being praised is not Pride. ([Location 1641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1641)) - Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. ([Location 1741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1741)) - The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. ([Location 1767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=1767)) - that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life. ([Location 2020](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2020)) - in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. ([Location 2082](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2082)) - when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours’, remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist. ([Location 2322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2322)) - There is a paradox here. As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own. It is when Dick realises that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he offers it back to God—it is just then that it begins to be really his own. ([Location 2637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2637)) - The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose. ([Location 2639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2639)) - Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. ([Location 2790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2790)) - Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. ([Location 2795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002BD2UR0&location=2795))