Mere Christianity

Another view that Lewis sees as simplistic is what he calls “Christianity-and-water,” which contends that “there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right—leaving out any discussion of sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption” (40). Lewis adds that this is not always an innocent viewpoint: it is often adopted by people who want to put forward a naïve, juvenile version of Christianity which they can subsequently attack. In Lewis’s view, there’s no reason to think religion would be particularly simple, given that reality is often complicated.

In fact, Lewis suggests that the problem Christianity attempts to solve is itself a complex one: namely, “[a] universe that contains much that is obviously bad and apparently meaningless, but contains creatures like ourselves who know that it is bad and meaningless” (42). According to Lewis, only two belief systems seriously attempt to grapple with this paradox. One is Christianity, which posits that a good world has gone wrong while retaining a semblance of what it should have been. The other view is Dualism, which believes that there are two powers—one good and one bad—behind everything, and that they are locked in a constant war with one another.

From here, Lewis sets out to explain what he sees as Dualism’s fatal flaw by pondering what we mean when we call one power good and the other bad. Having already demonstrated that morality is not simply a matter of subjective opinion, Lewis argues that “good” must mean something beyond personal preference. This, however, implies that there is actually a third force at work: a standard of goodness that must somehow exist above or beyond the dueling forces of good and evil—in other words, something like the monotheistic definition of God.

Lewis then highlights a further problem: if Dualism were true, badness would be an end in and of itself, independent of any good. Examining human behavior, however, Lewis concludes that people’s bad actions always stem from a desire for some “good” thing, such as pleasure, money, or power. By contrast, people sometimes do pursue goodness for its own sake—that is, because they feel obligated, not because they stand to gain anything. In other words, evil depends on good for its existence in a way that good does not, which implies that evil is not actually an equal and independent force. Here, Lewis points to the Christian notion of the Devil as a fallen angel, arguing that evil is not an original thing but a “parasite.”

Lewis admits, however, that Christianity is highly concerned with the presence of evil, and is thus much closer to Dualism than people think. However, where Dualism sees the universe as a war, Lewis suggests that Christianity sees this war as a “rebellion” (45) by something that was once good. Continuing the metaphor, Lewis argues that humanity lives in “enemy-occupied territory” (46) and can only be liberated through a kind of invasion. 

Discussing the presence of evil in the world, Lewis suggests that God created beings with free will, including the ability to go astray. In Lewis’s view, free will is a necessary element of any world “worth creating” (48); without it, humans would simply be machines doing God’s will. Furthermore, it’s pointless to take issue with this state of affairs, since God himself is the source of our reasoning power.

As to the question of what caused humanity to go wrong, Lewis responds that free will carries with it the risk of selfishness or of seeking to play God. Drawing loosely on the Book of Genesis, he further argues that Satan, having already fallen into a similar trap himself, encouraged humans to think that they could find happiness outside of God. This resulted in “money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy” (49).

The problem of evil isn’t a hopeless one, however. For one, we retain our God-given sense of right and wrong. God also inspired “good dreams”: many cultures have stories about a dying and reborn god whose actions confer some benefit on humanity. Lastly, He revealed himself and his moral code to a particular group of people—the Jews. 

These three things, according to Lewis, laid the groundwork for the arrival of Jesus among the Jews. Nevertheless, within the Jewish framework, Jesus‘s claims were shocking: that he could forgive humanity‘s sins (including those committed against not only God but other humans), that he would judge the world at the end of time, and that he was in fact God (something that would seem impossible, given the Jewish understanding of God as a being separate from the physical world). Interestingly, though, those who read accounts of Jesus’s words and actions in the Gospels don’t tend to find him silly or conceited but rather (as Jesus himself says) “humble and meek” (52).

Lewis stresses, however, that merely viewing Jesus as an enlightened and moral man is not a tenable position, given the nature of his claims about himself; if an ordinary human claimed to be God, we would either condemn him or see him as a madman. In other words, this man was either the Son of God, a lunatic, or evil.