Mere Christianity is first C.S. Lewis book I have ever read, and I really enjoyed it. Lewis’s ability to communicate and simplify is incredible. Below are some quotes I found particularly impactful.
On Morality and Psychoanalysis
“But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.” -pg 91
Lewis contrasts the problem with one’s “raw material” and the problem of what one does with their raw material. He says that morality is concerned with the free choices we make with the raw material we are given. I agree to a point…but I think the discussion lacks an acknowledgement of the deficiencies of our fallen nature prior to regeneration. We need regeneration and faith before we can do anything with our raw material that pleases God.
On Christian Marriage:
“But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in the second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.” pg 109
From the first chapter called “Faith”
“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.” pg 143
From the second chapter called “Faith”
“And as long as a man is thinking of God as an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain—as long s he is thinking of claims and counter—claims between himself and God—he is not yet in the right relation to Him. He is misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he cannot get into the right relation until he has discover the fact of our bankruptcy….Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is every going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I can’t.’” pg 145-146
“If you like to put it that way, Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer…And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying…if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him…Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to actin a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” pg 148
In one sense Christ offers something for nothing. He purchases with His blood what already rightfully belongs to Him. However, in another way, Christ offers Himself for everything we have. I do not think Christ’s work in His elect will be complete until every motive, every intention, and every thought is captive to Christ, and the elect love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and mind.
Discussing faith without works, “The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your ‘faith’ in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all—not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him” pg 148
From the chapter Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
“But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands [to do good] have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with it sown life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right,, but does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on.” pg 196
“Christ says ‘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…I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall be come yours.’” pg 196
C.S. Lewis is not Calvinist, and he emphasizes the importance of free choice to accept or reject Christ as essential, but I do find it interesting when says that Christ’s will shall become ours.
From the chapter Counting the Cost
“As we say ‘I never expected to be a saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap.’ And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble. This is the fatal mistake. Of course we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when he made us.” pg 203
“On the one hand we must never imagine that our own unaided efforts can be relied on to carry us even through the next twenty-four hours as ‘decent’ people. If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end.” pg 204