# Mere Christianity * Author: [C. S. Lewis and CrossReach Publications](https://www.amazon.com/C-S-Lewis/e/B000APXBPG/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1) * ASIN: B00O3MM90A * ISBN: 1514285932 * Pages: 98 pages * Publication: April 20, 2017 * Publisher: Musaicum Books (April 20, 2017) * Reference: [[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O3MM90A]] * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A) --- He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. — location: [222](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=222) --- Dualism means the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war. — location: [682](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=682) --- God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form. — location: [816](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=816)He argued up to this point that dualism cant be right because it implies two forces one better than the other, evil one. But fpr something to be evil we have to compare it to a higher standard. In his view god is thiss higher stndard and the universe is undergoing a civvil war between the fallen angel and god. The beeginning off tthee book argues that we all feel a sense of moral rightness even if we dont act as we should. The exiatence of this is related to gods desires for our behaviour. --- Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority—because the scientists say so. — location: [926](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=926)Great quote on where our beliefs come from. --- In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. — location: [983](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=983)The rules forr agent behaviour for optimizing the robustbess and growth of a complex syatem. --- Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player's individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others. — location: [1014](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1014) --- 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: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. — location: [1021](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1021) --- It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. 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: [1040](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1040) --- It seems, then, that if we are to think about morality, we must think of all three departments: relations between man and man: things inside each man: and relations between man and the power that made him. — location: [1062](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1062) --- In fact, because Christ said we could only get into His world by being like children, many Christians have the idea that, provided you are "good," it does not matter being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. — location: [1081](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1081) --- 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. — location: [1085](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1085) --- Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. — location: [1100](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1100) --- But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. — location: [1105](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1105) --- A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as "intemperate" as someone who gets drunk every evening. — location: [1112](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1112) --- In the same way a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. — location: [1123](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1123) --- But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really matters. — location: [1129](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1129) --- It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. — location: [1170](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1170) --- There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: — location: [1185](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1185) --- Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. — location: [1212](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1212) --- The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. — location: [1261](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1261) --- We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. — location: [1271](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1271) --- One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. — location: [1290](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1290) --- God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them. — location: [1373](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1373) --- For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. — location: [1405](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1405) --- Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves— to wish that he were not bad. to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, jot feeling fond of him nor saving he is nice when he is not. — location: [1645](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1645) --- According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. — location: [1666](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1666) --- In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?" The point it that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. — location: [1669](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1669) --- We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. — location: [1676](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1676) --- If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy. — location: [1691](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1691) --- A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. — location: [1698](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1698)The difficcultt question is: howw to balance humility and self criticism against resolve and conviction? At what point does one become too proud or too passive? --- If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. — location: [1760](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1760)Most important chapter for me. --- This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith. — location: [1912](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1912) --- No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. — location: [1927](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=1927) --- That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens. — location: [2203](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2203)Dont like this. Horrible religions like christianoty were made to serve a purpose albeit different due to different climate and society. What males christianity more right? --- In other words I was assuming that Christ's life as God was in time, and that His life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a shorter period taken out of that time—just as my service in the army was a shorter period taken out of my total life. — location: [2259](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2259) --- He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call "good infection." — location: [2365](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2365) --- That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. — location: [2470](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2470) --- Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. — location: [2496](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2496)fake it til you make it. --- When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realises that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going—provided he does it for honesty's sake and not just to annoy his parents—the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before. — location: [2520](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2520) --- As long as we are thinking that way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. — location: [2588](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2588) --- — location: [2592](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2592)Interesting observation of normal morality. It has sOme truth to it but the recognition of it then allows us to grant something to the "self" in order not to be angry. --- It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him. I do not suppose any of us can understand how this will happen as regards the whole universe. We do not know what (if anything) lives in the parts of it that are millions of miles away from this Earth. Even on this Earth we do not know how it applies to things other than men. After all, that is what you would expect. We have been shown the plan only in so far as it concerns ourselves.     I sometimes like to imagine that I can just see how it might apply to other things. I think I can see how the higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be. I can even see a sense in which the dead things and plants are drawn into Man as he studies them and uses and appreciates them. And if there were intelligent creatures in other worlds they might do the same with their worlds. It might be that when intelligent creatures entered into Christ they would, in that way, bring all the other things in along with them. But I do not know: it is only a guess. — location: [2641](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2641)He acknowledges the existence of possible extra terrestrial life and that god is possibly above or beyomd that.the universe is drawn into chrisst at the end. Almost similar to the simulation hypothesis. --- Now, if I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists. — location: [2666](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2666)Cs lewis is an incredibly writer. Very easy to read, anticipates confusion and misunderstanding, and uses great analogoes and imagery to bring his point across. Learning a great deal about how to write well. --- One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realise your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. Now quite plainly, natural gifts carry with them a similar danger. If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. "Why drag God into it?" you may ask. — location: [2822](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2822) --- If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee. — location: [2840](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2840)The more you have the more you need to be aware, grounded and resist temptation because precisely because you dont think you have to. This goes for life in general. --- The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. — location: [2998](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00O3MM90A&location=2998)