2005-02-21 - 12:24 p.m.
Anyone who knows me well knows that not only do I not subscribe to any organized religion, but that I rather find them humorous. To state without any proof that what one believes is the absolute truth, thereby labelling as heretics all those around you who believe in their truths with just as much fervor (and just as little proof) is to me a display not of incredible faith but of narrow-minded arrogance. Then again, my lack of faith is just as brazen a statement. So for years now, I have lived with a mostly unspoken agreement amongst my religious friends - let's keep our vigorously unproven truths to ourselves and accept that we will live eternity in each other's equally unique hells. Mine, as it turns out, looks a lot like the inside of a coffin while their's inevitably seems to involve some sort of heat-related torture, so I always felt they were getting the better end of the bargain. Then again, I get to enjoy all the sexual immorality I want without having to feel guilty while playing "find your pants before sunrise", so I suppose it all evens out.
All this in mind, it should not have surprised me to receive three different copies of C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" from three separate friends. "If anything will convert you to Christianity, this will" they told me. Knowing it would do me no good to read the book looking for holes and errors, I decided to wait until I felt I could read it with an open mind. After all, there was a time when I too was a Pius Christian - surely, there must be enough of that left in me to read two hundred pages without a pre-determined conclusion. A few months later, ready to be convinced of anything, I started reading.
The good news - I now understand that much better what my Christian friends believe and why they believe it. The bad news - buy me some SPF 1000, I'm still going to hell. While I can only speak to one side of this issue, I have a feeling Christians who read this book will regard it as absolute, unrefutable proof while non-Christians will think of it as eloquently written, well intended nonsense. The book has a fundamental flaw - it goes about trying to prove a religion, all the while missing religion's most basic characteristic. A religion is not something which comes by reason or logic - it comes by faith. Lewis does a hell of a job trying to prove his faith but in the end, winds up preaching to the choir. Funny thing - I was in the choir, and we were the unholiest bunch in our entire school.
In attempting to prove the existence of a god, Lewis claims there is an innate human morality - a set of rights and wrongs. Though we don't generally follow these morals, we know ultimately what is right and wrong, without having to be taught it. To Lewis, this is proof there is a god. The historian quickly points out societies which possessed a set of morals atrocious by today's standards. With few exceptions, the Roman citizens saw nothing wrong with watching two men fight to the death for sport. The better part of the Southern United States saw nothing wrong with enslaving an entire race of people. According to Lewis, this behavior was a product of that society's upbringing, an upbringing which had masked this god-given sense of morals. This begs the questions, which pure subjects was Lewis using to reach this conclusion? He himself was no less influenced by the society around him than the ancient Roman's or the Southern slave-owners - does he not consider that one hundred years from that date, that future's society would condemn many of his society's 'morally sound' actions?
However, though I disagree with his 'proof' for a god's existence, I do not disagree with the conclusion. Personally, I think the many holes in science can be used as proof of a god much better than a supposed innate set or morals (ironic since being a pantheist myself, I make no distinction between nature and god - a matter for another discussion altogether), but that is neither here nor there. The argument which strikes me as utterly laughable is his 'proof' that Jesus Christ was divine and therefore, Christianity is the ultimate truth. Lewis argues that were Christ not actually divine, he could be described only as a lunatic, and a lunatic could never garner a following such as that of Christ. "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher...This man either was just what He said or else a lunatic...however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." This argument has an obvious weakness in that history is full of lunatics who have garnered followings much larger than the one Christ had during his lifetime (ironic that Lewis would miss this point considering this book was written a mere seven years after the end of the second World War). Furthermore, Lewis neither addresses nor attempts to explain the divine prophets of the world's other religions who accomplished the same feat as Christ with different audiences.
The great British author Jonathan Swift once said "you cannot reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into." Perhaps it would stand to reason that you cannot reason a man into a position in which reason plays no part. Yet in C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity', we see one great British author ignoring the advice of another and ultimately failing. It is a well written, captivating and at times humorous book, but if we measure his success against his statement "If I can bring anyone into that hall [Christianity] I shall have done what I attempted," I'm afraid he falls short of the mark with all but those who already believed what he preaches without being fully aware of their own faith.
