I believe there’s season in book reading! I bought Mere Christianity by CS Lewis for about a year already but never been able to understand what I was reading (I cited his deep British English as the reason!). The last week however when I picked it up again, I was amazed to realize that I could understand his English and comprehend all of what it was said. Therefore I think there is really season in book reading. Our life circumstances shapes our perspective and hence deepen our understanding about certain things. Anyway, I’m jotting down some of the thoughts I gathered as I read his writing – partly to remind myself and partly to encourage the readers out there.
I started not at the first chapter but the 11th of Mere Christianity and it was just mind blowing. Here CS Lewis talks about Faith.
Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. 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 creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependant on the weather and the state of it digestions.
As me (I nearly wanted to write as a woman however that might just be a sweeping statement for there are woman who are level headed and clearly unlike the emotional me ;p), the power of emotions in my life is strong. I feel strongly about things hence it is easy for me to react strongly whether within or without. Nonetheless, I am also aware the potential damage emotions bring if not brought under rein. Frankly speaking, not just in the matter of faith; there are days when I woke up on the wrong side of the bed feeling horrid. However maturity dictates that you learn to handle those emotions and be pleasant to colleagues or family even when you don’t feel like it. Likewise, in my relationship with God. There are days when I am lazy, when I don’t feel like God loves me, when I feel like I am the biggest scum on this earth however faith reminds me that the truth is God loves me, God accepts me and God deserves to be glorified because He is simply beautiful. Moods may changes but God and the truth doesn’t. Thus, the need to teach my mood to get off when necessary.
…One must train the habit of Faith. The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.
I think I am a very lazy Christian. I have my moments when I am seized by my passionate moods and will go all out for God. However when times are busy and when my spirit is down in the dumps, these spiritual disciplines are very often the first to go. Therefore, it is no surprise that I often forget the truth and end up listening instead to those that are of the dark. CS Lewis reminds me of the importance of reading the Word, of going to church, of holding these truths before ones mind until it is so fully ingrained into our thoughts and behaviour. I need this else I drift.
Next, comes the most startling and yet beautiful truth of this chapter.
The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtue is that we fail. If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain-any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side-that has to be wiped out.
Then comes another discovery…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… It is like a small child going to his father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he 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 2 discoveries God can really get to work. It is after that that real life begins.
Precisely what God did: blown my self righteousness to bits and making me finally realize I can’t do it at all. It’s impossible. I failed to be a Christian. Only God can make one a Christian. Any attempt to do so with ones own strength is futile and bring about despair. That’s when grace comes into the picture. God enables us but it is still a gift. There is nothing I can boast except the saving grace and kindness of the Father.
