PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
MERE CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER 8: The Great Sin
Number your paragraphs 1-13.
Paragraph 1:
What are some vices people will admit to even when they won't admit to this one great sin?
Do non-Christians show any mercy to the person who has this vice?
"There is no fault which maes a man more __________________, and no fault which we are more ______________________ of in ourselves."
Paragraph 2:
What is the opposite of this vice?
Lewis claims that pride is the essential vice, the utmost evil. How do unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all the other sins compare to pride?
"It was through Pride that the devil became the _______________: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete ____________-God state of mind."
Paragraph 3:
"The point is that each person's pride is in ________________ with every one else' pride."
Why do I get upset whenever somebody else is the hit of the party?
What is the essential element in pride?
Pride is not simply content to get something. What else must it have? List some examples.
Daniel Melnick, the great empressario of the New York stage, once remarked: "It is not enough for me to succeed; you must fail." That is the essence of pride.
If everybody were the same, there would be no pride. What is it that makes you proud?
Lewis goes on to show the difference between pride and the other vices with regards to competition. Two men may want the same girl. How does competition in the sexual impulse differ from competition in pride? In other words, how does the sexually-charged man differ from the proud man when it comes to women?
How does this same dynamic occur in the area of greed?
"Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of ______________."
Paragraph 4:
According to Lewis why does the man want to make 20,000 pounds instead of 10,000 pounds? Because he wants more pleasure?
Pride is "the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for ________________."
What is it that pride really enjoys?
What is it that makes a man feel really superior?
Why does the pretty young girl love to go around and spread misery among her admirers?
What is normally sexually true about that kind of young girl?
If I am a proud person, how do I view anybody else in the world richer and more powerful than myself?
Paragraph 5:
What may other vices actually do for people?
Yet what does pride always mean for those relationships?
Pride creates enmity not only between man and man but also between man and whom else?
Paragraph 6:
If you do not know God in this way, what else is true?
"As long as you are proud, you cannot ____________ God."
What is it about a proud man that keeps him from looking up to God?
Paragraph 7:
Whereas they may theoretically admit to themselves that they are nothing in the presence of this phantom God, what are they really imagining about themselves and this God?
These people "pay a ___________________ of imaginary humilty to Him and get out of it a __________________ worth of Pride."
Those kinds of people were actually operating in Jesus' day. Jesus said that He did not know them even though they were performing what wonderful religious works?
What test can we apply to ourselves to see whether or not we are proud?
Frederic March and the little old lady.
"The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either __________ about yourself altogether or see yourself as a ___________, ________________ object.'
Of the 2 which is the better?
Paragraph 8:
What is terrible about this worst of all the vices?
Why is this so?
Vices which operate through our animal nature are blatant and obvious. Pride is so bad because it not only comes direct from hell but is also "purely spiritual: consequently it is far more ______________ and deadly." This is the reason king Saul's sin was great than king David's.
What can pride do to the simpler vices?
What do teachers appeal to whenever they want a boy to behave decently?
How have many men overcome cowardice or lust or ill-temper?
"The Devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provide, all the time, he is setting up in you the _________________ of ___________--just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you _____________."
Book Three
Chapter 8 (part 1)
"There is one vice of which no man in the world is _________________; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in _______________ else and of which hardly any people, except _______________, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves."
What vice is Lewis referring to?
How can I find out how prideful I am?
Lewis elaborates on greed because materialism runs so rampant in modern society. Why will a greedy man want more money?
What are Christians right about?
In God what do you come up against?
What is true about people who appear to be religious yet are actually eaten up with pride?