PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
MERE CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER 8: Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
Before starting, number your paragraphs 1-12
Paragraph 1:
"It is the ________________ of Christianity. Christianity offers ________________ else at all."
Paragraph 2:
How are we like an honest man who pays his taxes?
Paragraph 3:
If you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on thenatural self, will it have enough left over to live on?
What will your natural self do when it is being starved and hampered and worried at every turn?
In the end you will end up doing one of 2 things. What are they?
"And once you have become that you will be a far greater _________ to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly ____________."
Paragraph 4:
What does Christ want from us, our money and time and work?
What has Christ come to do to your natural self?
What is Christ going to give us instead?
"In fact, I will give you ____________: __________ own will shall become yours."
Paragraph 5:
What does Jesus say which indicates that Christianity is very easy?
Paragraph 6:
When you are mountain climbing, is the one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do the safest thing to do?
Paragraph 7:
Why?
What is the one thing Christ warned us we could not do?
How are we like the field which has only grass but wants to produce wheat?
Paragraph 8:
What are we to do at that moment?
Paragraph 9:
How long at first are we able to do this?
Eventually what will happen?
Which does Christianity try to be more like, paint or stain? Why is that your answer?
Although it is hard to be perfect, what is it impossible to do?
How are we like eggs?
Paragraph 10:
"The Church exists for nothing else but to ________________ _____________ into ___________, to make them little __________________."
"If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a _____________ of ______________."
Who was everything made for and what is going to happen to everything?
What does it mean "to be gathered into Christ"?
Paragraph 11:
Paragraph 12:
What is Jesus doing to do with that present, with Himself?
"There are strange exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be ______________________."
Book Four
Chapter 8
According to Lewis is putting on Christ (that is, becoming like Christ) one job among many that a Christian has to do?
Lewis next shows us the ordinary idea most Christians when they become Christians. They think some new morality has been imposed upon them, some new way to behave. Now this new behavior goes against our natural self. What are we hoping though when all the demands of this new morality have been met?
As long as we keep thinking this way, what 2 results are likely to follow?
Is the Christian way harder or easier?
What does Jesus say which indicates that Christianity is very hard?
How does the illustration of the 2 boys learning geometry show you that the laziest boy works hardest in the end?
As hard as it is to turn your whole self to Christ, it is still easier than what?
At what time of the day does the real problem of the Christian life come?
Lewis now goes back to his first point. Is the Church a lot of different objects: education, building, missions, holding services?
How does Lewis explain about things being gathered into man? (It's an illustration of the way things might be gathered into Christ.)
When we are being drawn into Christ, we are becoming part of what?