PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
MERE CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER THREE: The Shocking Alternative
Introduction
Before going any further, make sure you process the following: according to Lewis the fact that you have an awareness of right and wrong, of good and evil, is evidence God exists. Why? Because the awareness of right and good does not come from inside the box [of human existence]. People are neither right nor good; they are evil (we've all broken all 10 of the 10 Commandments). THEREFORE, the awareness of good and right MUST come from outside the box, from a superior being, God.
Tim McClure puts it this way: this awareness of good and the right does not come from our environment; yet somehow we have this awareness. It must come from a memory of a time when perfection, good, and right were true of people. The memory chip within us reminds us of that time in the Garden of Eden. As a result, since we can't manufacture this good, right, and perfection, it must come from a higher being, God.
In today's lesson we come up to the major issue Christianity has to address: the problem of evil and suffering. The issue is this: if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? The only explanation could be that God is either not all powerful or He is not all-loving. Either explanation would undermine Christianity which says that in Jesus we see that the all-powerful God is loving.
Don't think that this is not an easy issue. It has been used successfully against Christianity by philosophers since time memorial. For example, Voltaire and other theologians used the great earthquake at Lisbon as an argument against the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. On that church feast day when thousands were in church worshipping God, the earthquake and ensuing tsunami killed tens of thousands of people. This according to Voltaire was demonstrable proof that there was no God.
Paragraph 1: There is an evil being in the universe. Is this in accordance with God's will? Then is God all-powerful?
Paragraph 2: The answer is "Yes" and "No." How does the example of the mother and the daughter illustrate this?
Another example of this would be that it is my will that Nathan go to Baylor but it is also my will that Nathan make the choice of which college he goes to for himself. These 2 examples show that God does not HAVE to be evil if the world He created is evil.
Paragraph 3: Free will implies people can go good or go bad. (Calvin claims that you can be free even though you can't do wrong. Lewis claims that this doesn't compute; it's illogical.) What is God's ultimate will for us?
God is taking a serious risk with this set-up. What is that risk? (It's the same risk adults take when they plan to have children.)
We don't really have a problem with free will. We all want to make the choices we want to make. Let's be honest. Our problem with free will is that when we make negative choices, we have to suffer the consequences. We want freedom without consequences, especially negative consequences. It doesn't happen that way.
Paragraph 4: What risk was God willing to take whenever He created people with free will?
Because God HAS given us free will, what has resulted?
When we say that God has taken a risk in creating us, do we really believe that? Do we really believe that God risked anything in creating us with free wills?
We feel that we are the only ones at risk. God made us free; if we reject Him, then we go to hell. Where is the risk for God? Simple. He risked losing His Son. If at any time God's FREE Son Jesus had refused to obey His Father by not dying on the cross, our salvation is not the only thing that would have been lost forever. God would have lost His Son forever. The risk God took is far greater than the risk we take.
I guess the question becomes: "Do you really believe that Jesus had the choice to disobey His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane?" Now you see why Gethsemane is so important. The fate not only of our salvation but of the entire creation (physical and spiritual) is at stake. Moreover, the fate of the God-head is at stake. If Jesus disobeyed, not only are we going to lose our salvation, but the God-head is split right into 2 opposing groups. You would have had a rebellion which would have made Satan's rebellion look like a love feast. That is how important Gethsemane is. Praise God though that Jesus obeyed His Father. (Notice the progression of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.)
Some think that God was unwise in the way He set up this world. What is the problem with thinking God did something unwise in setting up this kind of world? The sake applies with rationality in general.
Paragraph 5: How do you respond to the objection: If God did such a great job in making us, then why are we so rotten?
It's like a pendulum. God is so good and wonderful that what He created is so good and wonderful. It is the ball of the pendulum swung all the way over to the right, as high as it can go. When we sin though, we think that we have slipped just a little. The truth is that when we sin, we have let the ball slip. What happens then? It's not surprising that one of the greatest nations of all time--Germany, the home of Bach, Beethoven, Brahams, the great theological institutions of the 19th century--was also the greatest nation of mass murder of all time.
You intelligent younger adults need to take this paragraph very seriously. Because you have an incredible potential for greatness, you also have an incredible potential for evil. Some people will putter along in life, never causing any great evil. You don't have that luxury. You will either turn out great or evil. BE VERY CAREFUL.
Paragraph 6: What is Lewis' explanation for the reason that Satan went wrong?
Satan has led us into his sin, by promising to make us gods. What has been the result of that sin?
Most of us have rose-colored glasses on whenever we think of human history. We think that everything is progressing along nicely and ultimately to our good. Human history is little more than evil and suffering. Milton Cunningham said that in the last 2500 years, there have been over 250,000 wars. That seems preposterous until you realize that we are only talking 10 wars per year. There's at least that many going on right now today: Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia and Chechnia, Indonesia, Dafur, Nigeria, India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, India and China over their boundaries, Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israel and Iran, Israel and Hezbollah, just to name a few.
Paragraph 7: Why is it that it is impossible to make it without God?
Paragraph 8: The key to understanding human history is that people have rejected the role God has assigned to them and have wanted to become God. What has happened in human history which shows that this is indeed what has happened?
DON'T GO ANY FURTHER TODAY. WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW AT LEAST TO DO THE REMAINING PARAGRAPHS. THEY ARE HUGE! LEWIS ACTUALLY WROTE AN ENTIRE BOOK ON THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS. YOU NEED TIME TO LET EVERYTHING YOU'VE BEEN LEARNING TO SINK IN.
Paragraph 9: What was God's 3-fold response to this? (This and the next paragraph are huge!)
Paragraph 10: What is the real shock though?
Why is it shocking that this happened among the Jews? Would it have been so shocking if the Hindus had said this had happened among them?(This is critical and brilliant insight here!) This would not have been shocking if it had "happened" among the Hindus because Hinduism believes that everybody is divine. On the other hand, the Jews were taught from birth that whatever man was, he was NOT divine, he was NOT God. Even today many Jews reject Jesus because they claim that God would never become man. Well, the first Christians were Jews who felt the same way other Jews felt. What changed their minds was the fact that they met a Man who not only claimed to be God but also proved it by rising from the dead. Unlike their fellow Jews, they didn't base their belief on what they thought God would or would not do, they based it on what God actually did.
Next, Lewis claims that the mythologies back up the claim that Jesus was God who died and rose again. At first Lewis had rejected Jesus for the very reason that the mythologies believed in dying and rising gods. He felt that Jesus was just another corn king. J.R.R. Tolkien though convinced him that there was a radical difference between the pagan mythologies and the Christian "myth" of the dying and rising god. The pagan myths had their gods dying and rising all the time in some mythical place and way. Christianity though claimed that its "myth" was an historical event witnessed by historical persons who not only claimed to have witnessed the event but also were willing to die for that claim.
Where would the pagan mythologies come up with the belief that God was a dying and rising kind of God? From nature itself. Each year nature dies and rises again, during fall (dying), winter (death), and spring (resurrection). Well, if the God who made nature injected into it death and resurrection, it was only natural to assume that God Himself was a dying and rising kind of God. This doesn't "prove" Christianity is true; however, once more it shows how "large" a philosophy Christianity is. It accounts for facts, evidences, occurrances, etc., other philosophies and systems don't account for.
Paragraph 11: You need to process Jesus' claims to forgive sins. Why is this claim so important?
The wild thing is that if Jesus made this claim and it were not true, then the stories and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels would seem silly and conceited.
Paragraph 12: The following analysis from Lewis is brilliant: According to Lewis are the stories and teachings of Jesus silly and conceited? Since they are neither silly nor deceitful, then what must be true about Jesus?
Paragraph 13: What is one claim some people make about Jesus that cannot be made with any degree of real credibility?
When it is all said and done, if Jesus claimed to be God and yet was not, and if God raised Him from the dead, then ultimately your problem is not with Jesus but with God. For if Jesus is only a man and God raised Him from the dead, then God affirmed the blasphemy of a raving megalomaniac. God then would be the ultimate deceiver.
Book Two
Chapter 3