Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 8Episode 8: Book 3, Social Morality, Morality & PsychoAnalysis (Ch. 3 & 4)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 3: Christian BehaviourChapter 3. Social Morality The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right. Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk. The…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 10Episode 10: Book 3, Christian Marriage (Ch. 6)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 3: Christian BehaviourChapter 6. Christian Marriage The last chapter was mainly negative. I discussed what was wrong with the sexual impulse in man, but said very little about its right working-in other words, about Christian marriage. There are two reasons why I do not particularly want to deal with marriage. The first is that the Christian doctrines on this subject are extremely unpopular. The second is that I have never been married myself, and, therefore, can speak only at second hand. But in spite of that, I feel I can hardly leave the subject out in an account of Christian morals. The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism-for that is what the words “one flesh” would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 9Episode 9: Book 3, Sexual Morality (Ch. 5)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 3: Christian BehaviourChapter 5. Sexual Morality We must now consider Christian morality as regards sex, what Christians call the virtue of chastity. The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of “modesty” (in one sense of that word); i.e. propriety, or decency. The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle. Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally “modest,” proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 7Episode 7: Book 3: Christian Behaviour; The 3 Parts of Morality, The Cardinal Virtues (ch. 1 & 2)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 3: Christian BehaviourChapter 1. The Three Parts Of Morality There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was “The sort of person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.” And I am afraid that is the sort of idea that the word Morality raises in a good many people’s minds: something that interferes, something that stops you having a good time. In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations. When you are being taught how to use any machine, the instructor…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 6Episode 6: Book 2: The Practical Conclusion(ch. 5)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 2: What Christian’s Believe.Chapter 5. The Practical Conclusion The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man. Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest for death and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy, creatures. This means something much more than our trying to follow His teaching. People often ask when the next step in evolution-the step to something beyond man-will happen. But on the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us. How is this to be done? Now, please remember how we acquired the old, ordinary kind of life. We derived it from others,…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 5Episode 5: Book 2: The Shocking Alternative & The Perfect Penitant (Chapters 3 & 4)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 2: What Christian’s Believe.Chapter 3. The Shocking Alternative Christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the Prince of this World. And, of course, that raises problems. Is this state of affairs in accordance with God’s will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power? But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, “I’m not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.” Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 4Episode 4: Book 2: The Rival Conceptions of God, The Invasion(ch. 1 & 2)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 2: What Christian’s BelieveChapter 1. The Rival Conceptions Of God I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 3Episode 3: Book 1: What Lies Behind the Law, We Have Cause To Be Uneasy (ch. 4 & 5)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 1 – The Law of Human Nature;Chapter 4. What Lies Behind the Law Let us sum up what we have reached so far. In the case of stones and trees and things of that sort, what we call the Laws of Nature may not be anything except a way of speaking. When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a certain way. The so-called laws may not be anything real, anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of Man, we saw that this will not do. The Law of Human Nature, or of Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond the actual facts of human behaviour. In this case, besides the actual facts, you have something else, a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey. I now want to consider what this tells us about the universe…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 2Episode 2: Book 1: Some Objections, The Reality of the Law(ch. 2 & 3)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere ChristianityBook 1 – The Law of Human Nature;Chapter 2. Some Objections If they are the foundation, I had better stop to make that foundation firm before I go on. Some of the letters I have had show, that a good many people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature, or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is. For example, some people wrote to me saying, “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn’t it been developed just like all our other instincts?” Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct, by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help…

Mere Christianity Podcast: Part 1Episode 1: Preface & Book 1, The Law of Human Nature (chapter 1)Posted by C.S. Lewis; Narrated by Liam;Mere Christianity A Christian apologetical book by the British author C. S. Lewis. It was adapted from a series of BBC radio talks made between 1941 and 1944, originally published as three separate volumes: Broadcast Talks (1942), Christian Behaviour (1943), and Beyond Personality (1944). The book consists of four parts: the first presents Lewis’s arguments for the existence of God; the second contains his defence of Christian theology, including his notable “Liar, lunatic, or Lord” trilemma; the third has him exploring Christian ethics, among which are cardinal and theological virtues; in the final, he writes on the Christian conception of God. By Clives Stapleton Lewis, Professor at Cambridge University, England.Preface The contents of this book were first given on the air, and then published in three separate parts as The Case for Christianity (1943), Christian Behaviour…