Mere Christianity

I was re-reading CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity on my way back home today. I can say it again: this is my all-time favourite book. Lewis’ observation and thoughts are just priceless.

To quote him would just mean that I would have to post his entire book. But I can’t and won’t do that of course.

Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. (p.41)

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other. (p.76)

The Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on – including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning … The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become – and so on in a vicious circle for ever. Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. (p.109)

I must make a note here that I successfully got Killinger's book returned! I got it exchanged for Three Views of the Rapture, Pre-, Mid-, or Post-Tribulational? I wonder when will I have the moxie to handle it. Anytime over Killinger's though – I tried, I can't even get past the first few pages without cringing.

Maeghan