C.S. Lewis and “Mere Christianity”: Rival Conceptions of God

We now come to “Book Two” of Mere Christianity. If you remember, “Book One” simply made the case that if there is a “Something/Someone” behind the natural universe, it certainly seems that he is interested in morality, for our moral sense of right and wrong is something unique to human beings. And if that is the case, we human beings are potentially screwed, to put it bluntly, because none of us are really good at keeping the Moral Law.

Given that potential conundrum, Lewis comes to “Book Two”—What Christians believe about that “Something/Someone” behind the universe. Chapter 1 is entitled “Rival Conceptions of God.” As the title suggests, Lewis isn’t even quite talking about Christianity yet—he’s just outlining the major ways people in the world generally conceive of that “Something/Someone.”

Christianity and Other Religions

His first point might be a bit shocking at first, but when you think about it, is entirely true: if you are a Christian, you don’t have to reject all other religions out of hand as being totally false. Even the weirdest one might have a grain of truth to it that you can acknowledge. I found this to be true when I was in college, when I read up on Eastern Religions. I read The Upanishads, The Bhagavad-Gita, and The Tao Te-Ching, and found them fascinating. Of course there was plenty in them that I did not believe to be true, but still, there was plenty in them that was true. As a Christian, I could acknowledge that there is some truth in other religions.

Of course, on the flip side of that, Lewis points out that if you are an atheist, you are have to believe that all religions, at their root, are completely nonsensical and delusional. In that sense, Lewis says, Christianity is the “more liberal view” of world religions. That being said, of course, being a Christian does mean that where other religions differ from Christianity, you believe that Christianity is right and they are wrong. As Lewis states, “As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.” –Nice analogy, if you ask me.

Pantheism vs. Monotheism

Lewis then points out that the first major division in humanity is that of those who believe in some sort of God/gods and those who don’t. On that point, Christianity lines up with the majority of humanity. The second division is this: of those who believe in some sort of God/gods, some religions teach that He is ultimately beyond good and evil, while others teach that He is definitely good, and is thus opposed to evil.

The first group is more Pantheistic, and is more characteristic of Eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. They look at things like cancer or slums and say, “If you could only see them from the divine point of view, you’d see that they are part of the universe, and the universe is god, therefore, even cancer, poverty, and slums are god.”

The other view, that God is good, and is opposed to evil, is characteristic of religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When confronted with the pantheistic understanding of cancer and slums, Lewis states, “The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. Christianity believes that there are some things that are really wrong, and that God opposes them.

The Problem of Evil

That leads to the question, “If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong?” Fair question. In fact, Lewis states that for the longest time, that question was what kept him from being a Christian. In fact, many people aren’t Christians for the same reason—they cannot conceive how a good God could allow evil and suffering.

Yet what “woke Lewis up,” so to speak was his realization, “How did I get this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he had some idea of a straight line.” And so, Lewis was forced to admit that his very concept of “justice,” and his revulsion of the “injustice” in the world had to come from somewhere. The “problem of evil,” therefore, is a problem unique to religions like Christianity, not to Eastern religions or to atheism, for you can’t have a “problem of evil” unless you have some sort of idea of a real God who is good.

Stemming from this realization, Lewis ends the chapter by making an incredibly astute observation: by trying to prove that God didn’t exist and that the whole world was senseless was self-refuting, for in order to make the argument that the world was senseless, “I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense.” Get it? If the world was senseless, then you, being part of that senseless world, would have no concept of “sense” to begin with. Touché, Mr. Lewis!

If that still is a bit foggy, let me end with Lewis’ analogy: “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

Conclusion

Again, Lewis makes a very convincing point in regards to not only our sense of good and evil, but also to our very sense of meaning. I remember when I first read Mere Christianity, this chapter, especially that last quote, was incredibly convincing. If the world is meaningless, then I am part of the meaningless world; and if I am part of the meaningless world, and the world is meaningless, then how could I be outraged at evil? There would be no such thing as “evil.” How could I make arguments for anything—who should be president? Why Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time? Why the gassing of six million Jews was morally wrong?

Our very existence of human beings, what we do every day, every time we make any kind of meaningful argument whatsoever—it screams that there is such a thing as morality, there is such a thing as meaning. Where does that come from if the whole world is meaningless? Something has to give—I think it is obvious that the argument that the world is meaningless can’t hold up. There must be “something more” than blind, natural processes alone.