C.S. Lewis and “Mere Christianity”: The Invasion

A “Simple” Religion

Have you ever met someone who complains that if Christianity really was true that it wouldn’t contain so many complicated, hard to understand doctrines? A basic and simple religion would be so much more preferable, they tend to say. Well, as Lewis gets closer to discussing what historical Christianity actually is, he takes a brief moment to discuss this kind of mentality that says, “Simple religion is better.”

I personally get a little agitated when I hear people sometimes say, “Oh, I’m a spiritual person, but I’m not religious.” Even well-intentioned Christians tend to sometimes say, “I’m into Jesus, not religion.” That’s all well and good, but the fact is, it is really a cop-out from doing the hard work of trying to love God with all your mind and trying to actually figure out the implications of the resurrection of Christ in the real world. That’s what the Christian religion does.

Lewis essentially says the same thing. Christianity is not simple. Yes, you need to have “the faith of a child,” in the sense that you have to be humble enough to put your trust in God, but that doesn’t mean you are to be content with child-like thinking and the vague, feel-good emotionalism that has characterized so much of Evangelical Christianity these days.

And the thing is, as Lewis correctly states, the very people who criticize Christianity often throw up a caricature of it that is suitable for a six-year old, and then say, “How can you be so stupid to believe that?” The best example I can think of is Bill Maher’s movie, Religilous, in which he simply goes around to the well-intentioned but uneducated Christians in the country, asks them complex questions, and then mocks “Christianity” for being stupid. He doesn’t go to the actual Biblical scholars or preeminent theologians; he goes to the “truck stop chapel” somewhere out in Kansas.

When it comes to people like that, Lewis issues a warning: “Be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your time.” He’s right. If you’ve ever gotten into a discussion with a disciple of Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, or any of the New Atheist movement, you’ll know exactly what Lewis means. It is fool’s errand and a true “throwing your pearls before swine.”

The main reason that Lewis was attracted to Christianity was precisely because it wasn’t simple. “Simple” often means “simplistic,” which often means “unrealistic.” The fact is, reality is complicated and often unpredictable. Christianity, Lewis says, can get complicated, and it certainly is something you could not have guessed—hence, it actually corresponds to reality a lot more that you might initially think.

What’s the Problem?

The main problem facing us is this: “How could a universe contain so much that is bad and meaningless, yet have creatures like us who know what ‘bad’ and ‘meaningless’ mean?” Lewis claims there are only two worldviews that really address those facts: Christianity and Dualism. Dualism basically states that there are two ultimate powers in the universe: one eternally “good,” and one eternally “bad”—and they essentially duke it out for eternity. We are simply caught up in the epic, cosmic, eternal battle.

But Lewis concludes that ultimately Dualism doesn’t hold up for one reason: on what basis are we calling one power “good” and the other “bad”? As soon as you do that, you are, in fact, comparing the two in light of some higher standard, and then that higher standard would be the real “God.” There simply can’t be an eternal “good power” and an equally eternal “bad power.”

Lewis then makes a fascinating observation about “badness.” He says, “Wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of something good in the wrong way.” He’s right: “Badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.” Why do men have affairs and cheat on their wives? Because they want to experience the thrill and ecstasy of romance and sex. Romance and sex are good things, but having an affair is the wrong way to go about achieving them. Things like pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, in and of themselves, good things. It is when they are perverted that we call them bad.

So Where Does Evil Ultimately Come From?

If evil is simply “goodness gone bad,” then the “Bad Power” must somehow be a perversion of the “Good Power.” But in order to do that, the “Bad Power” must have intelligence and will—both of which are good things. It is in the perversion of something that we see badness and evil born. That is why, as Lewis says, evil is ultimately a parasite, not an original thing. This realization helps us understand, not just evil in the world, but the origin of what Lewis calls the “Dark Power.”

Therefore, unlike Dualism, that views the “cosmic battle of good and evil” between two equal independent powers, Christianity views the “cosmic battle of good and evil” as a civil war: the “Dark Power” is the rebel, and we are living in the part of the universe he is occupying.

Remember, Lewis wrote this on the heels of WWII—this analogy, therefore, would be quite fitting: just as the Nazis occupied Europe, so the “Dark Power” is occupying the world. And just as the Allies gained that initial foothold at Normandy, all the while working a great campaign of sabotage to undermine the Nazis, so is God doing the same thing in the world. The resurrection of Christ was, so to speak, God’s “D-Day,” where the rightful king landed to begin to reclaim his kingdom—but the war wasn’t over after D-Day. There was still more battles to be fought, and a lot more sabotage to inflict on the enemy.

That, says Lewis, is what church is for. We are still living in “enemy-occupied territory,” but when we go to church, we are taking part in God’s great plan to take down the enemy. And that is why Satan often plays on our “conceit, laziness, and intellectual snobbery” to prevent us from going.

Conclusion

The only thing I would add to Lewis’ analogy of “God’s great invasion,” is this. We must remember that just as the Kingdom of God is engaging is trying to sabotage Satan’s strongholds in this world, we would be foolish not to think that Satan is trying to do the exact same thing. To continue with the WWII analogy, we must remember that Hitler actively took over churches in Germany at the time. Men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer were right to reject Hitler’s churches.

In the same way, I think many churches have fallen prey to much of the “spirit of the age,” and have turned Christianity into something Christ never intended, whether it is the “prosperity gospel” of Robert Tilton, or any other “gospel” that bears very little resemblance to the Jesus of the Bible.

 In any case, understanding evil as a parasite, as a perversion of goodness, is the key to being able to start contemplating the nature of evil in the world.