mere christianity...

Good infection

In Christianity God is not a static thing - nor even a person - but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person.

The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him.

We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of Life He has - by what I call 'good infection'. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

"Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Mt 5:48

I find that good many people have been bothered about that. Some people seem to think this means "Unless you are perfect, I will not help you." And as we cannot be perfect, then, our position is hopeless. But I think he meant "The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less."

That is why He warned people to 'count the cost' before becoming Christians. "Make no mistake," He says, "if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you
choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconcievable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, or let you rest, until you are literally perfect - until My Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with Me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less."

And yet, this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less that absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. God is hard to satisfy, but easy to please.

Nice people or new men?

Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are simply contented with being a nice person, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee.

But if you are a poor creature - poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels - saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual pervesion - nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends - do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last).

C. S. Lewis: Mere Christianity
(First published in Great Britain 1952)