Insufficient Christianity: 9.2

Here is part II of my critique of chapter 9 of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. For those of you out of the loop, we’ve been going through Mere Christianity argument by argument and deconstructing them; partly because no one else has done this, and partly because I need a hobby and this is it.

So far, Lewis has led us down a rabbit hole of non-sequiturs and profound-sounding but inapplicable metaphors. At this point he is running with scissors, and those scissors are his religion.

He continues on by defining “repentance” using the Lewis Dictionary of Christianity (not a real book) as: surrendering to his god by realizing just how wrong and worthless you are so that you may start your life over again because that is the only way to fix all the fucking up you’ve done. Apparently this involves unlearning self-will. It sounds quite a bit like an Alcoholic’s Anonymous 12-step program to me. Apparently though, there is a catch. Once you read this catch, you’ll see why it is a catch.

“And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person--and he would not need it.

Here is why Lewis thinks god cannot just do the repenting himself: “Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all--to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has; this thing, in His own nature, He has not."

So who might this perfect person be, who can actually repent perfectly? Obviously it can’t be god, because god doesn’t suffer and die. Hmm… I think his name starts with J.

Sometimes, honestly, I marvel at the silliness of the ideas of repentance and atonement. I wish someone could explain to me why an omni-powerful god would create beings in his image, recognize that they are all horribly flawed by nature, send himself down to his creation as one of them to atone to himself for the sins of the things he created, and then reject them if they don’t believe he did this. This is supposed to be flawless, perfect, beautiful godly justice. The compass of justice, I bend thee.

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