Insufficient Christianity: Done!

This is it! The last Chapter of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.

In the last chapter I compared Christ's work of making New Men to the process of turning a horse into a winged creature. I used that extreme example in order to emphasize the point that it is not mere improvement but Transformation. The nearest parallel to it in the world of nature is to be found in the remarkable transformations we can make in insects by applying certain rays to them. Some people think this is how Evolution worked. The alterations in creatures on which it all depends may have been produced by rays coming from outer space. (Of course once the alterations are there, what they call 'Natural Selection' gets to work on them: i.e. the useful alterations survive and the other ones get weeded out.)

I don't know about you guys, but I honestly have no idea what Lewis is talking about here. Some people think evolution worked by applying rays from outer space to animals to transform them? What the hell? Is he talking about mutations caused by UV light? Did people think this in 1944? Lewis goes on to explain that most people know about evolution (as an aside, he mentions that some educated people disbelieve it. I wonder why he specified that some educated people disbelieve it, especially given that he seems to accept evolution) and that some people wonder what the "next step" in evolution is. Clearly, even though we can speculate, we really cannot say for sure what the "next step" might be in a general sense, because natural selection is so complex and our capacity to predict the path of evolution is limited by our imaginations and knowledge of future events. If we were to guess the trajectory of an evolutionary path, we could easily be wrong. Lewis claims that we're missing the point of evolutionary paths entirely because the "next step" has already taken place, going in a direction we could not have imagined to the point that some of us don't even realize that it is the "next step" at all. That next step is Christianity:

Now, if you care to talk in these terms, the Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is really new. It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change that goes off in a totally different direction - a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago. In a sense, the change is not 'Evolution' at all, because it is not something arising out of the natural process of events but something coming-into nature from outside. But that is what I should expect. We arrived at our idea of 'Evolution' from studying the past. If there are real novelties in store then of course our idea, based on the past, will not really cover them. And in fact this New Step differs from all previous ones not only in coming from outside nature but in several other ways as well.

So Lewis believes Christians are essentially more evolved than non-Christians. They are the "next step". They are the "new humanity". Clearly, from the paragraph above, this is supposed to mean that Christians are "better" than non-Christians. They are humans 2.0. They are akin to "superman" or "having more armor" or in general being greater. Lewis goes on to say that this spiritual evolution to the new humanity of Christianity is not quite the same as evolution by natural selection for several reasons:


1. It doesn't happen via sexual reproduction. You can't pass Christianity down genetically.


2. Organisms do not have a choice to "evolve", but people can chose to become spiritually evolved. "Progress was, in the main, something that happened to them, not something that they did. But the new step, the step from being creatures to being sons, is voluntary. We can, if we please, shrink back; we can dig in our heels and let the new Humanity go on without us."


So people who are not Christians are being left behind while humanity goes on without them. This certainly sounds a lot like the Indigo and Crystal children movement. It must be nice to feel like you're on a higher plane and have such a bright and awesome light compared to the dim and less worthy life of a nonbeliever. People who aren't Christians are lower creatures simply by choice. We choose not to have "progress".


3. Jesus was the first human who was a spiritually evolved version of the new humanity. 


4. Evolution to the new humanity of Christianity took place really quickly. Two thousand years is nothing compared to the entirety of the history of the universe. Every time it looks like Christianity is dying, it's not: "(Never forget that we are all still 'the early Christians.' The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the' opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense - and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them -that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.)"


To say that "they" hate Christianity simply because it is popular is an incredibly simplistic and naive understanding of how the world works. Lewis sounds like a hockey fan cheering for his favorite team. Raa raa raa we're #1! They hate us because we are so awesome! We can't be beat! Look how they try to knock us down but we just spring right back up! Also, Christianity would be nowhere without the crucifixion! The crucifixion is supposed to be the whole reason Christianity is so cool – because Jesus died for our sins. That was supposedly god's plan all along. 


5. The stakes of new humanity are higher because if an organism "falls back on earlier steps", the maximum it can lose is life, but if we fail to be Christians we will lose our eternal life which is infinite.

On this view the thing has happened: the new step has been taken and is being taken. Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognisable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of 'religious people' which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need you less. … They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognised one of them, you will recognise the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.

This sounds a lot like the Indigo and Crystal child movement. Christians are recognizable by their stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant voices and faces. This whole paragraph is simply ridiculous: imagine if I said this about atheists, or gay people, or any other group for whom I wanted to explain my favor for. Lewis goes on to explain that even though these superior Christians are easy to recognize by their obvious awesomeness, they are not all the "same". They are all totally unique, unlike non-Christians who all fade into the background of sameness and dullness. As an illustration, he says

I will try two very imperfect illustrations which may give a hint of the truth. Imagine a lot of people who have always lived in the dark. You come and try to describe to them what light is like. You might tell them that if they come into the light that same light would fall on them all and they would all reflect it and thus become what we call visible. Is it not quite possible that they would imagine that, since they were all receiving the same light, and all reacting to it in the same way (i.e. all reflecting it), they would all look alike? Whereas you and I know that the light will in fact bring out, or show up, how different they are. Or again, suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply 'In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else.' But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added the salt. (Of course, as I warned you, this is not really a very good illustration, because you can, after all, kill the other tastes by putting in too much salt, whereas you cannot kill the taste of a human personality by putting in too much Christ. I am doing the best I can.)

He goes on to say that Christians are super unique and awesome and they got that way by letting go of their pitiful selves and letting Christ overcome them:

It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Oh, so non Christians don't have personalities of their own. I hope I don't need to explain why I think this idea is filthy, bigoted, and dangerous. Dehumanization 101.

At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

The bigotry at this point is almost pouring out of Lewis' ears. To Lewis, I have no real self. I am a monotonous sheep, not unique and different and awesome like Christians. 


Lewis spends the rest of the chapter talking about how we have to completely give ourselves up to Christ in order to find our real selves. In order to save our life, we have to lose our own live, our personal ambitions, our favorite wishes. Here is his last thought:

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

THE END

Basically, a Christian can look at an atheist and see, "only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay" if he really believes the same things Lewis believes. It really makes me sad that my life could be summed up in this way regardless of the evidence to the contrary that my life is fulfilling and meaningful. It makes me sad that people can believe things like this about another human being, simply because of their lack of a belief in Jesus. I am a human being, and I am not living a less worthy life because I don't believe in Jesus. 


I hope that Flimsy and my analysis of Mere Christianity has been helpful to you, whether you're an atheist, a theist, or something in between. If you're a theist, please read Lewis' words from the perspective of an atheist. If you cannot possibly see that Lewis is advocating a bigoted version of Christianity that is unsupported by evidence or logic, pretend he is an atheist explaining "Mere atheism" and telling you that your life is meaningless unless you give up your belief in god. Pretend that every time I have pointed out a bigoted statement, Lewis is making that claim about you or your beliefs. Perhaps then you might come to understand our perspective. When people start to believe that they are better than everyone around them, it can and has easily lead to the mistreatment of others. Really, we're all the same people. We all have a story to tell. These divisions brought about by religious belief might make people in a particular religion feel better about themselves. People should not view themselves are more evolved, more enlightened, closer to perfection, and unfathomably more awesome than those around them due to their religion or the connection they think they have to god. This belief does not make the world a better place – it serves to divide and to justify treating people as less than equal. Not only can this line of thinking lead to injustice and inequality, but it has led to injustice and inequality. 


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