10/10Good old Clive Staples Lewis, a former atheist who converted to the Church of England, is THE best author on Christianity without a doubt. He is quoted more often than almost anyone, and for good reason. I have read more C.S. Lewis books than I think any other author. I do enjoy his stuff. And this, Mere Christianity, is, in my opinion, his very best work. There's more insight here than any book, outside of scripture, that I have ever read. The way he explains the Christian doctrine is simple, true, and inspiring. He has a section on pride that is just epic. He has a brief section on the Trinity, however, that is not as good as the rest. I'm going to cut my comments short, because I think that I'm going to set the quote record with this one.
Quotes that made the cut (Yes, I had to pass on some very good ones due to the excessive amount of amazing quotes.):
"The question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this?'"
"Selfishness has never been admired."
"I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people."
"As in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some wrong answers are much nearer being right than others."
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should have never found out that it has no meaning."
"When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on."
"There are a good many things that would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever. Perhaps my bad temper or jealousy are gradually getting worse - so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years....If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilisation, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual."
"If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things that we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them."
"God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them."
"The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."
"A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."
"Love is the great conqueror of lust."
"I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first world war, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it." Ha ha, one of my favorites.
"There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit."
"It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."
"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest."
"The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.'"
"If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."
"Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."
"Those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy."
"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist."
"Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary."
"If what you call your 'faith' in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is not Faith at all - not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him."
"What God the Father begets is God, something of the same kind as Himself."
"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is."
"God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one."
"Laziness means more work in the long run."
"He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment."
"You must realise from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."
"The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were 'gods' and He is going to make good His words."
Sorry, dear reader, for the abundence of quotations. This guy knew his stuff and how to say it, that is for sure.
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