Mere Christianity - Book Four - Nice People Or New Men

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Four

 

 

Beyond Personality:

Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity

 

 

 

 

10. Nice People Or New Men

     He  meant what He  said. Those  who put  themselves  in His  hands will
become perfect, as He  is perfect-perfect in  love, wisdom, joy, beauty, and
immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is  an
important  part of the  treatment. How far the change will  have gone before
death in any particular Christian is uncertain.

     I think this is the right moment to consider  a question which is often
asked: If Christianity is true why are  not  all Christians  obviously nicer
than all  non-Christians? What lies behind that question is partly something
very reasonable  and partly something  that is  not reasonable at  all.  The
reasonable part is this. If conversion to  Christianity makes no improvement
in a  man's outward actions -if he continues  to  be  just  as  snobbish  or
spiteful  or envious  or ambitious as he was  before-then  I  think we  must
suspect  that his  "conversion"  was  largely  imaginary;  and  after  one's
original conversion, every  time one thinks one has made an advance, that is
the  test  to  apply.  Fine  feelings,  new  insights, greater  interest  in
"religion"  mean nothing unless they  make our actual behaviour better; just
as in an illness "feeling better" is not much good if the thermometer  shows
that your temperature  is  still going up. In  that sense the outer world is
quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by
results.  A  tree is known by its fruit;  or,  as we say,  the proof  of the
pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave
well, we are  making Christianity  unbelievable to  the outside  world.  The
wartime  posters told us that Careless Talk costs  Lives. It is equally true
that  Careless Lives  cost Talk.  Our  careless lives  set the  outer  world
talking; and we give them grounds for  talking in a way that throws doubt on
the truth of Christianity itself.

     But there is another way of demanding results in which the outer  world
may  be quite  illogical.  They may demand not merely that  each  man's life
should improve if he becomes a Christian:  they may also demand  before they
believe in Christianity that they should see the  whole world neatly divided
into two camps -Christian  and  non-Christian-and that all the people in the
first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people
in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds.

     (1)  In the first place the situation in the actual world is  much more
complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians
and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who
are slowly  ceasing to be Christians but who  still call  themselves by that
name: some  of  them  are clergymen.  There are other people  who are slowly
becoming  Christians  though they  do not yet call themselves so. There  are
people who do not  accept the full Christian doctrine  about Christ but  who
are so strongly attracted by Him that they  are  His in a much deeper  sense
than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are
being led by God's secret influence to concentrate  on  those parts of their
religion which are in agreement with  Christianity, and who  thus  belong to
Christ without  knowing it. For example,  a Buddhist of good will may be led
to concentrate more and more  on  the Buddhist  teaching about  mercy and to
leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist
teaching  on  certain  other  points. Many of the  good  Pagans  long before
Christ's  birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there
are  a  great many people who are just  confused in mind and have  a lot  of
inconsistent beliefs all  jumbled up together. Consequently, it  is not much
use trying to make  judgments  about  Christians and  non-Christians in  the
mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in  the
mass, because there  one knows definitely which is  which. Also,  an  animal
does not turn (either slowly or suddenly) from a dog into a cat. But when we
are comparing Christians in  general with non-Christians in general, we  are
usually not  thinking about real people whom we know at all, but  only about
two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers. If you want to
compare the bad Christian and  the good  Atheist,  you must  think about two
real specimens  whom  you  have actually met. Unless  we come down to  brass
tacks in that way, we shall only be wasting time.

     (2) Suppose  we have  come down to  brass tacks and are now talking not
about an imaginary Christian  and an imaginary  non-Christian, but about two
real  people  in our own neighbourhood. Even then we  must be careful to ask
the right question. If Christianity is true then it ought to follow (a) That
any Christian will be nicer than the  same person would be if he were not  a
Christian.  (b)  That any man who  becomes a Christian will be nicer than he
was before.  Just in the same  way,  if the  advertisements of White-smile's
toothpaste are true it ought to follow (a) That anyone who uses it will have
better teeth than the same person would have if  he did not use it. (b) That
if anyone begins to use it his teeth will improve. But to point  out that I,
who  use  Whitesmile's  (and  also  have inherited  bad  teeth from  both my
parents), have not got  as fine a set as some healthy young  Negro who never
used  toothpaste at  all, does not, by itself, prove that the advertisements
are  untrue.  Christian  Miss  Bates  may  have  an  unkinder  tongue   than
unbelieving  Dick  Firkin.  That,  by  itself,  does  not  tell  us  whether
Christianity works.  The question is what Miss Bates's tongue would  be like
if she were not a Christian and what Dick's  would be like if he became one.
Miss Bates  and  Dick, as a result  of natural  causes and early upbringing,
have  certain  temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments
under new  management if they will allow it to  do so. What you have a right
to ask  is whether  that  management, if  allowed to take over, improves the
concern. Everyone knows that what is being  managed in Dick Firkin's case is
much "nicer" than  what is being managed in  Miss  Bates's. That is  not the
point. To  judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the
output but the plant. Considering the plant at Factory A it  may be a wonder
that it turns out anything  at  all; considering the  first-class outfit  at
Factory  B its output, though high, may be a great deal lower than  it ought
to be.  No  doubt the  good manager  at  Factory  A is going to  put  in new
machinery as soon as he can, but that takes time. In the meantime low output
does not prove that he is a failure.

     (3) And now, let us go  a little deeper. The manager is going to put in
new machinery: before  Christ has  finished with Miss Bates, she is going to
be very "nice" indeed. But if we left it  at  that, it would sound as though
Christ's only aim was to pull Miss Bates  up to the same level on which Dick
had  been all  along. We have been talking,  in  fact, as  if Dick  were all
right; as if Christianity was something  nasty  people needed and  nice ones
could afford to do without;  and  as  if niceness was all that God demanded.
But this would  be a fatal  mistake.  The  truth is that in God's  eyes Dick
Firkin needs "saving" every bit as much as Miss Bates. In one  sense (I will
explain what sense in a moment) niceness hardly comes into the question.

     You cannot expect God to look at  Dick's  placid  temper  and  friendly
disposition  exactly as  we do. They  result  from  natural causes which God
Himself creates.  Being merely  temperamental,  they will  all disappear  if
Dick's digestion alters. The niceness,  in fact,  is God's gift to Dick, not
Dick's gift to God. In the same way, God has allowed natural causes, working
in a world spoiled by centuries of sin, to  produce in Miss Bates the narrow
mind and jangled nerves which account for most of her nastiness. He intends,
in His own  good time, to set that  part  of her right. But that is not, for
God, the critical part of the business. It presents  no difficulties.  It is
not what He is  anxious about.  What He is watching  and waiting and working
for is something that is not easy even for God, because, from the nature  of
the case, even  He  cannot produce it by a mere act  of power. He is waiting
and watching for it both  in Miss Bates and in  Dick Firkin. It is something
they can freely give  Him or freely refuse  to Him. Will they, or  will they
not, turn  to  Him and  thus  fulfil  the only purpose  for which  they were
created?  Their free will is  trembling  inside  them  like the needle  of a
compass. But  this is a needle  that  can choose. It can  point to its  true
North; but it need not. Will  the needle swing round,  and settle, and point
to God?

     He can help it to do  so. He cannot force it. He  cannot, so to  speak,
put out His own hand and pull it into the right position,  for then it would
not be  free  will  any more. Will it  point North?  That is the question on
which all hangs. Will Miss Bates and  Dick  offer their natures to God?  The
question  whether the  natures they offer  or withhold are, at  that moment,
nice or nasty ones, is of secondary importance. God  can see to that part of
the problem.

     Do not misunderstand me. Of course God  regards a nasty nature as a bad
and deplorable  thing. And, of course,  He regards a  nice nature as a  good
thing-good  like bread, or sunshine, or water. But these are the good things
which He  gives  and  we receive. He  created Dick's sound nerves  and  good
digestion,  and there  is  plenty  more where  they  came from. It costs God
nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious
wills  cost Him crucifixion. And because  they  are  wills they can-in  nice
people just as much as  in nasty ones-refuse His request.  And then, because
that niceness in Dick was merely part of nature, it will all go to pieces in
the end. Nature herself will all pass away. Natural causes  come together in
Dick to make a pleasant psychological pattern, just as they come together in
a sunset to make a  pleasant  pattern of colours. Presently (for that is how
nature works) they will fall apart again and the pattern in both  cases will
disappear. Dick has had the chance to turn (or rather, to allow God to turn)
that momentary pattern into the beauty of an eternal spirit: and  he has not
taken it.

     There is a  paradox here.  As  long as Dick  does  not turn to  God, he
thinks his  niceness is his own,  and just as  long as he thinks that, it is
not his own. It is when Dick realises that his niceness is not his own but a
gift from  God,  and when he offers it back to God-  it is just then that it
begins  to be really  his own. For  now Dick is beginning to take a share in
his own creation. The only things we can keep  are the things we freely give
to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.

     We must,  therefore, not  be surprised if we  find among the Christians
some people who  are still nasty. There is even, when  you come to  think it
over,  a reason  why nasty people might  be expected to  turn to  Christ  in
greater numbers  than nice  ones. That was what  people  objected  to  about
Christ during His life on  earth:  He seemed to attract "such awful people."
That  is what people still  object to, and always will. Do you not  see why?
Christ said '"Blessed are the poor" and  "How hard  it  is  for  the rich to
enter  the Kingdom,"  and  no doubt He primarily meant the economically rich
and economically poor.  But do not His words  also apply to another  kind of
riches  and poverty? one of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you
may  be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money  can give  and  so
fail to realise your need  for  God.  If everything  seems to come simply by
signing  checks,  you  may  forget  that you  are at  every  moment  totally
dependent on God. Now quite plainly, natural gifts carry with them a similar
danger. If you have sound nerves  and intelligence and health and popularity
and a  good  upbringing,  you are likely to  be  quite  satisfied with  your
character as it is. "Why drag God into it?" you may ask. A certain level  of
good conduct comes  fairly easily to you. You  are not one of those wretched
creatures  who  are  always  being  tripped up  by  sex,  or dipsomania,  or
nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a  nice chap  and (between
ourselves) you  agree  with  them. You are quite  likely to believe dial all
this niceness is your own  doing: and you may easily not  feel the need  for
any  better kind of  goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds
of  goodness  cannot  be brought to recognise  their need for Christ  at all
until,  one  day,  the   natural  goodness   lets  them   down   and   their
self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are
"rich" in this sense to enter the Kingdom.

     It  is  very different  for  the nasty people-the  little, low,  timid,
warped,  thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced
people. If they make any attempt at  goodness at all, they learn, in  double
quick time,  that they  need  help. It is  Christ or nothing for them. It is
taking  up the cross and following-or else despair. They are the lost sheep;
He  came specially to  find  them. They  are (in one  very real and terrible
sense) the "poor": He blessed diem. They are  the "awful set" he goes  about
with-and of course the Pharisees say still, as they said from the first, "If
there were anything in Christianity those people would not be Christians."

     There is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us.
If  you  are  a nice person-if virtue  comes easily to you  beware! 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
contented with simply being nice, 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 perversion-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.)

     "Niceness"-wholesome, integrated personality-is an excellent  thing. We
must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our
power, to  produce a world where as many people as  possible grow up "nice";
just  as we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat. But we
must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should
have  saved  their souls.  A  world  of  nice people,  content in  their own
niceness,  looking no  further,  turned  away  from God,  would be  just  as
desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might even be more
difficult to save.

     For  mere  improvement  is  not redemption,  though  redemption  always
improves  people even here and  now and will, in  the end, improve them to a
degree  we cannot  yet imagine.  God became man to turn creatures into sons:
not simply to  produce better  men of the old kind but to produce a new kind
of man. It is not like teaching a  horse to jump better and  better but like
turning a  horse  into a winged  creature.  Of  course, once it has  got its
wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been  jumped and thus
beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the
wings are just  beginning  to grow, when it cannot do so:  and at that stage
the  lumps on  the shoulders-no one could tell by  looking at them that they
are going to be wings-may even give it an awkward appearance.

     But perhaps we have  already spent too long  on  this question. If what
you want  is  an  argument  against  Christianity (and I  well remember  how
eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began  to be afraid it was  true)
you can easily  find some stupid  and unsatisfactory Christian  and say, "So
there's your boasted  new  man! Give  me the old kind." But if once you have
begun  to see that Christianity  is on other grounds probable, you will know
in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you  ever really
know  of  other  people's souls-of  their  temptations, their opportunities,
their  struggles? one soul in the whole creation  you do know: and it is the
only one  whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in
a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your
next door neighbours  or memories of what  you have read in books. What will
all that chatter and hearsay count (will you  even  be able to remember it?)
when the anaesthetic  fog which we call "nature" or  "the real world"  fades
away and  the Presence  in which  you  have  always  stood becomes palpable,
immediate, and unavoidable?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discerning genuine Christian life from the life of an unbeliever.

1. Should all Christians be obviously nicer than all non-Christians? What is the result of careless lives displayed by Christians?
2. Why can the world not be divided into Christian and non-Christian by observed behavior?
3. Describe the factory analogy which Lewis uses when comparing lives in and out of Christ.
4. Do nice people need Christ as much as mean tempered people? What is God watching and waiting for in each person?
5. According to Lewis, the only things we can keep are...
6. Lewis wonders if a nice world would be harder to save than a miserable one, why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus is in the process of making Christians perfect, as He is perfect

• If so, can we expect all Christians to be nicer than all non-Christians?
• Not necessarily -- we have to start from where each Christian is
• A Christian should be becoming nicer than the person they were before they started following Christ (before He started his work in them)
• A tree is known by it's fruit
• When Christians fail to act Christian, we make Christianity unbelievable.
• Some people are just born with better dispositions than others...
• Christian is a process of transformation... some becoming more Christlike.... sadly, some becoming less... some confused and inconsistent

So, what of the individual?

• They should be better people than they would have been without Jesus
• They should be becoming 'better' after accepting Jesus
• The question is not Person A vs Person B, but Person A with Jesus compared to Person A without Jesus
• The evidence will not be the same in every life, and is impossible to judge from the information we have available to us.

Improvements:

• Illustration of two factories
• The factory manager starting with an old run-down plant will have to make improvements, but must continue putting out the best possible product at the best possible rate (though low) available today.
• The factory manager of the plant in good condition may very well put out a higher volume of product, but that does not mean it's the best possible for that plant or at the highest possible volume.
• The run-down plant manager will make improvements, but it takes time to get resources available to do that.
• We should expect to find some Christians who are "still nasty" people as God works on them

Natural causes:

• A person with a placid temper, and friendly disposition is not in a better position than the wretched, insecure person
• It is very likely the case that the person of good disposition may not be aware of the need for salvation
• ... while the "wretch" is painfully aware of their need for God's provision of salvation

God can help us, but He will not force us:

• in giving us free will, God has chosen to allow us to choose freely
• He will not force us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt 

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm