UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 9)

Question:
Could you say any more on how one discovers whether a task is laid on one by God, or whether it comes in some other way? If we cannot distinguish between the pleasant and the unpleasant things, it is a complicated matter. 

Lewis:
We are guided by the ordinary rules of moral behaviour, which I think are more or less common to the human race and quite reasonable and demanded by the circumstances. I don’t mean anything like sitting down and waiting for a supernatural vision.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 54-55.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 8)

Question:
Are not practices like fasting and self-denial borrowed from earlier or more primitive religions?

Lewis:
I can’t say for certain which bits came into Christianity from earlier religions. An enormous amount did. I should find it hard to believe Christianity if that were not so. I couldn’t believe that nine-hundred and ninety-nine religions were completely false and the remaining one true. In reality, Christianity is primarily the fulfilment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfilment of what was vaguely hinted in all the religions at their best. What was vaguely seen in them all comes into focus in Christianity — just as God Himself comes into focus by becoming a Man. I take it that the speaker’s remarks on earlier religions are based on evidence about modern savages. I don’t think it is good evidence. Modern savages usually represent some decay in culture — you find them doing things which look as if they had a fairly civilized basis once, which they have forgotten. To assume that primitive man was exactly like the modern savage is unsound.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 54.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 7)

Question: 
Is it true that Christians must be prepared to live a life of personal discomfort and self-sacrifice in order to qualify for ‘Pie in the Sky’?

Lewis:
All people, whether Christian or not, must be prepared to live a life of discomfort. It is impossible to accept Christianity for the sake of finding comfort: but the Christian tries to lay himself open to the will of God, to do what God wants him to do. You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mould are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice. But you must be prepared for the unpleasant things and the discomforts. I don’t mean fasting, and things like that. They are a different matter. When you are training soldiers in manoeuvres, you practise in blank ammunition because you would like them to have practise before meeting the real enemy. So we must practise in abstaining from pleasures which are not in themselves wicked. If you don’t abstain from pleasure, you won’t be good when the time comes along. It is purely a matter of practise.


"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 53-54.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 6)

Question:
Is it true that Christianity (especially the Protestant forms) ends to produce a gloomy, joyless condition of society which is like a pain in the neck to most people?

Lewis:
As to the distinction between Protestant and other forms of Christianity, it is very difficult to answer. I find by reading about the sixteenth century, that people like Sir Thomas More, for whom I have a great respect, always regarded Martin Luther’s doctrines not as gloomy thinking, but as wishful thinking. I doubt whether we can make a distinction between Protestant and other forms in this respect. Whether Protestantism is gloomy and whether Christianity at all produces gloominess, I find it very difficult to answer, as I have never lived in a completely non-Christian society nor a completely Christian one, and I wasn’t there in the sixteenth century, and only have my knowledge from reading books. I think there is about the same amount of fun and gloom in all periods. The poems, novels, letters, etc., of every period all seem to show that. But again, I don’t really know the answer, of course. I wasn’t there.


"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 53.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 5)

Question:
Materialists and some astronomers suggest that the solar planetary system and life as we know it was brought about by an accidental stellar collision. What is the Christian view of this theory?

Lewis:
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?  I see no reason for believing that one accident should he able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. Ii’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give yow a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 52-53.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 4)

Question 3.
Will you please say how you would define a practising Christian? Are there any other varieties?

Lewis:
Certainly there are a great many other varieties. It depends, of course, on what you mean by ‘practising Christian’. If you mean one who has practised Christianity in every respect at every moment of his life, then there is only One on record —
Christ Himself. In that sense there are no practising Christians, but only Christians who, in varying degrees, try to practise it and fail in varying degrees and then start again. A perfect practice of Christianity would, of course, consist in a perfect imitation of the life of Christ I mean, in so far as it was applicable in one’s own particular circumstances. Not in an idiotic sense it doesn’t mean that every Christian should grow a beard, or be a bachelor, or become a travelling preacher. It means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God. It means looking at everything as something that comes from Him, and always looking to Him and asking His will first, and saying: ‘How would He wish me to deal with this?’

A kind of picture or pattern (in a very remote way) of the relation between the perfect Christian and his God, would be the relation of the good dog to its master. This is only a very imperfect picture, though, because the dog hasn’t reason like its master: whereas we do share in God’s reason, even if in an imperfect and interrupted way (‘interrupted’ because we don’t think rationally for very long at a time — it’s too tiring — and we haven’t information to understand things fully, and our intelligence itself has certain limitations). In that way we are more like God than the dog is like us, though, of course, there are other ways in which the dog is more like us than we are like God. It is only an illustration.

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 50.

UK factory workers ask C.S. Lewis questions (Part 3)

[We continue here with C.S. Lewis answering questions posed to him by workers at the EMI factory in Middlesex, England, during World War II, in 1944.]

Question:
Supposing a factory worker asked you: ‘How can I find God?’ How would you reply?

Lewis:
I don’t see how the problem would be different for a factory worker than for anyone else. The primary thing about any man is that he is a human being, sharing all the ordinary human temptations and assets. What is the special problem about the factory worker? But perhaps it is worth saying this:
Christianity really does two things about conditions here and now in this world: 
(1) It tries to make them as good as possible, i.e., to reform them; but also 
(2) It fortifies you against them in so far as they remain bad.
If what was in the questioner’s mind was this problem of repetition work, then the factory worker’s difficulty is the same as any other man confronted with any sorrow or difficulty. People will find God if they consciously seek from Him the right attitude towards all unpleasant things . . if that is the point of the question?

"Answers to Questions on Christianity," God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 49-50.