Mere Christianity

Some quotes from the read of the day Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.

Highly recommended for all people, of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs.
There is so much packed in this small paperback book that I want to just highlight it all, but that would make highlighting lose its purpose no?

Beginning at Book 1:

"Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football."


"Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."
[how true is this? how often does someone, us or others, break a promise to a friend, and later when a promise made to us is broken or a word was not upheld do we cry "That's not fair"]

"These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it."

This Law of Human Nature that Lewis explains is the inherent feeling within us that compels us to not think of ourselves but of others. One of the situations he brings up is a feeling to help out. Seeing someone in danger and feeling a desire of helping"(due to your herd instinct)" and another to flee, to 'keep out of danger(due to the instinct for self preservation)" but besides these two are another a third impulse that "tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges... cannot itself be either of them."

"There are two reasons for saying it [Law of Human Nature] belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is... though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great- not nearly so great as most people imagine...the other reason is this what you think about the differences between teh morality of one people and another do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better."

something to chew on more to come later