Read along: http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Mere%20Christianity%20-%20Lewis.pdf

This section concludes “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. Next week I will do a complete review of the book per my usual methodologies. I also want to introduce that the next book is going to be “Then Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle if you want to get a jump start on reading that book. I am doing my best to keep up considering all of my free time is directed toward packing and moving.

In case you weren’t reading along, below is a one bullet summary of each chapter.

  • The Lords Prayer is to be spoken by the son of god.
  • Following Christian rules is not good enough because we will never be able to execute perfectly. Only once we accept that will Christianity work and we will be on our way to perfection.
  • People would prefer to be good enough rather than perfect. Perfect is only achieved through strict adherence to Christianity, see above.
  • If Christians are supposed to be nice than why aren’t all equally perceived as that? Think of where they would be without Christianity. All traits are gifts regardless of believer status or not.
  • Evolution can only take us so far and it is God’s plan to evolve us into better humans

The thing that I found interesting in this week’s reading was Lewis’ argument using evolution. In fact, I find Christianity’s general stance on evolution just plain wrong. It seems like it has been positioned so that you can only be on one side or the other. While I absolutely do not believe that humanity came from an amoeba or something, I see no reason why all life has not adapted to the environment. We even apply the same principles to livestock, pets and food with selective breeding. We even see the results in our lifetime.

The fact that Lewis acknowledges evolution at all seems novel. Not only that, by his writing he has accepted evolution as scientifically viable and uses it in a debate about Christianity is certainly unique. The idea that if we pick a point in time and think about evolution was an astute point. His point was that if we were guessing what evolution would lead to in dinosaur times is bigger, stronger and better dinosaurs. Nobody saw that the brain would be the better weapon then claws and spikes.

Lewis is a proponent of humanity evolving more toward godliness. I think my view is a little myopic but it seems like it is a hard stretch to say the Hitler is an evolution of Ceaser. I am more than sure that Ceaser was racist as he was brutal, making him and Hitler pretty much on par, just with different body counts and abilities to execute their vision at scale. The difference I see is that Ceaser was a product of his culture which was universally racist and brutal where as Hitler rose to that position.

I think that if we buy the evolution argument, it didn’t start at the birth of Christ. It should have started with creation. As a matter of fact, we started with near perfect beings that were of God. All the Moses, Solomon, David or pick your old testament hero had some character faults as we all do. But my point is that we should be much closer to the evolvement into Godly beings and I just don’t see it.

Another point that I mostly agree with was Lewis’ evolution of species argument. I think where this works is the time frame of the human life. He states that no matter low long we wait, a field of grass will not evolve into a field of wheat. The only way to get wheat is to plow up the field to start over. The point being is that we need to make drastic changes when we want drastic results.

My problem with that argument is the actual comparison. I think a more effective argument would have been you can’t get wheat from an apple orchard. Because both grass and wheat are grasses and I suspect that they diverged from one another at some long, distant point. But, the message is still clear and said by Einstein in a little more effective way. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

End Your Programming Routine: Many of those other points I didn’t talk about today are standard Christian doctrine. Maybe if you are Atheist or Agnostic then discussing those items might do more than the impact on me. However, subverting a dyed in the wool non-Christian argument to support your argument is brilliant. Finding common ground is a surefire way to persuade someone to your argument.