C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Book IV | Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
Chapter 10 | “Nice People or New Men”
Question: Lewis opens the chapter with, “He meant what He said.” What is Lewis referring to?
Answer: His previous chapter where he said, “Those who put themselves in [God’s] hands will become perfect, as He is perfect—perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, and immortality.” This work won’t be finished in this life—death is part of the process—and we don’t know how much of the work happens before we die.
Q: What is reasonable and unreasonable behind the question If Christianity is true, why aren’t all Christians nicer than non-Christians?
A: What is reasonable is that if becoming a Christian doesn’t make us better—less “snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious”—then we have to wonder if the conversion was real. Feelings and insights and “greater interest in ‘religion’” are meaningless if our behavior doesn’t improve. The world is correct to judge Christians this way even as Jesus said, “A tree is known by its fruit.” A bad-behaving Christian makes Christianity unbelievable and “throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.”
The unreasonable thing is not demanding that people become better when they become Christians, but saying that before you believe in Christianity the whole world needs to be put into two camps—the Christians and non-Christians—and the Christians “should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second.”
Q: What is the first reason Lewis says this is unreasonable?
A: The world is more complicated than people being either completely Christian or completely non-Christian. Some people “are slowly ceasing to be Christians but . . . still call themselves by that name.” (Lewis adds, alarmingly, that “some of them are clergy.”) And other people are in the process of becoming Christians “though they do not yet call themselves so.”
Some people have not accepted “the full Christian doctrine about Christ,” but are attracted to Jesus and are more His than they know. Some people are part of another religion, but “are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity,” for example a Buddhist who focuses on mercy and ignores other Buddhist teaching. Finally, some people are just confused “and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together.”
It follows that “it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-Christians in the mass.” Lewis says it’s better to compare cats and dogs since there you can know “definitely which is which.” When thinking about Christians and non-Christians, it’s better to think about two actual people than “vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers.”
Q: If we are talking about a real Christian and a real non-Christian, why do we need to ask the right question?
A: Two things are true. One, anyone who becomes a Christian will be nicer than they would have been. Two, anyone who becomes a Christian will be nicer than they were before. Lewis uses a toothpaste analogy. You’ll have better teeth if you use it and your teeth will get better if you use it. The problem is the original condition of the teeth.
There may be a certain believer who is more unkind with words than a certain unbeliever, but this “does not tell us whether Christianity works.” The real question is what the believer would be like if they weren’t a Christian or the unbeliever would be like if they were a Christian. Both people come from a unique environment with a certain temperament. The idea of Christianity is that it puts our temperament “under new management” if we allow God to do so. And so the question we can ask is if Christianity will improve a person understanding that each person begins at a different starting place.
Q: How does Lewis take this deeper?
A: Lewis notes that the unkind believer will become “very ‘nice’” when Christ is through with them. The problem is that then it sounds like God’s goal is to make the believer as nice as the unbeliever is, “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.”
God looks at individuals differently. A person with a good temperament is God’s gift to that person, not their gift to God. Their temperament may change with a change in circumstances. A “nasty” person with a “narrow mind and jangled nerves” produced from “a world spoiled by centuries of sin” will be set right by God “in His own good time.”
Q: What “is not easy even for God”?
A: Waiting to see if a person will offer themselves to God. “It is something they can freely give Him or freely refuse to Him. Will they, or will they not, turn to Him and thus fulfill the only purpose for which they were created?” It is a matter of free will that God can help but cannot force. Whether a person is nice or nasty is less important because “God can see to that part of the problem.”
Q: How does Lewis not want to be misunderstood?
A: “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.” A nice nature is God’s good gift, “like bread, or sunshine, or water.” It costs God nothing to give these good gifts. “But to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.” Because we have wills we can refuse God and our natures would “all go to pieces in the end.” The question is whether we will allow God to turn our momentary disposition “into the beauty of an eternal spirit.”
Q: What is the paradox that Lewis points out?
A: If the nice unbeliever turns to God and realizes his temperament is a gift from God, then that gift will become his. Otherwise he thinks he is his own creator. Lewis says, “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.”
Q: What should not surprise us?
A. That some Christians “are still nasty.” It also explains “why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers than nice one.” They know their need for God.
Q: What does Lewis say about the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor” and “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom.”
A: Primarily, this meant physical poverty and riches, but Lewis notes there is “another kind of riches and poverty.” Lewis writes,
“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 realize 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.”
The temptation is to think that our conduct and our temperament—our “niceness”—is our “own doing.” We may not “feel the need for any better kind of goodness.” Those without great temperaments come to understand they need help.
Q: What is Lewis’ warning and encouragement?
A: The warning is for nice people. If goodness comes easy “beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given.” Don’t mistake God’s gifts for your own merits. If you are content with nice, Lewis says to think of the Devil, whose gifts were greater than ours and who had a disastrous fall.
The encouragement is for those who struggle with perversions or insecurities. You should not despair. “You are one of the poor whom He blessed.” You have fewer gifts to work with: “Do what you can” knowing that God will one day give you a new being. In the meantime you’ve learned how to drive “in a hard school.”
Q: What should we conclude about niceness?
A: A “wholesome, integrated personality” is a good thing. We should make a world that helps people to be “nice,” even as we should desire a world where everyone has enough to eat. “But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls.” Nice people who have rejected God may be harder to save than miserable people who know their need.
Improvement is not salvation, “though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine.” God’s goal is to turn us into His children, not to make us better versions of ourselves.
Q: What was Lewis trying to do in this chapter?
A: There are some looking for an argument against Christianity and “you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian” and use them to say you’re better off without Jesus.
The problem is that avoids the issue. You don’t know the temptations and struggles and opportunities in other people’s souls. The only soul you know is you “and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.” It is you and God. You can’t complain about your neighbor. None of that will matter when this world passes away.
Leave a Reply