C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Book IV | Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
Chapter 7 | “Let’s Pretend”
Question: What two stories does Lewis want to have in our minds at the beginning of this chapter?
Answer: First, the story, Beauty and the Beast, where a girl “had to marry a monster for some reason.” The girl kissed the monster as though he was a man and he (phew) turned into a man.
Second, a story “about someone who had to wear a mask; a mask which made him look much nicer than he really was.” After years of wearing this mask, “when he took it off he found his own face had grown to fit it. He was now really beautiful.” The point is “what had begun as a disguise had become a reality.”
Q: How do these stories relate to what Lewis plans to talk about?
A: Lewis has been talking about the facts of “what God is and what He has done.” He now turns to practical matters of what we do. That includes praying the Lord’s prayer, which begins with “Our Father.”
Lewis wants us to see how those words mean we are, in a sense, pretending to be a son of God, “dressing up as Christ,” even though we are not. The “will and interests” of The Son of God “are at one with those of the Father.” We, on the other hand, “are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death.”
And yet Jesus tells us to do this.
Q: Why is it good to pretend to be something we are not in this way?
A: “There are two kinds of pretending.” Pretense in general is bad. For example, someone only pretending to help. “But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing.” For example, acting friendly when you don’t feel friendly can often lead to “feeling friendlier than you were.” You can take on a quality when you behave as though you already have it. Act the way you would like to feel.
When we pretend to be the Son of God, “dressing up as Christ,” we’ll find things going on in our mind that need to be stopped—and we should—and things we should be doing—and we should.
Q: What is happening there?
A: “The Christ Himself, the Son of God who is man (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn you pretense into a reality.” This is not just listening to your conscience. When you try “to be like Christ . . . you are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person.” It’s both easier and harder than following rules.
Q: What does Lewis say to people for whom this is not their experience?
A: He wants us to remember that God works through other people (even non-Christians), nature, our bodies, books, and experiences. We “are mirrors, or ‘carriers’ of Christ to other men. Sometimes unconscious carriers.” Lewis notes how non-Christians led him to Christ, “But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others,” why is why a loving Church body is so important.
Q: What are we not to forget?
A: We must grow up and learn to see Christ behind the person who helps us. We are not to rely on human beings but “go on to recognize the real Giver.” It is a mistake to rely on human beings who will “let us down” and (even the best) “will die.” To place our whole faith in a human being is like building a house on sand.
Q: What does the Bible mean, then, when it talks about “being born again,” “putting on Christ,” Christ “being formed in us,” and having “the mind of Christ”?
A: It doesn’t mean trying to do what Jesus said, but “that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you.” Jesus, who died, is now alive and working on your individual self . . . turning you permanently into a different sort of thing.”
Q: What do we learn in the process?
A: We notice not just our sinful acts, but our sinfulness. The problem is not just the things we do but “what we are.” For example, we do or say something unloving. We can make an excuse for that behavior because we were caught off guard, but Lewis asks, “surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is?”
We have some measure of control over the things we do. We can exercise our will to some extent. But there is a part of us that “is out of reach of [our] conscious will.” Our temperament is evidence of who we are and the place where we need the most change. Our motives can’t be changed “by direct moral effort.” We quickly learn, “Everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.”
Q: What other point does Lewis make?
A: Lewis makes it sound “as it it were we who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God who does everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to us.” And God also does some pretending: “Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretense into a reality.”
God looks at us as “a little Christ,” and Jesus stands next to us “to turn [us] into one.” God, Who is higher, raises us who are lower.
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