Professional Documents
Culture Documents
C. S. Lewis wrote the book Mere Christianity. In this book he separates many topics into
miniature books. The second book discusses how Christians should not view all other religions
as completely wrong, but just not fully correct. Somewhere in most religions there is a grain of
Biblical truth that makes the religion not completely wrong. Religion is just like math in that
math requires perfect answers, so religion requires exact beliefs, but just as in math; some
answers are less incorrect than others. Religion is man’s attempt to get to God; Christianity is
Lewis says that there are two categories of people: those that don’t believe in God, and
those that do believe in God. In that category are the subcategories of Hindus, Platonists, Stoics,
Ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Mohammedans, and so on. Many of these
religions have sections of their beliefs that are what Christians believe, but they are still not able
to claim Christ and go to heaven because they have not accepted Jesus as their personal savior.
Another concept that C.S. Lewis covers is the concept that an artist will not die when
their paintings are destroyed, even though they “put themselves into the painting”. The
individual is painting with all of their artistic talent to create the best possible painting
achievable. Some believe that God put Himself completely into the earth at creation. Using this
form of reasoning, they infer God will be destroyed when the earth is destroyed. However, since
God made the earth with little effort at all, this form of reasoning is unsound.
When C.S. Lewis was an atheist, he believed there must not be a God if the universe was
such an unjust and cruel place. He later realized where his logic was flawed. Lewis had no
example of the absence of injustice or cruelness with which to compare the earth; therefore, he
couldn’t state it was cruel. Lewis goes on to say that everything is absolute, and there is no
partial thing. In other words, gravity is always in effect, the earth will always be revolving
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity Book 2 Nathaniel Compton 1/19/11
around the sun, not the other way around. Sin will always be wrong, no matter what is
happening.
Mere Christianity covers many subjects such as free will, free will means we are able to
do things, but only because God planned for us to do those action far before time began.
Throughout the book, Lewis shows that has learned about how we as a people all think in two
abstract ways. The first is the herd mentality, and the second is the self-preservation mentality.
The Herd mentality is the concept that everyone looks out for each other to keep the
human race as a whole intact and to keep those around us protected. Herd mentality is exactly as
it is stated, it is the thought of keeping the human race together, and not allowing others to stray
and to be brought to harm if they can help it. For example, if someone yelled for help and the
only person that heard the yell would run to their aid without listening to the fear of death and
injury. The individual would be risking their life for a complete stranger for the sake of the
Self preservation is the concept of an individual taking care of his or herself as best to his
or her capabilities. That doesn’t mean that they live in a mansion it means they take the least
dangerous roads of life and they try to make sure they will be fine for a long period of time. For
example if someone were to yell for help another person wouldn’t help them because they know
that if they help the other person they might get themselves killed in the process. They are
worried that they will become injured in saving the other person and don’t want to risk injuring
themselves
Another subject that C. S. Lewis talks about is the way people view Christianity, the way
I see Christianity is that it is God coming down to man, not to be mistaken with religion, man
trying to get to God. Christianity is essentially God allowing us to have a relationship with Him
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity Book 2 Nathaniel Compton 1/19/11
and to live with Him in eternity. The word Christianity has had many meanings throughout time;
in the Bible times when someone was called a Christian it meant that they were a follower of
Christ. Nowadays if someone is called a Christian they are considered a nice person.
Lewis concludes the book by saying that we are all given challenges that we must choose
to either listen to the self preservation or the herd mentality and that by allowing one to take
presidency, we would not be using the wonderful mind that God has given us because sometimes
dashing in to save someone is not the best thing for us to do, yet letting them die is not any
better. Lewis has shown us the way that he feels as a people we are living by, if we didn’t have
the herd mentality we would be completely concerned with only ourselves and never help
anyone. If we were only focused on the herd mentality we would not preserve ourselves and thus
would be only hurting ourselves. Therefore we need to use both the herd mentality and the self-