Soul fuel
Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3, The Shocking Alternative
Christians believe that the devil is real, and that he is a fallen angel. This causes some difficulties. If God is good, why would something He created go so horribly wrong? If He is all-powerful, why allow Satan to do any harm, and if He is all-knowing, why create him in the first place? Lewis proposes that these difficulties are the price to be paid for free will.
He responds to the question, "How can anything happen contrary to the will or a being with absolute power?" with this example: "It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school-room every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.' Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy." So in order to have creatures with free will, God had to (according to His will) create beings with the ability to go right or wrong. I have heard this explanation of free will before, but not in relation to angels, and therefore the devil. I never really considered angels having free will, but I suppose that would have to be true in order for Satan to be a fallen angel.
Why not create beings without free will and, therefore, without the ability to do evil? "Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." Would you rather your significant other love you because they choose to, or because they don't have a choice? But God didn't create us because He needed beings to love Him. How could God need anything? Our free will is for our own sake, so that we can have the joy of "being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight..." I had always assumed that God was somehow incomplete without us creatures to love and worship Him. That is silly. Everything is for our own sake.
But, since He is omniscient, didn't God know His creatures would go wrong? He did...but He thought it was worth the risk. "If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -- that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings -- then we may take it it is worth paying."
So how did the devil go wrong? There is no way to know for certain, but the traditional guess is that he put himself before God...he wanted to be God. Anything with a "self" and free will can choose itself over God. "That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race." Satan told us we could be like gods, our own masters, and be happy without God. "And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history...the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
Why can't we be happy without God? Lewis says that God made us as a man makes an engine...and He is the fuel we run on. Try putting something other than gasoline in your car and see what happens. It might run for a while, but eventually your engine will be ruined. It must have the right fuel. God is the only source of true happiness for humankind. He designed us that way. The alternative just does not exist. I'm not sure how to prove this one, but it is one of those things Christians believe, and makes sense if you believe everything Lewis as explained so far. So we were made to run on God, and we chose to seek our own alternative energy source.
What did God do about it? He left us a conscience and that Moral Law thing we've discussed at length, He gave us the idea of a potential savior (seen in religions other than Christianity, a god who sacrifices himself and comes back again to give new life to mankind), and He selected a group of people (the Jews) and "spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was -- that there was only one of Him and that He cared about the right conduct." One of these people, then, goes around saying that He is God and can forgive sins. For a Jew to claim these things was quite a shock. Especially the bit about forgiving sins...any sins. That would be like me saying, "I forgive you for what you did to your brother." What right would I have to forgive something you did to someone else? That wouldn't make sense. So why would Jesus go around saying these crazy things? "This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." But most people who read about Jesus in the Gospels don't get the impression of a crazy man saying silly things. "Christ says that He is 'humble and meek' and we believe Him ; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings." Someone saying He is God and has the power to forgive sins wouldn't come off as humble or meek. But that is the impression we get, isn't it? He does not come off as a crazy or dreadfully conceited person.
The point Lewis is trying to make is that you can't really say that Jesus was simply a great moral teacher, but not God. "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice." If you read the gospels, I doubt you would find any evidence of lunacy or devious thought in the words of Jesus. Lewis is convinced, then, that Jesus was and is who He claimed to be. So what does that mean? We'll look into that next time. The next chapter is probably my favorite one in the book.
Thank you for reading!
Christians believe that the devil is real, and that he is a fallen angel. This causes some difficulties. If God is good, why would something He created go so horribly wrong? If He is all-powerful, why allow Satan to do any harm, and if He is all-knowing, why create him in the first place? Lewis proposes that these difficulties are the price to be paid for free will.
He responds to the question, "How can anything happen contrary to the will or a being with absolute power?" with this example: "It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school-room every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.' Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy." So in order to have creatures with free will, God had to (according to His will) create beings with the ability to go right or wrong. I have heard this explanation of free will before, but not in relation to angels, and therefore the devil. I never really considered angels having free will, but I suppose that would have to be true in order for Satan to be a fallen angel.
Why not create beings without free will and, therefore, without the ability to do evil? "Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." Would you rather your significant other love you because they choose to, or because they don't have a choice? But God didn't create us because He needed beings to love Him. How could God need anything? Our free will is for our own sake, so that we can have the joy of "being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight..." I had always assumed that God was somehow incomplete without us creatures to love and worship Him. That is silly. Everything is for our own sake.
But, since He is omniscient, didn't God know His creatures would go wrong? He did...but He thought it was worth the risk. "If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -- that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings -- then we may take it it is worth paying."
So how did the devil go wrong? There is no way to know for certain, but the traditional guess is that he put himself before God...he wanted to be God. Anything with a "self" and free will can choose itself over God. "That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race." Satan told us we could be like gods, our own masters, and be happy without God. "And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history...the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
Why can't we be happy without God? Lewis says that God made us as a man makes an engine...and He is the fuel we run on. Try putting something other than gasoline in your car and see what happens. It might run for a while, but eventually your engine will be ruined. It must have the right fuel. God is the only source of true happiness for humankind. He designed us that way. The alternative just does not exist. I'm not sure how to prove this one, but it is one of those things Christians believe, and makes sense if you believe everything Lewis as explained so far. So we were made to run on God, and we chose to seek our own alternative energy source.
What did God do about it? He left us a conscience and that Moral Law thing we've discussed at length, He gave us the idea of a potential savior (seen in religions other than Christianity, a god who sacrifices himself and comes back again to give new life to mankind), and He selected a group of people (the Jews) and "spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was -- that there was only one of Him and that He cared about the right conduct." One of these people, then, goes around saying that He is God and can forgive sins. For a Jew to claim these things was quite a shock. Especially the bit about forgiving sins...any sins. That would be like me saying, "I forgive you for what you did to your brother." What right would I have to forgive something you did to someone else? That wouldn't make sense. So why would Jesus go around saying these crazy things? "This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." But most people who read about Jesus in the Gospels don't get the impression of a crazy man saying silly things. "Christ says that He is 'humble and meek' and we believe Him ; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings." Someone saying He is God and has the power to forgive sins wouldn't come off as humble or meek. But that is the impression we get, isn't it? He does not come off as a crazy or dreadfully conceited person.
The point Lewis is trying to make is that you can't really say that Jesus was simply a great moral teacher, but not God. "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice." If you read the gospels, I doubt you would find any evidence of lunacy or devious thought in the words of Jesus. Lewis is convinced, then, that Jesus was and is who He claimed to be. So what does that mean? We'll look into that next time. The next chapter is probably my favorite one in the book.
Thank you for reading!
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