S1E24 – MC B3C11 – “Faith” (Part 1)

For the last two chapters of Book III we will be looking at the final theological virtue of “faith”. This chapter focuses on faith in terms of holding onto rational truths despite raging emotions.

Episode 24: Mere Christianity, “Faith” (Part 1) (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

• In this episode we will be answering the following questions:

Q1. What is faith?

Q2. Why is it a virtue?

Quote-of-the-Day

If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of faith, for the power to go on believing, not in the teeth of reason, but in the teeth of lust, in terror, in jealousy, in boredom, in indifference, that which reason, authority and experience (or all three) have once delivered to us for truth.

C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections

Toast

• Matt is currently doing Exodus 90, a challenge for Catholic men that eliminates distractions in one’s life in order to master desires and focus on God. Usually this means no alcohol, but he’ll make an exception for the podcast 😉
• The drink-of-the-week was Macallen 12. Here are the tasting notes Matt read:

Appearance: Deep amber with strong legs.

Nose: Oaky and hot right off the pour. Loads of oak and perfume reads as somewhat bitter at first, with notes reminiscent of an amaretto sour and a hint of spiced plums. The nose softens dramatically after a few minutes, settling into dark sherry and plum sweetness.

Palate: Sweet and full, but not overly complex. Lots of sherry, plums, powdered sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg give it a silky, round mouthfeel. The finish is quick, with a mild burn and a long, lingering presence of sweetness reminding him of iced cinnamon rolls.

Discussion

01. “The Irrational State of Man”

• Lewis spends most of this chapter dealing with the first definition of faith. He does begin talking about the second kind of faith, but he’ll deal with it primarily in the next chapter, the final part of Book III. In fact, he ends the chapter with a cliffhanger:

The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of Faith in the second sense.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

Defintion #1

• The first definition of faith Jack looks at is faith in the sense of holding onto a belief, despite changes in mood and emotion.
• When Lewis was an atheist, he never understood why faith was regarded as a virtue.

I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue – what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

• Jack’s mistake here was assuming that humans are purely rational creatures, when they aren’t. In fact, he discovered that this did not even apply to himself… although he’s probably being extremely humble here.

I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Example #1: anaesthetics. His reason knows that he isn’t being smothered and his reason knows that he will be unconscious before the operation begins. However, his emotions rebel against this.

I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Example #2: A guy talking to a pretty girl and his rational belief that she is a gossip goes out of the window as his emotions get the better of him.

A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted: but when he finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking, ‘Perhaps she’ll be different this time,’ and once more makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told her.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Example #3: A boy learning to swim. He knows he can float, but when the instructor takes away his hand, he panics.

His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water – or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• David gave his own example. When he went skydiving, he knew that it was safe, but the safety statistics he had read were quickly forgotten when he found himself standing by an open plane door with the ground far below…
• Matt gave the example of flight turbulence again.

02. “The Blitz”

• Faith comes following the period of reasoning.

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Jack then explains how this happens with Christianity…

…supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that a man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will cary out a blitz.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Matt gave the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who remained faithful to God, despite some dark years.

03. “Preparing for the Assault”

• The rebellion of your moods is going to come regardless, whether you are a Christian or an atheist. As a result, we have to train ourselves, or as Lewis puts it…

Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• He gives two practical ways of gaining spiritual discipline.

1. Prayer/Study

…make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day…

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

2. Church attendance

…that is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25

04. “Spiritual Decrescendo”

• Departure from Christianity is usually a slow fade:

If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it my honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

05. “I Am the Literal Worst”

Defintion #2

• The second definition of faith relates to our spiritual bankruptcy.
• In an earlier chapter, Jack explained that, in order to become humble, one must first realise one is prideful.

I want to approach it by going back to the subject of Humility. You may remember I said that the first step towards humility is to realise one is proud.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• He now goes on to say that the next step is to try and really live out the Christian virtues:

Try six weeks. By that time, having, as far as one can see, fallen back completely or even fallen lower than the point one begins from, one will have discovered some truths about oneself. No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Only good people really understand temptation:

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in … A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness … Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means – the only complete realist.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

06. “Two Things”

• This teaches us two things:

(a) We can’t earn salvation

If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain – any idea that we could perform our side fo the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side – that has to be wiped out … God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

(b) We can never give God anything which isn’t already his.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• He gives the example of a child asking his father for money in order to buy him a present.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. it is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

• Jack ends the chapter on a cliff-hanger…

When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. it is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of faith in the second sense.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Faith

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

• The outline for today’s chapter is available here.

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