Transcript Rivermont Presbyterian Church

Rivermont Presbyterian Church
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
Book 3 - Christian Behavior
Summary of Chapters:
3 - Social Morality
4 - Morality and Psychoanalysis
Responsibility, Integrated Religion, Psychological Material, and Spiritual Warfare
When Christianity tells you to feed the hungry it does not give you lessons in cookery.
If our charities to do not at all pinch us or hamper us, I should say they are too small.
Every time we make a choice we are turning the central part of us either into a heavenly
creature or into a hellish creature.
I Co. 10:23-33 (27)
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Questions For Discussion
3. Social Morality - A discussion of morality between man and man and what a society would be
like if it were completely Christian.
-Lewis states that Christ did not preach anything new in regards to morality. The real job of every
moral teacher is...?
-Why can Christianity not have a political program to apply the golden rule to a particular society at
a particular time?
-"The Church ought to give us a lead" is a legitimate statement if by Church we mean...?
-Lewis speculates that if we were to visit a Christian society, we would come away with a curious
impression. What is this curious impression?
-Lewis states that three great civilizations have condemned the very thing we have based ours on.
What were the three civilizations and what is the thing they have condemned?
-Lewis states that charity (giving to the poor) is an essential part of Christianity. How can we gage
our level of charity according to Lewis?
4. Morality and Psychoanalysis -The Christian specification for the human machine
-According to Lewis, psychoanalysis and Christianity are not in contradiction. How does
psychoanalysis affect a persons ability to make moral choices?
-How is a man who is in a position (due to anger) to kill thousands similar to a man who's anger only
causes laughter?
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Social Morality
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Golden Rule:
Do as you would be done by
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Christianity has, and does not profess to have a
detailed political program for applying ‘Do as you
would be done by’
When it tells you to feed the
hungry it does not give you
lessons in cookery
When it tells you to read the
Scriptures it does not give you
lessons in Hebrew or Greek
It was never intended to replace the ordinary human arts and science: it is a director which will
set them all to the right jobs, if only they will put themselves at its disposal.
Life is Religion
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The job is really on us, on the laymen, not the Church.
The application of Christian principles, say to trade unionism or education, must come from
Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from
Christian novelists and dramatics - from from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to
write plays and novels in their spare time.
The New Testament tell us:
1. There is no passengers or parasites
2 . Leftist - and Obedient
3. Cheerful society
Economy = Socialist
Code of manners = Aristocratic
Modern Economy - Based on lending money at interest
Christian Economist are needed here.
The concept applies to all professions.
To All of Life
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The Question of Giving - Charity
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give
more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc..,
is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving
too little. If our charities to do not at all pinch us or hamper us, I should say they are too small.
A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us want it.
And we are not going to want it until we become fully Christians.
But I cannot do it until I love my neighbor as myself.
And I am not going learn to love my neighbor until I learn to love God
and I cannot learn to love God until I obey Him.
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Morality and Psychoanalysis
Christian Specification for the human machine
Moral Choices Involve:
1. Choosing
2. Feelings, Impulses (raw material of his choice)
Natural and Perverted Desires
Bad psychological material is not sin but a disease
God does not judge man on the raw material at all but on what he does with it.
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part, the part of you that chooses, into
something a little different from what it was before ... turning this central part either into a heavenly
creature or into a hellish creature.
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I appeal to evangelical Christians to use the whole range
of their professional skills to speak prophetically about
our times. We need deeper analyses of the pathology of
scientific, technological social and political evils in our
contemporary world, in light of the eternal realities
revealed in God’s Word. A new missionary enterprise is
involved: to go virtually into every professional area of
life, just as in the past we have emphasized the
geographical penetration of our world with the gospel.
James Houston
Romans 12: 1,2
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