Ep. 32 | Mere Christianity | Part 11 | To Go The Distance
Highlights Faith as Lewis uses it here means “spiritual tenacity.”
“Faith is…a necessary virtue. Unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be a sound Christian…but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”
“There will come a moment when there is bad news…or he’s in trouble…or is living among a lot of other people who don’t believe…or when he wants a woman…or wants to tell a lie…some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And…his desires will carry out a blitz on his belief…I know by experience. Now that I’m a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable…This rebellion of your moods…is going to come.”
"I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true…I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.
”Faith does not rise or fall on the basis of reason alone. People don’t come to faith strictly on the basis of logic and people almost never quit the faith strictly because of intellectual doubts.
“What if, the true story is that people stop believing and then find they need arguments to justify their unbelief?…The intellectual arguments for atheism are, generally speaking, just rationalizations concocted after the fact. A lot of unbelief is rooted, not in reason, but in the emotions.” (Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, Alec Ryrie)
What circumstances and emotions make us start thinking, “You know…it would be very convenient for me right now if Christianity were not true.”
1. Moral Compromise - Living with the sin and the faith at the same time creates an intolerable dissonance.
2. Suffering - Buried underneath the claim of atheism, there’s often a deep emotional wound.
3. “Friendly Fire” - It’s easy to blame God for the things that people do in his name.
“Consequently one must train the habit of faith…make sure that some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That’s why daily prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.”
Faith or spiritual tenacity must be fed by study, meditation, prayer, worship and engaging in the community of other believers.
It’s not game day, it’s training day that’s crucial. What we do in training, practice, preparation will determine the outcome. We will go the distance because we trained for it.
To develop our faith/spiritual tenacity two things are required. First, become part of a faith community that provides inspiration and practical instruction for Christian living. And, second, slow down. Stop booking yourself with wall-to-wall commitments. Leave space for your pursuit of God. . Jesus didn’t come all the way from heaven to earth…Jesus didn’t die on the cross…he didn’t call us to follow him, so that we could merely start the race. He calls us to finish it.
Faith of the Fatherless, Dr. Paul Vitz
Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Church History, John Dickson.