MereChristianity: * Book II. What Christians Believe " 1. The Rival Conceptions Of God"

* Book II. What Christians Believe


1. The Rival Conceptions Of God

 

     I have  been asked to  tell you what Christians believe, and I am going

to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If

you  are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions

are simply wrong  all through.  If you are an atheist you do have to believe

that  the main point in all the religions of the whole  world  is simply one

huge mistake. If you are a Christian,  you  are free to think that all these

religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least  some hint of the truth.

When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human

race have always been wrong about  the question that  mattered to them most;

when I became a Christian I was able to take  a  more liberal view. But,  of

course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs

from other  religions,  Christianity  is  right  and they are wrong.  As  in

arithmetic-there  is  only one right  answer to a sum, and all other answers

are wrong: but some of the wrong answers  are much  nearer being right  than

others.

    

 The first big division of humanity is into the majority, who believe in

some  kind  of  God  or gods,  and  the minority  who do not. On this point,

Christianity  lines up  with  the  majority-lines up with ancient Greeks and

Romans,  modern  savages, Stoics,  Platonists,  Hindus,  Mohammedans,  etc.,

against the modern Western European materialist.

  

   Now I go on to the next big division. People who all believe in God can

be divided according to  the sort of God they believe in. There are two very

different ideas on this subject One  of them is  the idea  that He is beyond

good and evil.  We humans  call  one thing  good and  another thing bad. But

according to  some  people  that  is merely our  human point of  view. These

people would say  that the wiser you become the less you would want  to call

anything good or bad, and the more dearly you would  see that everything  is

good in  one  way and  bad  in  another,  and  that  nothing could have been

different.  Consequently,  these  people  think  that long  before  you  got

anywhere  near   the  divine  point  of  view  the  distinction  would  have

disappeared  altogether. We call a  cancer bad, they would  say, because  it

kills a  man;  but  you might  just as  well call  a successful surgeon  bad

because he kills  a cancer. It all depends  on the point of  view. The other

and  opposite idea is that God is quite  definitely "good" or "righteous." a

God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave

in one way and not in another.  The first of these views-the one that thinks

God  beyond  good and evil-is called  Pantheism.  It  was held by the  great

Prussian philosopher Hagel  and, as  far as I  can understand  them, by  the

Hindus. The other view is held by Jews, Mohammedans and Christians.

    

 And  with this big difference between Pantheism and  the Christian idea

of God, there usually  goes another. Pantheists usually believe that God, so

to speak, animates  the universe as you animate your body: that the universe

almost is God, so  that if it  did  not exist He would not exist either, and

anything you find  in the  universe is  a part of God. The Christian idea is

quite  different.  They think God invented  and made the universe-like a man

making a  picture or composing a  tune. A painter  is not a picture, and  he

does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say,  "He's  put  a lot of

himself into  it,"  but you only mean  that all  its beauty and interest has

come  out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in  the same way that

it is in  his head, or even in his hands. expect you see how this difference

between Pantheists and  Christians hangs together with the other one. If you

do not take the  distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is

easy to  say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But,  of

course, if you think some things really bad, and  God  really good, then you

cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate  from the world

and  that  some  of  the  things  we see  in it are  contrary  to His  will.

Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, "If you could only

see it from the  divine  point of view, you  would realise that this also is

God." The Christian replies, "Don't talk damned nonsense." (*)

     ----


     [*] One listener complained  of  the word damned as frivolous swearing.

But I mean exactly what I say-nonsense that is  damned is under God's curse,

and will (apart  from  God's grace) lead  those who  believe it  to  eternal

death.

     ----


     For  Christianity is  a  fighting  religion. It  thinks  God  made  the

world-that space and time, heat  and cold,  and  all the colours and tastes,

and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God "made up out  of His

head" as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things

have gone  wrong  with  the  world that  God made and that  God insists, and

insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.

  

   And, of course, that raises a very big question. If a good God made the

world why has  it gone wrong? And for many years I simply  refused to listen

to the Christian  answers  to  this  question,  because  I  kept on  feeling

"whatever you say,  and however clever your  arguments are,  isn't  it  much

simpler  and  easier to  say that the  world was not made by any intelligent

power? Aren't  all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to  avoid the

obvious?" But then that threw me back into another difficulty.

 

    My argument  against  God  was  that  the universe seemed so cruel  and

unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does  not call

a  line  crooked  unless he  has  some  idea of a straight line.  What was I

comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If  the whole show was

bad and senseless from A to Z, so  to  speak, why did I, who was supposed to

be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against  it? A man

feels  wet  when he falls into water,  because man is not a  water animal: a

fish would not feel wet.


     Of course I could have  given up my  idea of justice by  saying it  was

nothing but  a  private idea of my own. But  if I did that, then my argument

against  God collapsed too- for  the argument  depended on  saying that  the

world  was really unjust, not simply  that  it  did not happen to  please my

private fancies. Thus in the very act  of trying to  prove  that God did not

exist-in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless-I  found I was

forced to assume that one part of reality-namely my idea of justice-was full

of sense.


     Consequently atheism turns  out to be too simple. If the whole universe

has no meaning,  we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just

as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no  creatures  with

eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.