2. The Invasion
Very well then, atheism is too simple. And I will tell you another view
that is also too simple. It is the view I call Christianity-and-water, the
view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all
right-leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and
hell and the devil, and the redemption. Both these are boys' philosophies.
It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are
not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at
looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of-all
about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and
what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain-and, of course,
you find that what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and
complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a
child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and
good. But if you are not-and the modern world usually is not-if you want to
go on and ask what is really happening- then you must be prepared for
something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is
silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.
Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are
not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy
Christianity. Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a
child of six and make that the object of their attack. When you try to
explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult,
they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is
all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He
would have made "religion" simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc.
You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their
ground every minute and only waste your tune. Notice, too, their idea of God
"making religion simple": as if "religion" were something God invented, and
not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own
nature.
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd.
It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you
have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you
would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match-all at equal
distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or
all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go farther from
the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either
the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four,
one has two, some have none, and one has a ring.
Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That
is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not
have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always
expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the
sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about
it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys'
philosophies-these over-simple answers. The problem is not simple and the
answer is not going to be simpler either.
What is the problem? A universe that contains much that is obviously
bad and apparently meaningless, but containing creatures like ourselves who
know that it is bad and meaningless. There are only two views that face all
the facts. One is the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone
wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been. The other
is the view called Dualism. Dualism means the belief that there are two
equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and
the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight
out an endless war. I personally think that next to Christianity Dualism is
the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. But it has a catch in
it.
The two powers, or spirits, or gods-the good one and the bad one-are
supposed to be quite independent. They both existed from all eternity.
Neither of them made the other, neither of them has any more right than the
other to call itself God. Each presumably thinks it is good and thinks the
other bad. One of them likes hatred and cruelty, the other likes love and
mercy, and each backs its own view. Now what do we mean when we call one of
them the Good Power and the other the Bad Power? Either we are merely saying
that we happen to prefer the one to the other-like preferring beer to
cider-or else we are saying that, whatever the two powers think about it,
and whichever we humans, at the moment,, happen to like, one of them is
actually wrong, actually mistaken, in regarding itself as good. Now it we
mean merely that we happen to prefer the first, then we must give up talking
about good and evil at all. For good means what you ought to prefer quite
regardless of what you happen to like at any given moment. If "being good"
meant simply joining the side you happened to fancy, for no real reason,
then good would not deserve to be called good. So we must mean that one of
the two powers is actually wrong and the other actually right
But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe a third
thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good
which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to. But
since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard, or the
Being who made this standard, is farther back and higher up than either of
them, and He will be the real God. In fact, what we meant by calling them
good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right relation to the
real ultimate God and the other in a wrong relation to Him.
The same point can be made in a different way. If Dualism is true, then
the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in
reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is
bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are
cruel for one of two reasons- either because they are sadists, that is,
because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual
pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get
out of it-money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power, and safety
are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing
them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. I do not mean,
of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean
that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some
good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you
cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when
you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because
kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty
is wrong-only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words
badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness
is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.
And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.
We called
sadism a sexual perversion; but you must first have the idea of a normal
sexuality before you can talk of its being perverted; and you can see which
is the perversion, because you can explain the perverted from the normal,
and cannot explain the normal from the perverted. It follows that this Bad
Power, who is supposed to be on an equal footing with the Good Power, and to
love badness in the same way as the Good Power loves goodness, is a mere
bogy. In order to be bad he must have good things to want and then to pursue
in the wrong way: he must have impulses which were originally good in order
to be able to pervert them. But if he is bad he cannot supply himself either
with good things to desire or with good impulses to pervert. He must be
getting both from the Good Power. And if so, then he is not independent. He
is part of the Good Power's world: he was made either by the Good Power or
by some power above them both.
Put it more simply still. To be bad, he must exist and have
intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in
themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even
to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you now begin to
see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That
is not a mere story for the children. It is a real recognition of the fact
that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers which enable evil
to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a
bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things-resolution,
cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why Dualism, in a strict
sense, will not work.
But I freely admit that real Christianity (as distinct from
Christianity-and-water) goes much nearer to Dualism than people think. One
of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament
seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe-a
mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease,
and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was
created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong.
Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does
not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil
war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied
by the rebel.
Enemy-occupied territory-that is what this world is. Christianity is
the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in
disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of
sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret
wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us
from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and
intellectual snobbery.
I know someone will ask me, "Do you really mean, at
this time of day, to reintroduce our old friend the devil-hoofs and horns
and all?" Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I
am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer
is "Yes, I do."
I do not claim to know anything about his personal
appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that
person, "Don't worry. If you really want to, you will Whether you'll like it
when you do is another question."
