C. S. Lewis depicts Christianity as a hallway with doorways going into various rooms. You can't live in the hallway-you have to pick a room. Hence the different denominations. He urges us to be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. This makes the point that he is talking about Christianity, not any particular denomination. This is useful in our thinking about the different denominations today. It is necessary for us each to find a place where we feel at home and can express our faith.
His discussion of right and wrong as clues to the meaning of the universe is a detailed treatise, going where we usually care to tread-the existence of a moral law. The fact that we have broken it and put ourselves wrong with the power behind it. It is when this is realized that "Christianity begins to talk." Facing the "terrifying facts" and, at the same time, the questions that Christianity claims to answer. In other words, if Christ came to save us, what is he coming to save us from?
Lewis's response is powerful. "Either this man was and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit on Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God."
The relationship of loving self and neighbour and God, and understanding how they are interrelated, depends on loving God. This begins by obeying God.
Our choices are a combination of making a choice and realizing the various feelings and impulses that are the raw material of that choice. "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance"
Lewis argues that theology is like a map of learning and thinking about Christian doctrines. Doctrines are not God, they are only a kind of map. "It is not safe going to sea without a map."
This, I believe, has been the struggle of the church throughout the ages-determining the accuracy of our maps. The struggle is timeless.
Lewis talks about drawing us into the "personal life" of God. He uses a parable from the writings of George MacDonald about what God is doing in our lives: "You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage. But He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
He also makes a powerful comparison-Christ's work of making a new man to the process of tuning a horse into a winged creature. "Not mere improvement but transformation."
This last part is truly amazing because I got the general sense of God taking over, all powerful, doing so much beyond our thinking and imagining.
The more we get of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.
The last sentence of the book stands by itself: "But look for Christ and you will find Him and with Him everything else thrown in."
