Well, I finally did it: got through Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It only took me 48 years to do it. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I first learned of the book when several of my friends were reading and speaking well of it during our sophomore year in college. I was a nominal Christian at the time and had never heard of C.S. Lewis, the whole Narnia thing having passed me by in the 1950s. I marked this as a book I should read.

Over the years, beginning in 1975 when I read The Screwtape Letters, I came to know Lewis better and better. Mere Christianity eluded me, however, or I avoided it. Then my co-teacher of our adult Sunday school class thought this might be a good book to have a lesson series on. I picked up a copy and started reading it. I bogged down a couple of chapters in, and set it aside.

A couple of months ago I asked if my co-teacher had a biography of Lewis I had loaned him. He returned it along with a copy of Mere Christianity, saying he was pretty sure I had loaned that to him as well. I couldn’t find a copy in my house, so I accepted it as my own.

I read it in 15 sittings in October and early November. I didn’t find it all that hard to read, and wondered why I bogged down on previous readings. Lewis has a different way of looking at things and describing them in non-church language.

The contents of this book were adapted from radio broadcasts Lewis made during World War 2. Lewis went on the BBC to provide information and comfort for a war-weary land. In the Preface to this book, he explained his purpose.

…I have thought the best…service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has  been common to nearly all Christians at all times.

He also explained what wasn’t his purpose.

…I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two Christian ‘denominations’. You will not learn from me whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic. This omission is intentional.

Why did Lewis decide to make his broadcasts in this manner?

…the questions which divide Christians from one another often involve points of high Theology or even ecclesiastical history…

And Lewis achieved this in the book. He talked about “mere” Christianity, or, perhaps another way to understand it is Christianity stripped of everything that divides us. leaving only what unites us. The examples of this in the book are many, and I’ll not give them here.

Lewis is considered an intellectual, which was probably the reason I delayed so long to read this, thinking it would be difficult to understand. It really wasn’t. The first few chapters deal with moral codes that are common to all cultures. Where do they come from? Lewis concluded that the universality of these codes was evidence that they came from God, an important discovery on his road first to theism then to Christianity.

If you haven’t read this, I urge you to do so. It was excellent, and will help any Christian better understand the faith.

For this book, there’s no question that this will become part of my permanent library. I don’t think I’ll reread it immediately, but will someday.