Mykell A's Response to "What Christians Believe"

So, I must start out by saying that I found the paragraph above the start of the section to be very entertaining.  I always think of those who convert to Christians as people who are suddenly a lot happier about life, but I guess it’s possible for someone to finally have to reluctantly “give in” and become a Christian after failing over and over to prove there is no god. 

And so I begin my response to the reading assignment I was given, “What Christians Believe”.   I must admit that I was surprised to see that C.S. Lewis had written a section in our text book, and I was pretty excited to read it.  From what I gathered, Lewis had spent a lot more time thinking about how to logically prove that there is a god than I had throughout my life.  I guess I’ve just always known, and so there wasn’t as much to think about, but this article helped me to see the logic in Christianity.

I found it amusing that he pointed out that you can’t just have things be simple in life, and therefore it makes no sense that people would claim that things are the way they are just because that’s the way God made them to be and other such excuses for what they don’t know.  At the same time, he mentions that there are people who say that the closer you come to being wise, the more you realize that things aren’t just black and white, and that even good deeds contain a bit of evil in them and vice versa.  I couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t true, since if it’s something you know that God wants you to do no matter what, you should do it!  None of this shades-of-grey stuff! 

One point that I really liked about this article was the distinction between Satan being a fallen angel as opposed to him just having come into existence as an evil being who thought his ways were best.  It reminded me of a discussion a friend of mine from high school had with me.  She was convinced that Satan had just come into existence all on his own and that he was pure evil from the very beginning and had never had an ounce of godliness in him at all.  I tried to explain to her what those who are LDS believe, but she refused to even let me speak, saying that I was just speaking blasphemy and should keep quiet.  (Her mom had told her that she could join any church she wanted but the one I went to, since we “worshiped Satan”.  The funny thing is, I had told her pretty much all of the basic church doctrine before her mom told her this, showing all this evidence to her that LDS people are Christians, and yet she believed her mom over me, and she had known me for six years.  Yet just like that she accepted that her mom was right and that I was a follower of Satan.  She told me once that she prayed every day that I would convert to her religion.  This was approximately two days after she had just told me that she didn’t believe she had found the true church or if there even was one.  So why was she trying to convert me to her not-true religion?  Strange… ) 

Lewis provided a great argument, though.  He basically said that if God is stronger than Satan (which no Christian can deny, I’d hope), then why doesn’t He just put an end to Satan’s rule over the earth?  Well, that’s because he must respect freedom of will, which explains why He allows us humans to do what we want, even though He doesn’t always like what we choose to do with our freedom.  Still, it must be worth it to Him for us to have our agency, since He’s allowed us to have it. 

I really liked this article, and it was fun to read it from the LDS perspective, especially since Lewis’ arguments were so in line with what we believe.  It was really quite amazing, and got me to think a lot more about the logical arguments in favor of Christianity as opposed to the largely spiritual ones that I’ve relied on throughout my life (not that those are bad at all, and they’re even more powerful than logic, in my opinion).