God's Incarnation: Confronting Evil and Establishing Morality

Thank you. Good evening!

I hope you all are doing well. It's great to virtually see you and to see some of you commenting in the chat. I'm so grateful for your presence and for being here.

It's Thursday night, and I'm so excited about it! I'm glad to be back with you again. It's been a fantastic week, and I hope it's been a great week for you since the last time we gathered together on these wonderful nights. If you're watching after the fact and you're just catching up on different days, welcome all the same! I'm so glad that you're here with us.

In fact, we have so many tuning in after the fact, and I'm very, very grateful for that. But for those of you that are here right now, it's great to see you. I'm so grateful for your presence and for being with us.

For those of you who don't know, I'm in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, I'm back in Columbus, Ohio now. I just spent two days away, managed to drive down to the lovely country that is Tennessee. I mean country at times; every one of these states feels like a different place. I spent a lot of time in Tennessee just for a day to recognize my grandfather, Fred Hardman, for all of his years of service with a beautiful portrait that will hang in The Graduate School of Theology. I'm really grateful to them and to be able to be there and spend time with my family before turning around and coming right back. I got back here, taught class last night, and then I'm back here with you all tonight. Truly grateful!

I see others are tuning in all the way from Texas, and we've got those in Ohio. I know in the past we have people from Florida, China, and Washington State. I mean, it's just fantastic to see so many people from so many different places.

Some of you may not know, but actually this same class, the same course in essence, we are teaching live on campus every Tuesday night here. We have about 20 to 25 students that are actively engaged in that each Tuesday night. We have food, and we spend time having these discussions. We go through this wonderful book together, and it's really been a wonderful experience so far. I hope it's been a great one for you.

I have had a lot of notes from individuals thanking me for the notes and the different things that we're adding. Use the day after, on Friday or something like that, going in there, and even some Bible study type materials you can look at. I'm glad you like those; I'm glad those are helpful in that premise, and I will do my best to continue to do that and provide those each and every week so that you can continue your studies and continue your readings.

I really do hope you're enjoying the reading through this book. We have so much to cover tonight, so with that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and just dive right into the slides because, boy, these Book Two chapters one, two, and three are heavy. They're meaty; they're good! So we're going to dive right in.

I'm going to minimize myself down here. I hope you can see where we're at. We are in Book Two, chapters one through three, and this is often, if you have the assist in your titles, it's often called "The Rivals," "The Invasion," and "The Shocking Alternative."

As we've laid forth, Lewis has laid forth these first couple of weeks the premise of moral law and made really some arguments back and forth on this idea of almost like the conscience—that there is something underlying that is there for us that speaks to us in a way that would not have just evolved naturally through time.

So with that in mind, we're going to dive straight in and look at this next chapter of Book Two called "The Rival," which speaks to the overall premise of exploring two contrasting conceptions of God: the Christian God and the pantheistic God.

From the Christian God, as Lewis describes it, is a transcendent personal deity who exists beyond the material universe. This God is the creator of all things and is intimately involved with His creation. He is a separate entity from the world; thus, He is not bound by it. He is not made by it, and that's very different than the pantheistic view.

This is where Lewis gives a description of this. The pantheistic God, on the other hand, is the idea that God is synonymous with the universe itself. In pantheism, there is no distinction between God and the material world; everything is considered God. Pantheism often characterizes God as an impersonal abstract force or principle. He's just kind of there.

Now, Lewis makes some distinctions in this, and these are fairly important distinctions. He argues that the two conceptions of God are fundamentally different and irreconcilable. The Christian God is a personal being who stands apart from His creation, while the pantheistic God is an impersonal, all-encompassing entity that is essentially the universe.

So Lewis contends that it's crucial to distinguish between these two concepts because they have significant implications for how individuals view the world, morality, and the relationship with the divine. He asserts that the Christian conception of God as a personal Creator provides a foundation for morality and purpose, whereas the pantheistic view lacks the same basis for moral values and personal significance.

So he goes back to his original argument that there's something inherently within us that is different than the world and cannot have created itself in essence.

Diving into a lot of the quotes, I told you there's some meaty quotes tonight, so we've got quite a few of these, and we're just going to move quite a bit through because, I'll be honest with you, I may have just done better just by quoting the whole entire three chapters or just reading it aloud. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing that, but I will obviously add some comments along the way.

Please feel free, if there are some quotes or anything that you love or that really hit you this week, put them in the chat. Let me know; I'd love to know which ones stood out to you. Those would be fantastic!

So we'll read through these, and I'll make some comments because I really do want to let Lewis speak here when it comes to these arguments.

"If you are a Christian, you do not have to believe that all 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 those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was a young atheist, I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race had always been wrong about the question that matters to them most."

So this is a fascinating opening premise because he kind of wants to underline something very quickly. If you are a Christian, you do not have to believe that all of the religions are simply wrong all throughout. In fact, there are a lot of things that you can learn from other religious faiths where these underlying truths seem to come through.

Some of my examples where there are obviously, you know, Mormonism and Christianity—many Mormons would claim Christianity, and in some contexts, you could see very easily the underlying value systems that might be there, especially when it pertains to family and things of that nature. But you also then have Islam and Judaism and these other major world religions, and there is a lot of good that is found within them. There are things that are even moral and righteous in those premises.

So Lewis is saying if you're a Christian, it doesn't mean that you have to just look at another thing and say, "Well, because one thing's wrong, all things must be inherently wrong." But if you're an atheist, you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions on the whole is simply one huge mistake.

And I do love that he says, "When I was an atheist, I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race had always been wrong about the questions that matter most to them."

That's an interesting premise to think about—that everybody had to have automatically been wrong about the most important thing: Where do we come from? Who are we? What's our purpose?

From there, he goes on to say, "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."

So he gives this quantification, in essence, this qualification where eventually the Christian will say, "Though, when it comes to these other things, when there are major differences, I believe Christianity to be right and the others to be wrong."

They may have things about them that are true, that are good, that may be even holy in the morality sense of the word, but there is something ultimately that is different in those and thus is wrong because it is not the truth that is found in Christianity.

He notes this concept of 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."

So this is where he's going back to saying this is how I can find some things that are good about other faiths, other religions, and say, "Well, those things are good, not all the things that they say are wrong because some are nearer to being right than others."

From that point, he kind of dives into this, giving it some depth.

"The first big division of humanity is into the majority, those who believe in some kind of God or gods, and the minority, those who do not."

Now, historically, this has always been true. There's always been the larger group, in general, who believe in a God or gods and the minority who do not. Now, it would mostly be in the 20th century and even 21st century where you would have quite a few that are more atheistic or agnostic in some form. But that is a modern twist, a modern turn.

Now, there have always been those who have claimed some type of agnosticism or atheism historically, but it's always been the minority, and in all honesty, it's still historically numerically the minority.

Then he says, "On this point, Christianity lines up with the majority—lines up with the ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Stoics, Platonists, Hindus, Muhammadans, etc.—against modern Western European materialists."

So he's actually saying this is kind of a new construct that we're setting forth here, this idea that atheism or agnosticism, that there is no God, is not really something that's been accepted historically by any stretch of the imagination.

Definitely a big shout out to Jovan—great to see you, man! Appreciate you being here.

So the first of these views, the one that thinks God beyond good and evil, is called pantheism.

Now he's going to dive into pantheism a little bit deeper here.

So 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 Hegel and, as far as I can understand, by the Hindus. The other view is held by Jews, Muhammadans, and Christians.

So here he's kind of making the first division. Besides the idea that there are people who believe in God and people who do not, now he's saying within the religious realm, there are those who believe in the premise of pantheism and those who believe in what he would call Jews, Muhammadans, and Christians, and so forth.

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. 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.

So here he's making a very clear alliteration and an example of what it means to be the difference between a pantheist and those who would claim Christianity.

And I do want to reiterate again because a lot of times when I teach or when I'm speaking, people think I'm just referencing my own religious belief. I am specifically noting what Lewis is saying, and Lewis is laying forth very clearly.

He's trying to make a distinction, and we have to remind ourselves of this. He's talking about mere Christianity, the basic idea. He's not going into the doctrines; he's not going into all those different things. He's making a philosophical argument from the beginning, trying to lay these foundations.

From there, he's saying pantheists believe that God is just kind of in anything. He is all these things as opposed to Christianity, which kind of makes this argument that says a painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed.

So there's a difference between what pantheists believe—that God is kind of in everything. It's this Mother Nature, Mother Earth type of scenario. But nothing changes for Mother Earth, or everything changes from Mother Earth if you hurt Mother Earth. But nothing changes for God if He exists outside of the Earth.

So in this, he says, "Confronted with a cancer of a slum, the pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the Divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God.'"

And he's referencing even the evil or this cancer that is killing this individual.

Now notice here what Lewis says: "The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense, for Christianity is a fighting religion.'"

Now, I do want to note underneath here, this is a fascinating premise because he actually notes 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.

He is using the word quite literally in the terminology in the way it's meant. Yes, in our culture and our time of days—and candidly, most of our culture now, that's probably one of the least of the worst words that people use in some form or fashion.

But I do love that he quantifies it—that he actually goes back and says, "No, no, I meant that quite literally." Not literally just in that sense, but literally that it is those who would believe this will find eternal death.

The Christian replies, "Don't speak this way; that is nonsense." This idea that a cancer, in and of itself, from a Divine point of view, is also God.

From there, he notes, "If things God made the world, that space and time, heat and cold, now this is referencing kind of the premise of Christianity and all the colors 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."

Now, I love this because he's speaking in some fashion of Christianity as kind of a third person. Almost, it thinks God made this world—Christianity believes this—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes and all the animals and vegetables are things that God made up out of His head.

They were part of His creation, so the very act of creating, of inventing something, came from God as a man as we would make 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 here's where Lewis kind of changes a little bit and switches up a little bit. He says, "My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust."

But then he noticed, "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 uniform universe with when I called it unjust?"

So here's a fascinating notion because he's hearkening back to not only his own days as an atheist but also to his original notion of where did this come from? Where from my mind would I have come from this cruel or unjust?

So he's going back to this idea of it being created, but there's something wrong with this world. And then he was saying, "When I was an atheist, as I was looking at this world, I would look at it and go, 'Ah, it seems so cruel, so unjust.' And then my own logical brain started going, 'But how do I know what is just and unjust? Well, how do I know that unless there is a standard? How do I know a crooked line unless I've seen a straight one? What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?'"

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 had 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 a word without meaning.

Now, this is a fascinating philosophical argument that he's making here, that he's setting forth this very premise of simplicity of how we know these things. It doesn't make sense. In fact, how can you make sense of something if it shouldn't make sense to someone if there is no sense?

And so I love the way he puts it because he's a great scholar when it comes to writing. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist and then finding himself going, "What is fair and unfair? Well, how could I agree with this? I don't even know where the standard comes from."

In other words, that the whole of reality was senseless. There is no purpose to this. 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 had no meaning, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. That's too simple; it's too simple of an answer when it comes down to it.

And that purposelessness is truly something that Lewis said. From there, I mean, it makes no sense at all.

And I love this turn of phrasing, especially when you know of scripture and the walking in the light, that he says, "Just as if there was no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning."

So this leads him into "The Invasion," kind of the second part of his argument here, into this next chapter. This is the concept of the invasion of Christian theology into the world.

So now he's going not just from a God who created, but now he's trying to introduce Jesus, Satan, and other arguments and so forth.

So yes, Jovan notes, "Transcendence entails the capacity to transcend a threshold, to be able to transcend, to find meaning." Absolutely!

So from here, we see the central concept of this second chapter in "The Invasion" by God into the human world. Lewis suggests that Christianity presents a unique and radical idea: God became incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ, entering into the human realm to confront and overcome evil.

Within this, he deals with the very premise of dualism. Lewis begins by discussing the idea of a spiritual battle between good and evil, often referred to as dualism. He argues against dualism, emphasizing that it cannot explain the existence of moral values and the distinction between right and wrong.

He compares this invasion to an inside job, where God takes on human form to address the moral and spiritual crisis of humanity.

Lewis believes that the invasion serves as the solution to the problem of evil and moral wrongdoing and demonstrates God's commitment to redeeming humanity and reconciling it to Himself. He argues that the moral law—this is going back to the first chapters and the rest—which humans recognize and often fail to uphold, indicates the need for redemption and the divine invasion to restore the moral order.

Lewis concludes that the invasion represents a pivotal event in human history, with Jesus Christ as the central figure in the Christian faith.

And so the relevance of this is we will discuss the specific relevance of this. So I don't want us to miss this of Jesus and how this affects Christian theology and deepens our faith.

So some quotes from this next chapter, and then again, I told you these were just getting deeper and deeper into this, which is fantastic.

So he ends the chapter on atheism being too simple, and then he starts the next one with, "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.

Now, I want to lay this for you because this is actually a very prominent and fairly prevalent theology even within our world today. This is the "God is love; everything is okay" view. God wants to be your best friend. Jesus is over here begging for you just to pay attention to Him and spend time with Him.

That's the premise of the Jesus I often call the "feathered hair Jesus." He looks nice; he's just begging for your friendship. He's just really wanting you to be there with Him. You don't have to change; you don't have to do anything. In fact, there is no evil, really. It's just the good. Just accept, and there's no darkness, no everything else.

And that's highly problematic. You wouldn't believe how often this is an underlying message in a lot of Christian churches today.

And most will not see this automatically, but it is the underlying prevalence of their preaching. A lot of times, you can see this in the Prosperity Gospel. You can see this in a lot of—and I'm not necessarily just going after mega churches because small churches do this too. It's not just community churches. You can find this even, and not just in the denominational world, but at times even in churches that have lost their way, that have been part of the church because they buy into almost like feel-good Christianity, but they never speak the totality of the Gospel of everything that is there.

This next quote he says: "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 that the Christian doctrine is really held by an instructed adult, then they complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God, then 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 time."

This is a very real thing—that there are people who will dismiss any type of depth. So Christianity for them is on the surface. They never want to get into the depths of doctrine. They never want to get beyond the idea that God is love.

And this is such a huge thing.

Yeah, and I know, Dave, exactly—a straw man! Who would do such a thing? A lot of people!

And so this very premise of laying up these types of arguments and then not wanting to get into the depths of it all is a real thing that we deal with today. This was a real thing that Lewis was dealing with in the 1940s.

So I found it fascinating that he kind of deals with this in that manner.

"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 cannot have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we have 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 is just that queer twist about it that real things have."

So let's leave behind all these boys' philosophies, these oversimple answers. The problem is not simple, and the answer is not going to be simple either.

I do love that there's a kind of a dismissive tone in some ways where you can tell that this has been a straw man argument, and Lewis is just going, "Look, I'm dealing with this now in this manner, but let's leave this behind."

This idea that there's nothing really—everybody's fine, everybody's good, we don't really need Christianity—that's the Christianity people should believe.

Instead, he's going, "No, you have to deal with the problem of pain and suffering. You have to deal with the problem of evil. If you don't deal with it and you don't actually acknowledge it or see where it's coming from, then you miss a grand narrative that God has set forth and how we have arrived at the point that we are in our human history."

And so he gets to it. He says, "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."

So this is a philosophical problem.

And then he says, "There are only two views that face all of these 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 one of them bad—and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war."

I do love this because this has taken many forms. This dualism kind of goes back to even the idea of kind of the Mother Earth premise. We're all one; we're all the same—that kind of premise. But it also has to do with this concept of the yin and yang.

And so you see this in a lot of different religious groups too.

And from there, he gets to a point where he says, "But at the moment you say that," and he's referencing this idea of even acknowledging that the dualism proposes both a good and an evil.

And when you acknowledge that there's good and evil, the moment that you say that there is one that is good and one that is bad, you're actually having to deal with the fact that how do you know which one is good and how do you know which is bad?

Because you're making an argument specifically that if there is a dualism, that one of them is what you would want and the other one is something that you wouldn't want.

So he says, "But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe a third thing in addition to these two powers. This dualism, this good and this bad, some law or standard or rule of good to which one of the powers conforms and the other fails to conform to. But since the two powers are judged by the standard, then the standard or the being who made the 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 is in a wrong relation to Him.

So in essence, he's saying dualism in and of itself cannot work because dualism requires a standard. That means something had to have set that standard that is above these things and then dictated which one is good and which one is bad.

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 what Christianity has always said? That the devil is a fallen angel—that is not a mere story for 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.

So I want you to notice here when he's talking about good or bad, and when he gets to the point where he says, "Putting it more simply, to be bad, for something to be bad, if there is this dualism, he must exist and have intelligence and will."

So bad would have to exist on its own, but existence, intelligence, and will are in themselves good things. Therefore, he must be getting them from the good power.

They must be, in essence, the opposite. Even to be bad, he must borrow or steal from his opponent. What is he stealing? Resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself.

He's having to take from these different things, and that's why he's saying the devil himself is not some apparition that doesn't exist. It's not just a story for children, which is why Christian theology cannot dismiss the devil, cannot dismiss hell.

Because in and of itself, it shows it as a parasite—that which once was good, not created evil, and actually changes over.

And yes, David, you're spot on—Augustine and Aquinas would agree with this argument very much so.

And so the powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given to it by its goodness. These were good things meant for good that are now being used for evil.

And then he also says, "But I freely admit that real Christianity, as distinct from Christianity and water," which is his little side note on things, which is the one without any depth, "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 talks 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 we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Now, I do want to note, especially you have to remember this is taking place during World War II. So the idea of a rebellion within an underlying area—an area where there is a conquering nation that is superseding, that is evil in and of itself—and that you were in occupied territory would have really resonated with the people there, especially going out on the airwaves to British soldiers and others who would have been possibly in France and other places in occupied territory.

So fascinating premise!

So he's also making this very strong case that you cannot separate out from the scriptures the idea of Satan, the idea of evil.

And this is a key thing: 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, that there is a problem, but it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It's a civil war, a rebellion, that we are living in the 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 lingering into the secret wireless of our friends. You are listening in to the underground networks.

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. He does not want us diving into the depths of what it is and realizing the war and the rest that is going on around us.

And then he finishes up by saying this, and this is one of my favorite little quotes.

"Do you really mean at this time of day to reintroduce our old friend the devil—hoofs and horns at all?"

So he always kind of brings in an alternate view, in essence, and then he responds, "Well, what the time of day has to do with it, I do not know."

And I love that little thing because it's very much like a conversation one would have.

And then he says, "And I am not particular about the hoofs; it should be 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.'"

And so he kind of ends this chapter with this idea of, "Ah, you think I'm like, 'Oh man, you're just bringing up the devil again.' And he goes, 'Well, I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything because I just told you that I believe that this is real. This is a big part of that. But if you really do want to meet him, you will, and I'm not really sure you're going to enjoy it.'"

And so this leads us into this last chapter. The essential idea is the dilemma Lewis presents: either the moral law has a supernatural origin or it does not. If it does not, Lewis argues, there are troubling implications.

Diving straight into the quotes—fantastic quotes to deal with here.

"Christians then believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the prince of this world."

And of course, that raises problems. "Is this state of affairs in accordance with God's will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say. And if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?"

And so he lays forth this foundation.

From there, like I said, fantastic imagery, and his use of analogy is just wonderful.

"But anyone who had been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school room every night. You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.' Then she goes up one night and finds the teddy bear and the ink and the French grammar all lying on the ground. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy, but on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy."

The same thing arises in any regiment or trade union or school. You make a thing voluntary, and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.

So he basically speaks to this idea of laying out a foundation for the premise of free will, but also laying out this idea that, no, you can want something and know that it might not happen that way but still desire it and it still both be for you your will and also not your will.

What they ultimately might choose will probably be the same.

It will probably be the same in the universe. God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right.

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong. I cannot. If I think a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad.

And free will is what has made evil possible. The happiness which God designs from His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.

And for that, they must be free.

Now, this premise of free will is one that has been argued quite a bit in a lot of different ways. I do love Lewis's ironic simplicity with this, how he lays forth these arguments for free will.

But I do think that he plays off it really well when it comes to the premise of free will, but also that the way that he just noted will in and of itself can be both something that God wants but also knows that people will choose something different.

That it is not against God's will, but it also is against God's will. God desires something but allows you the free will to do it, knowing that you might choose something that is not good for you.

He still allows you the free will even though it is not His ultimate will that that happened.

Of course, God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way. Apparently, He thought it worth the risk.

And this is one of my favorite arguments that he makes: "Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him, but there is a difficulty in disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes. You could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him, you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. It is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on."

Now, one of the key things I would note is this is an argument I've seen people try to make with a lot of atheists and atheist friends and stuff that I have out there.

And unless you have the underlying premises of what Lewis has already set forth—specifically the idea that there is an inherent right and wrong that we all feel and experience historically—that it is something that is ingrained in each human being, that we have that premise, and then from there the power of evil and free will and the rest, this argument doesn't have a lot of basis behind it unless you have all that underlying construction.

And so it's not one that you can just come up and say, "You don't have the right to disagree with God." Just, "Well, because you know you don't."

Well, they might just turn around and say, "Well, I don't believe in God, so I'm not arguing against God. I don't believe He exists."

But if you have the foundational aspects of what Lewis has laid forth, and then you put forth this premise, it is very hard to refute this idea that He, being the source from which all your reasoning power comes from, you could be no more right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its source.

And I do love that last part. It's like cutting off the branch you're sitting on.

And I can only see almost see like a cartoon sitting there and doing something of that nature.

So how did the dark power go wrong? This is back to the premise of Satan, in essence. He's referencing power, the good, bad, dark power, and Satan here.

"No doubt we ask questions to which human beings cannot give an answer with any certainty. A reasonable and traditional guess based on our own experiences of going wrong can, however, be offered. The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first, wanting to be the center, wanting to be God. In fact, that was the sin of Satan, and that was the sin he taught the human race."

Notice this: "What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could be like gods."

In fact, you can actually remember what the specific word Satan used to—"Did God really say? Did He really say that this was the case?"

And they could set up their own as if they had created themselves, be their own masters, invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God.

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history: money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empire, slavery—the long and terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

Truly powerful statement there!

"That is why it is just not good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace from Himself because it is not there. There is no such thing."

Now, I would give this little caveat here. He's not referencing the premise of pleasures; he's not referencing the pleasures of this earth, physical pleasures, things of that nature.

He's referencing true happiness, true understanding when it comes to peace and joy and happiness apart from God Himself.

This is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended, civilizations are built up, excellent institutions devised, but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and it all slides back into misery and ruin.

In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice.

That is what Satan has done to us humans. We keep relying on things that do not and will not ultimately sustain us in any way, shape, or form. Our very nature requires and needs God to be sustained.

And then there's the response.

"So what did God do? First of all, He left us conscience—the sense of right and wrong. And all through history, there have also been people trying, some of them very hard, to obey it. None of them have ever quite succeeded. Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams. I mean those queer stories scattered all throughout the heathen religions about a God who dies and comes to life again and by His death has somehow given new life to men."

Now, I'll be honest with you, the second one's a little different for me. I'm not sure I necessarily see that as an actual reason, as something that I would actually throw out myself as an example in some form.

But it is fascinating that it is found in a lot of different religious groups or religious undertones that there are those things out there. But I don't find that as compelling as I do these other ones.

But thirdly, He selected one particular people, and I do love how the terminology he uses this and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was—that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct.

I really do find that fascinating as he speaks specifically of the Jewish people, that construct.

And then comes the real shock: "Among the Jews, there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if he was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says he has always existed. He says he is coming to judge the world at the end of time."

So he lays forth this entire argument of dualism, and then dualism doesn't work. And then he argues, and then, but there's still this underlying thing that we know.

And then there's these people who seem to have been given an insight into what God wants and who we are to be. And from then, all of a sudden, a man shows up, and he turns the world upside down because he starts making claims that he is God.

He claims to forgive sins. He says he has always existed. He says he is coming to judge the world at the end of time.

I mean, this is a key component of Christianity.

And one part of that claim tends to slip past this unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to.

I mean, the claim to forgive sins—any sins.

Now, this is a fascinating thing because, I'll be honest with you, we don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about this when it comes down to it.

We don't tend to think about the fact that it's one thing for me to forgive when someone sins against me. And Lewis makes this note: if somebody steals from you, you can forgive them. If somebody does something wrong to you, you can forgive them.

But then he turns and says it's a whole other thing for Him to forgive the sins of others—to forgive the sins that more people have sinned against me, to forgive the sins of other people outright about something that they have done against somebody else.

That He claimed to have the ability to forgive all sins—any sins—not just the ones that I had the ability to come to forgive in front of me, but that He was able to forgive all sins.

Fascinating distinction!

And the last note here that I just want to kind of close this out with tonight is this one where he closes this chapter—probably one of my favorite, if not one of the favorite quotes of all time.

It's also one that is fairly well known because what he says is, "When this Jesus came, it was very easy for people to just kind of make out these claims that he's just a moral teacher or all these types of things. But that's not an option."

He says this: "I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. Here, he would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice: 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 at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us; he did not intend to do so."

Now, that is, in and of itself, a powerful statement.

And more than anything, this speaks to the deity of Jesus. It speaks to the God aspect of Jesus, and it also lays forth from within Christianity on the whole.

There is no Jesus light. There is no—you can't come to Jesus and take Him just for His moral teachings or just the things that you like. It's not Buffet line Jesus either.

He is who He says He is, or He wasn't.

And this is where you often hear the saying, "Liar, lunatic, or Lord." That's who He is.

And for us, this is a key component because if there is no Jesus and there is no resurrection, there is no death, burial, and resurrection, then Christianity of itself is not what we know it to be.

It would not be true in that case.

But because it is, and this is who Jesus makes the claim to be, it's a very different premise than to look at Christianity on the whole and look even at trying to explain Christianity to people and say, "Look, you can't miss this. This is one of the key components that has to be understood."

So with that in mind, this is where we'll draw a close this evening.

I am, again, eternally grateful for you guys being with us—those that are watching after the fact, those that tune in along the way. You guys make my evening every week. I'm so grateful for your time, for your presence, for you being with us.

And let me just close out this "liar, lunatic, or Lord." If you have any questions about it, if you want to study, if you want to know more about Jesus, I know I'm here for you. I know there are others, even in the chat and the groups, that you can reach out to.

You may know them and not me personally, and I'm more than happy to help and support. If you've been invited to this group or online into my profile, wherever you may be seeing this on YouTube or Facebook, just know that we're here for you. We want to help you answer whatever questions you have.

As I've told my students for years, I never promised to have all the answers, but I do promise to do my best to look and to search alongside of you, and that's what I can promise you from that standpoint.

Thank you guys so much for being with us tonight and for being with me. You guys make my night every week, and I cannot wait to see you guys again.

I love you all. I appreciate you guys so much. Can't wait to see you again next week. It gets even better each and every week; it just gets a little bit deeper.

If you haven't had a chance, go back and watch the other videos too. You can see that and catch up with us.

Until then, have a wonderful week. We'll see you guys all next week. Thank you!