Tonight we had the first session of our Mere Christianity Book Club. We had a large group. I'd guess about twenty or so.It was hard to cover the first two sections and do them justice as they deal with so many big topics in such a short space. We discussed the case Lewis makes for a universal impulse for determining right from wrong. This led into the need to find a transcendent cause or source for morality. The sense most people have of the world's brokenness and the need for healing moved us toward the Christian idea of Jesus as savior--the very center of God's strategy to make the world right.
Our next session will be held on February 21, 7:00pm. You're welcome to join us. We'll be discussing Section 2, Chapter 5 and all of Section 3.
In case you didn't catch it in my post last Tuesday, the entire book is available for free online. The entire text is there, downloadable as a pdf, and available as audio. CLICK HERE.
From Book Two, What Christians Believe, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"--
Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment