Home > Work > Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters

Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters QUOTES

Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters QUOTES

1 " But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage lumps on the shoulders- no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings... "

― C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters

2 " All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint
of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can
take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he
ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's
work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and
then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no "swank"
or "side," no putting on airs.
To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand,
it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all
of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is
going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful
society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy
is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."
If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come
away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic
and, in that sense, "advanced," but that its family life and its code of manners were rather
old-fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some
bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one
would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. "

― C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters