Mere Christianity – by C.S Lewis (A Reflective Book review)

I’m thankful for the little time machines that can be found almost everywhere in our world!

You’re probably thinking..“Time machines?? What do you mean?!”

Well, they only exist for people who take notice, who pick them up from dusty shelves of their homes or the public libraries and peek into them…

You guessed it right, I mean Books!

Delving into a good book or reading a quote by a famous person, I’ve always thought how wonderful it is that words, spoken or written down in a book can immediately transport us into the mind of the author, which is much different that our own. And how reading someone’s thoughts and stories laid out on blank pages exhilarate our own imaginations and become a portal to another era altogether, especially if you’re reading something from the past or of historical significance. That’s why I think books can be considered as portals to other people minds, and vehicles to traverse thoughts, inspirations, imaginations and maybe time itself in our mind’s eye. Books may be the only thing closest to a “time machine” of sorts we have in our day.

And indeed this was a recurring thought in my mind as I read Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis. Lewis was born in 1898, almost a 100 years before I was born. And yet, here I was, able to read his thoughts and get insight into the compelling arguments he made about Christianity. Books indeed are a marvel. No wonder people of all civilizations before us have almost always left behind writings and artifacts that contain writings. And so am I, right now, typing away on my computer.

Well, coming onto the matter of the book itself, I think its A MUST read for everyone on earth. You may ask why and the reason is summed up interestingly in quote by C.S Lewis, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

So it’s a must read for the believer and unbeliever alike, for the saint and the skeptic, for the pious and the post-modernist. Not only because it deals with the central doctrines of Christianity, but also because it deals with questions that should be answered before one concludes the veracity of Christianity. These are questions about human nature, morality and the basis for ‘moral’ standards, whether ‘good’ and ‘evil’ truly exist and ‘rival concepts of God‘ (as Lewis calls them) laid out in different world religions, while exemplifying why the Christian worldview is the only one which makes sense of the human condition and our need for God.

And if you are someone who is not interested in these questions, you might have more of a reason to pick up this book, as I strongly believe that it will help you weed through certain notions and ‘feel good’ philosophies you might have picked up in your life that immerse much our world today.

Here is what the Los Angeles times had to say about Mere Christianity – “Lewis, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.“

So if you’re a Christian, or someone who isn’t but is beginning to wet their feet into the idea of the existence of God or as some call it “a higher power“, this book cannot be more highly recommended!