Man or Rabbit?

This addressed a fundamental issue of our modern condition. Can we just be “good” without being Christian? Lewis dissects this question and reveals the real motive behind it, a belief that one can escape the conviction that would come from knowledge that Christianity is actually true. As he puts it, when people ignore the real question, whether or not Christianity is true, they can remain “safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isn't someone inside?” It seems to stem from a fear that there could actually be some truth in the rumor, if he knows that there is no truth to it, he would not be asking the question at all.

We see this far too much in our current society, probably because we have, if possible, worsened morally. We would not like to be weighed by our countless wrongdoings, so we prefer to circumvent the true issue and instead focus on what we can do to appear “blameless”. This kind of thinking is appealing because we are able to keep from feeling guilty because we feel we are doing a good things. Even Christians do this, and it is important that we eradicate this kind of behavior because it supposes we can curry favor by acting a certain way, meanwhile there is “none who does good, no not one” (Romans 3:12). We cannot simply build our own ladder to heaven with our good works.

Going back to the ostrich-like behavior Lewis speaks of, he tells us that this kind of skirting around the truth, actually intentionally evading the truth, whether it be true or false, is the worst thing one can do. In doing this we are intentionally acting oblivious to the questions that life begs of our existence. We would not be hiding at all if we were not considering the fact that there may be truth to the claim. In ignoring truth we are not interested in acting as we should, but merely trying to bypass our purpose.

CS puts it best: “The idea of reaching 'a good life' without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up 'a good life' as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence.”