PWJ: S1E33 – MC B4C5 – “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers”

Today we encounter one of my favourite chapter titles in Mere Christianity: “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers”. Today we speak more about Christ’s Resurrection and what it achieved, and how we can benefit from it.

This is our first remote episode. Matt moved to New York this month, so over the next few weeks we’ll be working out technical issues as we get used to doing this podcast remotely over the next.

Please send any objections, comments or questions, either via email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack or message us via Instagram!

Episode 33: The Obstinate Toy Soldiers (Download)

— Show Notes —

• Giovanna, whose email we read on a previous episode sent me a message asking why it was that Matt has seen no movies. Matt blames it on being a colossal nerd. 

• We also had a message from Katie, asking about the analogy I gave concerning free will. In this episode, I have another go at trying to explain it… Imagine that I see a football match live. I later watch a recording of that game with my friends who didn’t see it. I know exactly what is going to happen as we watch it, but that doesn’t mean that those players didn’t have free will when they played that game.

Katie also had her own explanation, drawn from Parade, a song by Go Fish, which describes life as a parade where we can only see what’s right in front of us, whereas God sees the whole parade. Lewis earlier gave a similar comparison, describe life as a line on a piece of paper, along which we move…whereas God can see the whole page. 

• We also had some more feedback from our friend Greg following the mailbag episode. 

• Since this week’s chapter is about our resistance to the divine life, our Quote-of-the-week comes from our favourite of Lewis’ works:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

• The drink-of-the-week was Laphroaig 10 year single malt scotch. Matt was a peasant and added ice to his scotch.

• In Chapter 1 of Book IV, Lewis ended by saying that the world is like a sculptor’s shop where we are statues and that there is a rumour going around that some of us are going to come to life. In today’s chapter this image is tweaked slightly. Lewis compares us to tin soldiers…

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

• Also in Chapter 1, Lewis contrasted natural life, which he called “bios”, and supernatural life, which he called “zoe”. In today’s chapter he suggests that if mankind had never fallen, our bios life might have automatically been drawn up into the zoe life. However, we did fall, so Lewis doesn’t spend much more time on that. Instead, he spends some time describing how bios and zoe are now in conflict with each other…

“The two kinds of life are now not only different (they would always have been that) but actually opposed. The natural life in each of us is something self-centered, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

This conflict between “bios” and “zoe” is expressed in different ways in the New Testament. In particular, I’m thinking of St. Paul’s description of the spirit and the flesh and his interior battle in Romans 7:

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me

Romans 7:18-19

• I pointed out that we see even in things as mundane as going to the gym and eating well that, although we know that these things are good for us, part of us naturally rebels against it.

Matt brings up a point that is addressed elsewhere in Mere Christianity that both good an bad activities have “cumulative interest” in the sense that they incline us further towards the same sort of activity. 

• Now Lewis considers translates the ideas of “bios” and “zoe” into the idea of little tin soldiers becoming real men:

“Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

I pointed out that this was the opposite problem Buzz Lightyear had in the movie Toy Story (which Matt, although actually having seen the movie, he of course, couldn’t remember at all) when Woody tries to convince him “You are a toy!”

• So how does Jesus fit into all this? Jack talks about the Incarnation. I spoke for a little while about how, as Christians, we take too lightly the idea God becoming man. I spoke about the Carmen Christi from Philippians which emphasizes Jesus’ humility in becoming man and I mentioned how shocking this idea is Muslims: 

“…[Jesus became] a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

• The result of the Incarnation was the beginning of a new humanity:

“The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be: one man in whom the created life, derived from his Mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the divine Son”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

• Jesus’ life involved death, even long before the crucifixion:

“And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, “killed,” He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn-poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture.”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

• When He rose again, it wasn’t just that Divinity rose from the grave, humanity came too:

“The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God….”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

…and this was a new beginning:

“For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier – real tin, just like the rest – had come fully and splendidly alive”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

• So what if Jesus represented a new humanity? How does that affect us? We might think this if we view each human person as fundamentally separate. However, Lewis points out that we are all connected to each other:

“For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well: and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It would look like one single growing thing – rather like a very complicated tree”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

Not only that, we are connected, not only to each other, but also to God:

“Every man, woman, and child all over the world is feeling and breathing at this moment only because God, so to speak, is ‘keeping him going’”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

The result of Jesus’ resurrection is that this Zoe life is now transmitted throughout humanity:

“From that point the effect spreads through all mankind. It makes a difference to people who lived before Christ as well as to people who lived after Him. It makes a difference to people who have never heard of Him. It is like dropping into a glass of water one drop of something which gives a new taste or a new colour to the whole lot”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

I compared this to the mingling of the water and wine in the Rite of Holy Communion.

• So Jesus has now done His bit, but does that mean that we’re now all saved? Well, not quite…

“…the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us. Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work – the bit we could not have done for ourselves – has been done for us. Humanity is already “saved” in principle”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

It is important point to emphasize is that this salvation is a gift:

“We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

Our part is to open ourselves up to Jesus:

“If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us…. if we get close to Him we shall catch [“the good infection”] from Him”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

Matt spoke about the book The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen where the author encourages his readers (1) to trust Jesus and (2) to be grateful to God.

• Lewis closes out the chapter by renewing his request to Christians to not quarrel with each other concerning their preferred formulations of this process:

“You can say that Christ died for our sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death. They are all true. If any of them do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other people because they use a different formula from yours.”

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 5)

I shared my podcast review of Joy Clarkson‘s podcast, “Speaking with Joy”:

“I heard Joy Clarkson’s podcast mentioned in an online CS Lewis group. I went over to her podcast and, to my great excitement found that she was just finishing up a series of episodes on my favourite CS Lewis book, The Great Divorce. Naturally, I immediately binged all those episodes. Joy’s thoughtful commentary is a delight to listen to and you would do well to subscribe”

iTunes review for podcast “Listening with Joy”

Matt told us about a guy he met who built a Narnia room hidden in his house behind a wardrobe. I let it be known that this is something I see being in my own house some day…