PWJ: S1E36 – MC B4C7 – “Let’s Pretend”

Is pretending a good thing? In today’s chapter, Lewis explains why sometimes it’s a good thing to “fake it til you make it”.

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

Episode 36: Let’s Pretend (Download)

— Show Notes —

• The reason there wasn’t an episode last week was because my audio editing software (GarageBand) decided to eat the audio. 

• The quote-of-the-week:

“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted — i.e. keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station…asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone. You are in the right way. Walk — don’t keep on looking at it.”

C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

• Matt and I haven’t managed to synchronize on scotches yet, so our drink-of-the-week is pretty simple: Dos Equis.

• Matt would love to meet up with any New York listeners. Please feel free to send us an email.

• This past week we passed the 10,000 download mark, with over 450 people downloading the episode on the first day. Thank you to everyone who subscribes, has written reviews and shared this podcast with their friends! You guys rock…

• In previous episodes, we had recounted the story of Lewis giving his money to a beggar and his companion challenging him about it. Based on Douglas Gresham’s telling of the story, we had said that the companion was JRR Tolkien. However, I recently discovered that it was Walter Hooper, Lewis’ secretary towards the end of his life. I found this out by watching a series of interviews by Eric Metaxas.  The point in the video where Hooper describes this event happening outside The Lamp and Flag can be found here.

• Matt told the story about when Lewis convinced Hooper to play a prank on his live-in nurse (contradicting the impression you’d get from portrayals of Lewis such as those in Shadowlands):

“Jacobs records another story that captures his good spirits from the time. Following his resignation, Lewis sent his secretary, Walter Hooper, to collect his things from his rooms at Cambridge–including an extraordinary number of books for which he had little room. Back at the house, writes Jacobs, some comedy ensued when Lewis talked Hooper into building a wall of books around the sleeping body of Alec Ross, Lewis’s live-in nurse, who had chosen the wrong time and place to take a nap”

Giving Thanks For C.S. Lewis

• I recommended to Matt Eric Metaxas’ book, Bonhoeffer, since I knew he was a fan. We have agreed both of us to read Life Together.

• Jack begins by reminding us of two stories where pretense leads to reality. The first was Beauty and the Beast. The second was a story where a man wears a mask for a year and his face becomes confirmed to the beautiful shape of the mask.

• Next, Lewis draws our attention to the opening words of the “Our Father”:

“…Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

When we realize what these words mean, we realize how far short we fall from them:

“…the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God. You are not being like The Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centred fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

The strange thing is that this is what God has told us to do:

“…this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• Lewis explains that not all pretending is bad.  For example, he saw children’s games as a good kind of pretending:

“They are always pretending to be grown-ups-playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so that the pretence of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• I delivered my flawless Batman impersonation.

• He also pointed out that if you pretend to be friendly when you are not, it typically has the effect of making you more friendly:

“When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• When we realize we’re falling so, we quickly recognize ways in which we could make our dressing up as Christ less of a pretense:

 “Now, the moment you realise ‘Here I am, dressing up as Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretence could be made less of a pretence and more of a reality… You will find several things going on in your mind which would not be going on there if you were really a son of God. Well, stop them… Or you may realise that, instead of saying your prayers, you ought to be downstairs writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash-up. Well, go and do it”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

It is Jesus who is affecting the change:

“The Christ Himself… is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretence into a reality… He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

…and not simply a fancy way of talking about your conscience:

“This is not merely a fancy way of saying that your conscience is telling you what to do… If you simply ask your conscience, you get one result: if you remember that you are dressing up as Christ, you get a different one. There are lots of things which your conscience might not call definitely wrong (specially things in your mind) but which you will see at once you cannot go on doing if you are seriously trying to be like Christ. For you are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person… It is more like painting a portrait than like obeying a set of rules. And the odd thing is that while in one way it is much harder than keeping rules, in another way it is far easier”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

We’ll be addressing the question of whether Christianity is hard or easy in a later episode.

• Some might not have an experience of Christ directly helping them, but do have experience of other people helping them:

“…[It] is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings… He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti-Christian… But above all, He works on us through each other… Men are mirrors, or ‘carriers’ of Christ to other men… That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important… Sometimes unconscious carriers. This ‘good infection’ can be carried by those who have not got it themselves. People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

Lewis even suggests that using other people is God’s favourite method.

• We discussed why Lewis says that he thinks a person could come closer to Christ, even when it looks like they are rejecting Christianity. This reminded me of the following passage from Surprised By Joy:

“the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing,’ he went on. ‘All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once’…”

Surprised By Joy, Chapter 14

• Lewis compares God’s pretense to that of a mother teaching her child to read:

“At first it is natural for a baby to take its mother’s milk without knowing its mother. It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him. But we must not remain babies. We must go on to recognise the real Giver”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• He encourages us to always recognize the real Giver behind the gifts. Jack also encourages to recognize that the earthly instruments God uses are flawed creatures:

“…if we do not, we shall be relying on human beings. And that is going to let us down. The best of them will make mistakes; all of them will die. We must be thankful to all the people who have helped us, we must honour them and love them. But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it””

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

I spoke about all the people who had impacted my life, both living and dead, and how they communicated God’s life and love to me.

• Matt spoke briefly about the current scandals in the Catholic Church. In particular, he mentioned a recent video from Bishop Barron.

Matt also quoted evangelist Matthew Kelly:

I think I’m always struggling with some aspect of the Church. The Church is not perfect. Find a perfect church, join it, and it won’t be perfect anymore. 

A Conversation With Matthew Kelly

• As the chapter draws to a conclusion, Lewis emphasizes that this transformation by Christ is not just an exercise in reading comprehension:

“Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out – as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out… It is a living Man… really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity. 

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• He also comments that we start to notice our sinful nature:

“…We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

When performing the evening examination of conscience, Jack notes that his mind is always quick to give a defense for his lack of charity in a particular situation:

…the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself… surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

He compares it to rats in the cellar:

“If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

This reveals our desperate need for God’s action to make this transformation possible:

“I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if (as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do-if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are-then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about… After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God. 

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

It is God who acts in us, raising us up to become sons:

“I have been talking as if it were we who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God who does everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to us. In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending… to make the pretence into a reality.”… I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does. We treat our dogs as if they were ‘almost human’: that is why they really become ‘almost human’ in the end”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 7)

• I ended with my podcast-review-of-the-week:

“Comedy of the Week” is a production of BBC Radio 4. Every Sunday night they offer an episode from some British Comedy programme. Whether it’s the delightfully awful puns of Tim Vine, or fast-paced episodes of “Just a minute”, it offers a wide sample of the best in current British comedy.

iTunes Review for “Comedy of the Week”