Latest / Reformed Thinking / Let's Pretend | C. S. Lewis

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Let's Pretend | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the show. We're calling this one Reformed
• 0:03
  Thinking. Good to be here.
• 0:04
  We're doing something pretty specific today.
• 0:07
  We've taken a stack of sources, all from the world of theology,
• 0:10
  and we're going to try and, you know, pull out the most
• 0:12
  practical Nuggets for you. We want to see how these old,
• 0:15
  sometimes pretty dense ideas apply to the reality of your
• 0:19
  life right now. And I think it's good to set the
• 0:21
  ground rules for this deep dive. When we say Reformed thinking,
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  we are being really precise. We're two Protestant Christians,
• 0:29
  and we're looking at all this material through a very
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  particular lens. We're trying to ground our whole
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  discussion in the historic tradition of Reformed theology.
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  Yeah, and for us, that means keeping things consistent with,
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  say, the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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  Exactly gives us a framework. It does.
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  We're not just, you know, reading a text in isolation.
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  We're looking for a systematic understanding of how God relates
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  to his people, and for this deep dive, we're focusing on CS
• 0:56
  Lewis. Specifically, Mere Christianity.
• 0:59
  That's right. But we're not even doing the
• 1:00
  whole book. We are zooming way in on just
• 1:03
  one chapter. It's titled Let's Pretend.
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  In that title, it's a chapter that stops a lot of people in
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  their tracks. It stopped me.
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  I mean, think about that title for a second.
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  Let's pretend, right? In most Christian circles, and
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  honestly in most moral frameworks in general,
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  pretending is a bad word. It's a negative thing.
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  It immediately makes you think of hypocrisy, yes.
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  Yeah, it implies being fake, putting on a show.
• 1:28
  Yeah. We're usually taught that
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  authenticity is, you know, the highest virtue.
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  Be true to yourself. So when CS Lewis, who is usually
• 1:35
  so rigorously logical, comes along and tells me that the next
• 1:38
  step in my spiritual life is to play a game of make believe.
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  You have to pause. You do.
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  Why is he advocating for something that on the surface
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  just sounds like lying? And that's the hook, isn't it?
• 1:49
  It seems so counterintuitive. And I think our mission for this
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  deep dive is really to unpack that tension.
• 1:55
  We need to get a handle on the distinction Lewis is making
• 1:58
  between deception, which is, you know, hiding who you really are,
• 2:02
  and aspiration, which is more like acting like who you want to
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  become. I know we're going to get into
• 2:07
  some pretty heavy concepts later on.
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  I saw the notes about was it rats in the cellar?
• 2:12
  Oh yeah, that. Sounds, yeah, and very Lewis.
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  It is a strong image and it connects directly to what we
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  believe about human nature, about sin from a reformed
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  perspective. But before we get to the rats,
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  we really have to understand the mask.
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  The mask. OK, so Lewis kicks this whole
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  chapter off with two stories. He says let me put 2 pictures in
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  your mind. The first one is a classic fairy
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  tale, one we all know, Beauty and the Beast.
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  And most people know the Disney version, of course, but the
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  original story has a specific detail that Louis really zeries
• 2:44
  in on, right? So the story is the girl is
• 2:46
  forced to marry this monster. She does it, but the key detail
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  Louis highlights is that she kisses the monster as if it were
• 2:53
  a man. Even though it isn't.
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  Not at all. She treats this beast with the
• 2:58
  dignity and the affection that you would give to a human being
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  and because she treats him that way.
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  He actually becomes a man. Exactly.
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  The act of treating him as something he wasn't helped turn
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  him into what he could be. It's a fascinating idea.
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  And then he immediately pairs that with a second story.
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  This one's a bit more obscure, but it's just as effective.
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  Yeah, the one about the man who wore a mask.
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  Right, a man who had to wear a mask for years, and this mask
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  made him look much nicer, much more benevolent than he actually
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  was on the inside. He was, for all intents and
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  purposes, hiding his true face. He was.
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  And here's the twist. When he finally took the mask
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  off, years and years later, he found that his own face had
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  actually grown to fit it. He had become the man in the
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  mask. So what started out as a
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  complete disguise, A deception, it became a reality.
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  That is the principle Lewis is building the entire chapter on.
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  He's making a pretty bold argument that the external
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  action the putting on can actually shape the internal
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  nature. And this isn't just like pop
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  psychology. Fake it till you make it.
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  No, not at all. This is getting at the very
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  mechanics of what we call sanctification, how we change.
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  OK, so let's bring this down to earth.
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  Louis transitions from these fairy tales to something that
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  pretty much every Christian does, maybe without even
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  thinking about it. The Lord's Prayer.
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  Our Father. Just those two words, we see
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  them so automatically, our Father who art in heaven.
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  But Louis, he stops us right there.
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  He says, do you have any idea what you were doing when you say
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  those words? You're pretending.
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  It's a really startling claim when you first hear it, but you
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  have to follow his logic. When you say our Father, you are
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  putting yourself in the place of a Son of God.
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  You are standing in a position that legally and naturally
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  belongs to one person, Jesus Christ.
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  And Lewis then immediately reminds us of what we actually
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  are. If I look at myself honestly in
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  the mirror or if I listen to my internal monologue for 5
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  minutes, I am not naturally acting like a son of God.
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  Lewis calls this a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes,
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  greeds, jealousies and self conceit.
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  And that is the Westminster Confession right there.
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  I mean, that's the doctrine of total depravity in a nutshell.
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  We aren't born naturally inclined toward God's will.
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  Not even a little bit. No, we are born inclined towards
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  self. So when this bundle of greed and
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  jealousy stands up and says, Our Father presenting himself as if
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  he shares the will and the interests of God, that is, as
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  Lewis puts it, a piece of outrageous cheek.
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  Well, rageous cheek. I love that phrase.
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  It's so British, but it's true. It's audacious.
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  It is almost disrespectful, isn't it?
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  It would be except for one small detail.
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  What's that? We were ordered to do it.
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  Right. It's not arrogance if you're
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  obeying a direct command, but it is still pretending we're
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  dressing up as Christ. And this brings us to the core
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  distinction. Why pretend?
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  What is the good of it? And this is where Lewis breaks
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  it down into two clear categories.
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  There's bad pretending, and then there's good pretending.
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  OK, let's define those because that's critical.
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  Yeah, bad pretending is what we usually think of when we hear
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  the word. Correct.
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  Bad pretending is when the pretense is there instead of the
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  real thing. It's the substitute.
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  So like the man who promises to help you and he acts like he's
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  going to help you, smiles. Pats you on the back.
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  But has absolutely no intention of actually doing it.
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  That's deception. That is hypocrisy.
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  OK, so that's bad pretense. What's good pretense?
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  Good. Pretending is different.
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  It's where the pretense leads up to the real thing.
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  It's the precursor. Think about children.
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  Lewis uses the example of children playing shop or
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  soldiers. When a little kid puts on a pot
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  for a helmet and marches around with a stick, he's not a
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  soldier. Of course not.
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  He's pretending, but by playing the game but going through the
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  motions, he is in a small way, hardening his muscles,
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  sharpening his wits and preparing himself to maybe one
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  day be a soldier. In reality, the game is the
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  training ground for the reality. I see this with my kids all the
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  time. They Playhouse, they pretend to
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  be the parents. They are not parents, but they
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  are practicing the empathy and the responsibility that they're
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  going to need 20 years from now. Lewis then applies this directly
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  to our social interactions. He talks about putting on a
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  friendly manner. This is such practical advice,
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  he asks. What do you do when you don't
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  feel friendly? We have all been there.
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  You're at a party, or you run into someone you find
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  particularly annoying, and you have absolutely zero desire to
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  be kind or patient or gentle. The world and especially our
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  modern culture might tell you be authentic.
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  If you don't like them, don't fake it.
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  Show them your true self. Right.
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  But Lewis and I would say Christian ethics in general says
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  something totally different. He says no.
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  Put on a friendly manner. Behave as if you were a nicer
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  person than you actually are in that moment.
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  And the weird thing is, the psychological feedback loop on
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  that is real. When you force yourself to act
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  friendly, you often start to actually feel a little bit more
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  friendly. And the inverse is true, which
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  Lewis is quick to warn us about. If you allow yourself to act
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  rudely, you will feel more rude. It's a spiral.
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  It's a spiral. If you indulge the behavior of
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  the old man, as Paul would call it, the sinful nature, you
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  reinforce that nature. If you put on the behavior of
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  the new man, you encourage those feelings to grow.
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  You're carving a new groove. This is where it moves from just
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  general psychology into real theology, Lewis says.
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  When we were dressing up as Christ, the entire internal
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  monologue changes. So it stops being just about
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  conscience, you know, following a list of do's and don'ts and it
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  starts being about a person. This is a critical shift in the
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  Reformed understanding of sanctification.
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  It is not just moralism. It is not just be a good boy or
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  try harder. Right when you were pretending
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  to be Christ. When you're putting on that
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  mask, you start to notice things that you wouldn't notice
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  otherwise. Lewis gives us great example of
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  prayer. You might be kneeling down to
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  say your prayers, but then you realize you are actively
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  ignoring a duty. Yeah, like helping your wife
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  wash up the dishes or writing that letter you promised your
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  friend you would write a week ago.
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  Exactly. And if you're just following a
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  rule called say prayers at 8:00 PM, you might just ignore the
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  dishes. You're checking the box.
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  I've done my duty. But if you are pretending to be
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  Christ, you're forced to ask a different question.
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  Would Christ ignore the need for service right in front of him to
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  go kneel down and be pious? And the answer is clearly no.
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  The pretense forces you into a higher, more holistic reality of
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  obedience. It's all about what the New
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  Testament calls union with Christ, Lewis says.
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  We're trying to catch a good infection.
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  We're not just copying a historical figure from a book.
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  We're trying to let his actual life invade ours.
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  And that leads us to some specific terminology Lewis uses
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  that I think is incredibly helpful.
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  He makes a distinction between two Greek words for life, BIOS
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  and Zoe. OK, let's unpack that BIOS.
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  Yeah, we that's the route for. Precisely.
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  BIOS is a natural biological life.
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  It's the life we get from nature.
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  It runs on food, air and water. But crucially, it always runs
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  down. It decays, it eventually dies.
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  That is the life we are all born with.
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  So that's the default setting. That's the default.
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  And then there's Zoe. Zoe is the spiritual life.
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  It is the life that has existed in God from all eternity.
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  It is uncreated, undecaying and eternal.
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  And the whole point of Christianity, Lewis argues, is
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  not just to make BIOS a little bit nicer.
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  It's not just to Polish up the tin soldier.
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  Exactly. It's not about polishing the tin
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  soldier, it's about turning the tin soldier into a real, living
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  man. It is to inject Zoe into BIOS.
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  The tin soldier analogy is so good because a tin soldier is
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  completely separate from the child who's playing with it.
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  But if that tin soldier actually came to life, it would share the
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  nature of the child. And the part of us that resists
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  this change, that's the tin part, our fallen nature, that
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  bundle of self-centered fears, it clings to its tinness.
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  It doesn't want to be turned into a real man because that
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  involves a kind of death that involves surrendering the
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  autonomy of being a tin soldier. You have to give up control.
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  So how does this infection happen?
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  How do we actually get? Zoe Lewis talks about the means
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  by which Christ works on us. He does.
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  He talks about nature, our own bodies, books, even anti
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  Christian experiences. But he lands very heavily on
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  community, on other people. He says men are mirrors or
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  carriers. Carriers.
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  There's that infection metaphor again.
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  We catch the life of Christ from other people who already have
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  it. This connects directly to the
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  Reformed doctrine of the church, the idea that we are not meant
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  to be solitary Christians. We can't be.
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  Lewis does some some spiritual math here.
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  He says that when 2 Christians are following Christ together,
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  there isn't just twice as much Christianity as when they're
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  apart. He says there's 16 times as
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  much. 16 times that's exponential growth.
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  It is, and it highlights the absolute necessity of the
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  visible church. We need to be around other
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  carriers to catch the infection. You simply cannot sanctify
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  yourself in a vacuum. You need the friction, the
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  encouragement, and the fellowship of other believers.
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  But then right after that, Lewis drops a really important
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  warning. And as someone who has seen
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  people get badly burned by church or, you know,
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  disappointed by their heroes, this part is so crucial.
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  It's the warning against idolatry, plain and simple.
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  Lewis says that while people are carriers, they are never the
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  source. He goes back to an analogy he
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  uses elsewhere of a baby and its mother's milk.
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  It's natural and right for a baby to first take the milk
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  without really knowing the mother.
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  OK, but eventually the baby must grow to recognize the giver, not
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  just the gift. You have to look past the milk
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  to the mother. And if we don't make that leap
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  in our spiritual lives, we're in big trouble.
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  We're building our house on sand.
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  Lewis is incredibly blunt here. He says the best of them will
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  make mistakes. All of them will die.
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  Wow. If you pin your entire faith on
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  a human being, even the holiest, wisest pastor or mentor you
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  know, you are setting yourself up for a catastrophic collapse.
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  That is such a hard balance to strike because on one hand he's
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  saying we desperately need community, we need these
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  carriers, but on the other hand he's saying don't you dare
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  worship the carrier. You have to look through them to
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  the Christ they're. Carrying.
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  So we honor them, we love them, but we don't build our house on
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  them. That's it.
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  Our foundation has to be Christ alone.
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  So we're pretending, we're trying to catch this good
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  infection, we're hanging out with other carriers, and ideally
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  we're slowly becoming these new little Christ's.
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  And then Louis just hits US with a dose of reality.
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  He talked about his own experience with his evening.
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  Prayers. This is where we get to the rats
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  in the cellar. Yeah.
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  Lewis admits that when he reviews his day, the sins he
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  finds are not usually some grand villainous plot to take over the
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  world. They're almost always sins
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  against charity. He says he is sulked or he
• 13:54
  snapped at someone, or he sneered.
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  The sins of the temper, the sins of the attitude, the small, ugly
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  things. And the common excuse we all
• 14:01
  make is, well, he has caught off guard.
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  Or I didn't have time to correct myself.
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  I was tired. They startled me.
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  We have a tendency to think that the real us is the calm,
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  collected, thoughtful person we are when we're alone in a quiet
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  room reading a book. Yes, we think the person who
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  snapped when the coffee spilled all over their laptop.
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  That's not the real me. That was just a momentary
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  reaction to stress. And Lewis just says no.
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  He completely destroys that defense.
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  He says the suddenness of the provocation did not create the
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  ill temper, it revealed it. That hurts.
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  He gives this image. If there are rats in a cellar
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  and you go in shouting and stomping your feet, the rats
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  will all hide. You'll go and say see no rats.
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  But if you fling the door open and turn on the lights, suddenly
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  you'll see them scrambling for cover.
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  The suddenness didn't put the rats there.
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  The rats were always there. The suddenness just showed you
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  what the cellar is actually inhabited by.
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  Man, this is the doctrine of total depravity and high
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  definition. The sin is not just the action
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  of me snapping at my wife. The sin is the nature inside of
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  me in the cellar that wants to snap.
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  The rats are resident in the soul.
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  And Lewis points out the terrifying implication of this
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  metaphor. What's that?
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  The cellar is out of reach of your conscious will?
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  You can control your axe to some degree.
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  You can bite your tongue. You can force a smile when you
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  want to scream, but you cannot, by a direct act of your will,
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  change the fact that you wanted to scream.
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  You cannot kick the rats out by simply willing them away.
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  There's a line that just stands out, he says.
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  I cannot by direct moral effort give myself new motives.
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  We are bankrupt. And that realization of
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  bankruptcy is the actual beginning of the gospel.
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  As long as you think you can manage the rats yourself, you'll
• 15:48
  just keep playing the moral improvement game.
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  You'll just keep trying to be a better, more polished tin
• 15:53
  soldier. Exactly.
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  It's only when you finally realize I have rats in the
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  cellar that I cannot reach that you finally give up and say,
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  God, you have to do this, I can't.
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  It forces us into a state of total reliance on God.
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  We realize we cannot manufacture this change of heart.
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  It has to be a gift. Which pivots us perfectly into
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  the final movement of the chapter.
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  We started this whole conversation with us pretending
• 16:16
  to be Christ. Louis ends it with God
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  pretending. Divine make believe.
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  Yes, God looks at us. He sees the rats.
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  He sees the self-centered, greedy, grumbling, rebellious
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  human animal he is under absolutely no illusions about
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  who and what we are. And yet, and yet, he says, let
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  us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our son.
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  He treats us as if we are Christ.
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  This is the very heart of the doctrine of justification.
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  When God looks at a believer, he does not see our sin.
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  He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ.
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  He declares us righteous long before we are actually fully
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  righteous in our behavior. He treats us as sons before we
• 16:58
  really learned how to behave like sons.
• 16:59
  Lewis uses that mother and baby analogy again here, and it's so
• 17:02
  beautiful. A mother talks to her baby as if
• 17:05
  the baby understands every word. Right, the baby is just making
• 17:08
  noises, bubbling, cooing. But the mother speaks to it in
• 17:10
  full sentences like a rational human being.
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  And because she treats the baby like a human, the baby
• 17:16
  eventually becomes a human who can speak and understand.
• 17:19
  Or the dog analogy he uses, right?
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  We treat our dogs as if they're almost human.
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  We talk to them, we give them personalities.
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  And in doing so, they become something more than just a wild
• 17:29
  wolf. They become a companion.
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  The higher thing raises the lower thing by treating it as if
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  it were already higher. That's it.
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  God's pretending is the engine that actually drives reality.
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  He is not deceived. He knows we are messy.
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  He knows about the rats. But he treats us according to
• 17:46
  the future He's making for us. He sees the new little Christ
• 17:50
  inside the Sinner, no matter how small or weak that new life is,
• 17:54
  and he interacts with. That, as Paul says, he calls
• 17:57
  into existence the things that do not exist.
• 17:59
  OK, let's just let's trace the whole arc we've travelled in
• 18:01
  this chapter. It's really something We start
• 18:04
  by pretending. We try to act like Christ.
• 18:06
  We say our Father. Aspirational obedience.
• 18:08
  Yes, and this attempt to pretend immediately reveals our complete
• 18:13
  failure. We see the rats in the cellar
• 18:16
  because we realize we can't sustain the ACT perfectly for
• 18:19
  even 5 minutes. That failure drives us to
• 18:22
  despair of our own ability, which then forces us to rely on
• 18:26
  Christ. And then we find out that Christ
• 18:28
  has been pretending all along, treating us as sons so that we
• 18:32
  might one day actually become sons.
• 18:34
  It moves from our feeble, clumsy attempt at imitation to his
• 18:40
  powerful divine act of recreation.
• 18:42
  Yeah, it shifts the entire project from us obeying a set of
• 18:45
  rules, like a Marxist or a Platonist might follow a
• 18:48
  philosophy, to us interacting with a living person who is
• 18:51
  surgically removing the old self and implanting the new self.
• 18:54
  It. Takes so much of the pressure
• 18:55
  off. I mean, the pressure to be good
• 18:57
  is just crushing. If you think it's all up to you,
• 18:59
  it's. Impossible.
• 19:00
  But if the pressure is just to stay close to the source, to
• 19:02
  stay in the way of the infection, that that feels
• 19:05
  possible. It changes the focus from
• 19:07
  performance to abiding. We don't pretend in order to
• 19:11
  earn God's love. We pretend because we have been
• 19:13
  given a new role, a new identity to grow into.
• 19:17
  So what does this all mean for the listener today?
• 19:19
  I mean, what's the big take away?
• 19:20
  I think the most practical take away is to not be afraid of
• 19:23
  that. Fake it till you make it dynamic
• 19:25
  in your spiritual life. As long as the goal is true
• 19:28
  holiness. If you don't feel like praying,
• 19:30
  pray anyway. If you don't feel like loving
• 19:33
  your neighbor, act lovingly toward them anyway.
• 19:35
  Don't wait for the feelings to arrive before you act.
• 19:38
  Act and trust that God uses the action itself to shape the
• 19:41
  feeling. And also check your cellar.
• 19:43
  Don't be surprised when the rats show up.
• 19:45
  Exactly. When you snap, when you feel
• 19:47
  that surge of jealousy, don't just brush it off as I was just
• 19:50
  tired. Admit it.
• 19:52
  That is the rat. That is my fallen nature.
• 19:55
  Confess it and then remember that God sees that rat and still
• 19:58
  calls you. Son, that is the beauty of
• 20:00
  reformed thinking, isn't it? Yeah.
• 20:02
  It's brutally realistic about the depth of sin and wildly
• 20:06
  optimistic about the power of grace.
• 20:08
  Yes. It holds those two things in
• 20:10
  tension. So as we kind of wrap up this
• 20:12
  deep dive, I want to leave you, the listener with a thought to
• 20:15
  chew on. We've talked a lot about how God
• 20:18
  treats us. He treats us as little Christs
• 20:22
  in order to help us become that well.
• 20:24
  If you are a carrier of Christ as Lewis says, and if you were
• 20:28
  meant to imitate God, how does this change the way you treat
• 20:34
  the difficult people in your life?
• 20:36
  I mean if you treated that annoying Co worker or that
• 20:38
  estranged family member not as they are in this moment but as
• 20:42
  the little Christ they could be, what would happen?
• 20:45
  That is the challenge, isn't it? Can we actually participate in
• 20:48
  God's divine make believe toward others?
• 20:51
  Can we learn to speak to the new man in them, even when the old
• 20:55
  man is screaming at us? That is where the rubber really
• 20:58
  meets the road. And if you are a carrier of this
• 21:00
  infection, what kind of infection are you spreading
• 21:03
  today? Are people around you catching
• 21:05
  anxiety and cynicism and criticism from you, or are they
• 21:09
  catching a little bit of Zoe? That is a question worth asking
• 21:12
  yourself every single morning. This has been a deep dive into
• 21:15
  CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. We hope this helps you not just
• 21:18
  understand the book, but, you know, live the life.
• 21:21
  Thanks for listening.