信心(一)

Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis

1943

Bill Lin 譯

Book III. Christian Behavior

11. Faith

信心(一)

在這一章裡，我必須談到基督徒所謂的信心。大略地說，基督徒的“信心”有兩個意思，或兩個層次，我會一一的說明。

第一個意思就是單純的相信──接受基督教的教義或把它當真。就那麼簡單。但是使人詫異，至少我一直不解的，就是實際上，基督徒把這個意思的信心當成是一種美德。我總要問：在我們的世上，這怎麼會稱得上是一種美德呢？相信或不相信一堆教義的陳述，和道不道德有什麼關係呢？我總是說，很明顯的，一個腦筋清楚的人接不接受任一陳述，並非因為他要不要，而是因為他看到好或壞的憑據。假如他弄錯了憑據的好壞，並不能指他就是個壞人，只能說他不是個很聰明的人。而且假如他明知那憑據是不好的，但是還不顧一切的勉強自己去相信，那也只是愚蠢而已。

我想，現在我還是抱著同樣的看法。但是那時我所沒看到的，而且好多人也還沒看到的，就是這樣：

那時我設想，假如人的心裡一旦認定一樣事情為真，他將會自動的繼續視它為真，直到一些真正需要再考慮它的理由發生了。事實上，我設想人心是完全按著理性的。但事實並非如此。舉個例子：我的理智根據好的憑據，完全相信那些受過適當訓練的外科醫生們，除非等到我失去了知覺，在我沒有被麻醉以前，他們不會開始動手術。

但是那個想法並無法改變這個事實：當他們把我擺在手術台上，掛上他們那嚇人的面罩，俯視著我，一個幼稚的恐慌湧上我的心頭，我開始想，我就要窒息了，而且我怕他們在我完全昏睡前就要開始對我動刀。換句話說，我對麻醉失掉了信心。拿掉我的信心的不是理智：相反的，我的信心的基礎是理智；動搖信心的是我的想像和情緒。這個信心爭戰的一邊是理智，另一邊是情緒和想像。

當你想到這一點，你會看到很多這類的事例。一個男人知道，根據完美的證據顯示，那一位他熟悉的漂亮的女孩是個撒謊、不能守秘密和不應該被信賴的人；但是他發現，當他和她在一起時，他就失掉了對那些認知的信心；他開始想：「或許她這回會不一樣…」然後再一次把自己當成呆瓜，又告訴她一些他不應該讓她知道的事情。他的感覺和情緒摧毀掉他真正的信以為真的信心。

或者我們拿一個男孩學游泳的例子：他的理智完全知道，一個沒有支撐的人體，不一定會沉入水裡：他看過成打的人浮著游泳。但是整個問題的所在，就是當教練放開手，讓他毫無支撐的在水中，他是否會繼續相信這個看法，或者他會突然不相信它，而在一陣恐懼中沉了下去。

現在，正好相同的事情也發生在基督教的信心上。我不要求任何人接受基督教，假若他的最佳理性判斷告訴他，憑據的衡量反對他這樣做。那並不是信心的切入點。但是假設一個人的理智已經決定，憑據的衡量贊成如此行。我可以告訴你們，那個人在未來幾個星期會發生什麼事。

將來會有傳來壞消息的時候，或者他惹了麻煩，或者他是和一大堆不信的人相處，一下子他的各樣的情緒起來了，像閃電般的襲擊他的信心。

或者有時他需要一個女人，或需要撒個謊，或覺得了不起，或看到一個可以發不義之財的機會：實際上，有某些時候，真希望基督教的信心不是真的。再一次，他的希望和慾望會來執行另一個閃電的襲擊。

我正在談的那些情境，並不是指挖掘到任何真正反對基督教的理由。那些我們必須面對的，完全是不相干的事。我正談到的那些情境，都只是單單的一個情緒冒上來反對他的信心。

這樣的信心，我在這裡所用的字眼的意思，就是不管你的情緒的變化，能把持得住你的理性已經接受過的東西的功夫。因為不管你的理性觀點是什麼，情緒總是會改變的。這是我體驗出來的。現在我是個基督徒，我有些情緒會讓我覺得整個事情簡直是難以置信；但是當我還是個無神論者的時候，我曾在某些情緒裡，覺得基督教所說的很有可能是真的。不管如何，你的反抗你真正自我的背逆的情緒總是會起來，這就是為什麼信心是如此必須有的德行；除非你能教導你的情緒到達“隨心所欲不逾矩”的地步，否則你永遠成不了一個好的基督徒，甚至是一個好的無神論者，而只是見風轉舵的生物，所相信的實在是隨著天氣或他的消化程度而變化。所以一個人得操練信心的習性。

第一步要認知你的情緒變化的事實。假如你已經接受了基督教，接著就要每天用心的花時間持守那些基要教義。這就是為什麼每日的禱告、讀宗教的書籍和上教堂是基督徒生命裡不可或缺的一部分。我們需要不斷的被提醒我們所相信的，因為不但是這個信仰或是其他的事情都不會自動的活在我們的內心，它需要被持續的餵養。事實上，假如你查看一百個已經對基督教失掉信心的人，我懷疑有多少人是為著確切的論點的推論而離開的？大多數的人不都是流失的嗎？

現在我必須談到信心的第二種或是較高層次的意義：這是我所碰過的最困難的嘗試。我要採取回到以前所提的謙遜作切入。你們或許記得我說過，要變得謙遜的第一步必須要體認到人是驕傲的。現在我要加進的下一個步驟，就是要認真的嘗試，去實踐基督徒的美德。

一個星期是不夠的。事情在第一個星期總是順暢的。試一下六個星期，到那時，一個人會發現，他有可能會完全倒退，甚至退到比出發點還要更低；那個人才會發現某些自己的真相。沒有人知道自己有多壞，直到他已經很努力的想做好。

目前流行一個愚蠢的觀念，就是好人不會知道什麼叫做誘惑，這是個十足的謊言。只有那些試過去抵擋誘惑的人，才知道誘惑力有多大。總之，你跟德軍打過仗而非投降，才知道他們的軍力有多大，你試過逆風行走而非臥倒避風，才知道風有多強。一個不到五分鐘就向誘惑屈服的人，根本不知道要抵擋一個鐘頭以後的會是如何。這就是為什麼壞人，在這一個情形下，很少知道什麼叫做壞。他們已經慣於屈服引誘而過著被庇護的生活。

我們永遠無法知道我們裡面的邪惡衝動的力道，若非直等到我們試著去對抗它；而耶穌基督，因為祂是唯一從未對誘惑讓步的人，所以祂也是唯一全然知道什麼叫做誘惑──唯一完完全全的實際論者。

所以，從一個認真的嘗試，去實踐基督徒的美德裡，主要的是，我們知道我們失敗了。假如有這麼一個觀念，說神要給我們某種的考試，假如我們配得，我們可以得到好成績，這個看法是必須要被丟棄的。假如有任何一個交易的觀念──任一觀念，說我們可以努力的做好我們合同這一邊該做的，然後是神欠我們的，在公義裡，完全是看祂了，神必須履行祂那一邊的義務──那也是必須要被丟棄的。

我想每一個對神有些模糊信念的人，一直等到他變成一個基督徒以前，都會有這一種考試或討價還價的觀念。真正基督教的信仰的第一個成效就是粉碎那個觀念。當他們發現幻想破滅了，有些人把這個想成基督教是沒用的，就放棄了。他們似乎把神想像成是傻呼呼的！當然，實際上神完全知道這個想法。基督教的信仰所要對付的各樣事情之一，就是要粉碎這個觀念。神一直在等待這個時刻，讓你發現，在這個考試裡，沒有一個問題能讓你獲得及格的分數，或是使神虧欠你。

然後是另一個發現。你所有的每一個天賦功能，你的思考力或每一時刻移動四肢的行動力，都是神所給予的。假如你把一生的每一時刻全然的奉獻給神的服事，你也不能給祂任何原來不屬於祂已經擁有的東西。所以當我們提到一個正為神做事或獻給神東西的人，我要告訴你，這真正像這麼一回事：它就像一個小孩正要去跟他的父親說：「老爸，給我一個六便士銅板去給你買你的生日禮物。」當然，這父親就給了，而且也很喜悅孩子的禮物。這是很好很適當的一件事，但是只有傻子才會想到這父親在這交易上得到了六便士。

當一個人發現了這兩件事以後，神才能真正的在他身上作工。在這以後，真正的生命才開始，這個人現在甦醒了。我們可以繼續來談信心的第二個意義。

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I must talk in this chapter about what the Christians call Faith. Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief-accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle me-is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue-what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then- and a good many people do not see still-was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this. A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking, "Perhaps she'll be different this time," and once more makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told her. His senses and emotions have destroyed his faith in what he really knows to be true. Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water-or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down.

Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

The first step is to recognize the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

Now I must turn to Faith in the second or higher sense: and this is the most difficult thing I have tackled yet. I want to approach it by going back to the subject of Humility. You may remember I said that the first step towards humility was to realize that one is proud. I want to add now that the next step is to make some serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues. A week is not enough. Things often go swimmingly for the first week. Try six weeks. By that time, having, as far as one can see, fallen back completely or even fallen lower than the point one began from, one will have discovered some truths about oneself. No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it; and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means-the only complete realist. Very well, then. The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail. If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain-any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side-that has to be wiped out.

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of Faith in the second sense.