Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
1943
Bill Lin 譯
Book III . Christian Behavior
信心(二)
我要開始說一些我希望每個人都得小心注意的東西。是這樣的：如果這一章對你來說是毫無意義，或者看來它是想要回答一些你想也不想的問題，請跳過去，一點也不要理會它。
基督教裡有某些東西，在你還是個門外漢以前，可以從外面去理解它們。但是有好多事情，除非你已經走了一大段基督徒的路，是無從理解的。這些事情都是百分之一百實用的事情，雖然它們看來並非如此。它們是在信仰的旅途，到了特殊的交叉路口或路障時要怎麼辦的指標；除非一個人已經到過了那些地方，要不然它們對你是沒有任何意義的。每當你看到了任何一個基督教著作的陳述，假使你無法消受，不必煩惱，就把它擺著，將來有一天，或許是幾年以後，你會豁然領悟。或許一個人現在自以為是了解了，但只是自得其害。
當然，這些話是對所有的人，也是對我說的。在這一章裡我將要解釋的事情，或許我都還沒走到。我可能以為我已經到那裡了，其實並不然。我只能請求學有專長的基督徒，留心的查看，當我弄錯了就告訴我；其他的人就把我所說的，當成一撮醒味的鹽──是我要分享的，因為可能有所助益，而非堅持我是對的。
我現在要說的是信心的第二種意義，高一點層次的意義。上星期我提起了在這個意義裡的信心的問題：當一個人盡其所能的要實踐基督徒的種種美德，發現他做不到，而且看到了甚至假設他能盡其所有的奉獻，也只不過是把原來就是屬神所有的再回給了神。換言之，他發現他是一無所有。所以再說一遍，神所要的並不是我們的行為。祂關心的是我們應該是某種高品質的被造物──在創造我們時所期望的──和祂自己在某些方面有相關聯的生物。
我沒有加上“而且人與人之間有某方面的關聯，”因為那已經被包含進去了；假如你和神的關係是對的，你和所有其他人的關係也必然是對的，正如一個輪子，假如所有的輪輻都正確的接到輪軸和輪框，它們個別的相關位置就必定是對的。而且，只要一個人把神想像成是一個主考官，正給他一張考卷去作答，或者是某種交易的另一方──只要他想到他和神之間在討價還價的話──他和祂還沒有進入正常的關係，他誤解了他自己，也誤解了神。所以他無法進入正常的關係，直等到他發現我們的破產的真相(失敗和一無所有)。
當我說“發現”，我意味著真正的發現；不是只像鸚鵡般的跟著說。當然，每個小孩子，只要給他們上一些宗教課，他們很快的學會說：我們所奉獻給神的，全然是原屬祂的，而且我們發現我們自己都無法做到毫無保留的奉獻。只是我正在說的是真正的發現：真正的體驗到那是個事實。
照這個說法，除了盡最大的努力(而最後失敗了)，我們不能知道我們守不住神的律法。若不是我們真正的嘗試了，無論我們說什麼，在我們內心的深處總會有這個念頭：下回假如我們能更努力，我們將會成功的達到完善的境地。所以，從一方面來說，要回歸到神的路，是一條在道德上努力精進的路；但從另一面看來，再怎麼努力，它都無法把我們帶回天家。所有的這個努力只把我們帶到了這個重要的關頭，在那時你只能對神說：「祢得幫這個忙，我做不下去了。」
我拜託你們，不要開始問自己：「我是否已經到了這個關頭？」不要停下來，開始省察自己，看看是否趕上了；那只會使人上錯了軌道。當我們生命中最重要的事在發生的時候，在那個當下，我們經常不知道發生了什麼。一個人不會一直對自己說：「嘿!看我正在長大。」經常是在回顧的時候，他才意識到發生了什麼，也才認清了那就是所謂的“長大”。
甚至在一些簡單的事情裡，你們都能看出同樣的道理。一個開始焦慮他是否能入眠的人，很可能仍然很清醒。同樣的，我現在正提到的事情，或許不會在一剎那間臨到每一個人──像聖徒保羅St Paul或般揚Bunyan那樣：它或許會如此緩慢逐漸的，以致於沒有人能確定是哪個鐘頭，或甚至是哪一年。重點是它自己裡面變化的性質，而不是當它發生時，我們的感覺。這是個從對我們自己的成就的自信，到絕望無法自拔而仰賴神的狀況的改變。
我知道“仰賴神”這句話會惹起誤解，只是現在我還是必須用到它。一個基督徒仰賴神，意味著他把所有的信任擺在耶穌基督裡：信靠耶穌基督會與他分享祂從出生到祂的被釘上十架所完成的人類的完全順服：耶穌基督會使人更像祂自己，從某種意義上說：矯正了那個人的缺失。以基督徒的用語來說，祂會與我們分享祂與聖父的關係，像祂一樣，使我們成了“神的眾子”。在下一本書 Book IV裡，我會試著更進一步分析那些字眼的意義。
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I want to
start by saying something that I would like everyone to notice carefully. It is
this. If this chapter means nothing to you, if it seems to be trying to answer
questions you never asked, drop it at once. Do not bother about it at all.
There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the
outside, before you have become a Christian. But there are a great many things
that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along
the Christian road. These things are purely practical, though they do not look
as if they were. They are directions for dealing with particular cross-roads
and obstacles on the journey and they do not make sense until a man has reached
those places. Whenever you find any statement in Christian writings which you
can make nothing of, do not worry. Leave it alone. There will come a day,
perhaps years later, when you suddenly see what it meant. If one could understand it now, it
would only do one harm.
Of course
all this tells against me as much as anyone else. The thing I am going to try
to explain in this chapter may be ahead of me. I may be thinking I have got
there when I have not. I can only ask instructed Christians to watch very
carefully, and tell me when I go wrong; and others to take what I say with a
grain of salt- as something offered, because it may be a help, not because I am
certain that I am right.
I am trying
to talk about Faith in the second sense, the higher sense. I said last week
that the question of Faith in this sense arises after a man has tried his level
best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that
even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's
own. In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy. Now, once again, what God
cares about is not exactly our actions. What he cares about is that we should
be creatures of a certain kind of quality- the kind of creatures He intended us to
be-creatures related to Himself in a certain way. I do not add "and
related to one another in a certain way," because that is included: if you
are right with Him you will inevitably be right with all your fellow-creatures,
just as if all the spokes of a wheel are fitted rightly into the hub and the
rim they are bound to be in the right positions to one another. And as long as
a man is thinking of God as an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do,
or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain-as long as he is thinking of
claims and counterclaims between himself and God-he is not yet in the right
relation to Him. He is misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he
cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered the fact of our
bankruptcy.
When I say
"discovered," I mean really discovered: not simply said it
parrot-fashion. Of course, any child, if given a certain kind of religious
education, will soon learn to say that we have nothing to offer to God that is
not already His own and that we find ourselves failing to offer even that
without keeping something back. But I am talking of really discovering this:
really finding out by experience that it is true.
Now we
cannot, in that sense, discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying
our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say
there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder
next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the
road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in
another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this
trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You
must do this. I can't." Do not, I implore you, start asking yourselves,
"Have I reached that moment?" Do not sit down and start watching your
own mind to see if it is coming along. That puts a man quite on the wrong
track. When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not
know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself,
"Hullo! I'm growing up." It is often only when he looks back that he
realizes what has happened and recognizes it as what people call "growing
up." You can see it
even in simple matters. A man who starts anxiously watching to see whether he
is going to sleep is very likely to remain wide awake. As well, the thing I am
talking of now may not happen to every one in a sudden flash-as it did to St Paul
I know the
words "leave it to God" can be misunderstood, but they must stay for
the moment. The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all
his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with him the perfect
human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion: that
Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a sense, make good his
deficiencies. In Christian language, He will share His "sonship" with
us, will make us, like Himself, "Sons of God": in Book IV I shall
attempt to analyze the meaning of those words a little further. If you like to
put it that way, Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything
for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that
very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognizing
that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we should have liked would be
for God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones. Again, in a sense,
you may say that no temptation is ever overcome until we stop trying to
overcome it- throw up the sponge. But then you could not "stop
trying" in the right way and for the right reason until you had tried your
very hardest. And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does
not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying
to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person
if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over
to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new
way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but
because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a
reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because
a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
基督徒們經常爭論，到底要帶領基督徒回天家的，是好行為或是對耶穌基督的信心。我對如此困難的問題是真的無從置喙，但是我看來就像在問一把剪刀哪一個刃比較有需要。
Christians
have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good
actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a
difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of
scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only thing that will
bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the
only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him
good actions must inevitably come. There are two parodies of the truth which
different sets of Christians have, in the past, been accused by other
Christians of believing: perhaps they may make the truth clearer. One set were
accused of saying, "Good actions are all that matters. The best good
action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving money. The best thing to
give money to is the Church. So hand us over Ј10,000 and we will see you
through." The answer to that nonsense, of course, would be that good
actions done for that motive, done with the idea that Heaven can be bought,
would not be good actions at all, but only commercial speculations. The other
set were accused of saying, "Faith is all that matters. Consequently, if
you have faith, it doesn't matter what you do. Sin away, my lad, and have a
good time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end." The
answer to that nonsense is that, if what you call your "faith" in
Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is
not Faith at all-not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of
some theory about Him.
The Bible
really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one
amazing sentence. The first half is, "Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling"-which looks as if everything depended on us and our
good actions: but the second half goes on, "For it is God who works in
you"- which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid
that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but
I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate
into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God
and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like
two men working together, so that you could say, "He did this bit and I
did that." But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He
is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I
do not think human language could properly express it. In the attempt to
express it different Churches say different things. But you will find that even
those who insist most strongly on the importance of good actions tell you you
need Faith; and even those who insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do
good actions. At any rate that is as far as I go.
I think all
Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at
first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and
virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a
glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as
a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a
mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it
anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source
from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the
rim of our world. No one's eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people's
eyes can see further than mine.
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