It is just like Lewis to begin talking about whether Christianity is necessary to live a good life and end up with the question of whether one is a man or a rabbit. Lewis's basic point in this selection is that in order to answer the question of whether or not Christianity is necessary to lead a Good Life is a question that each person must answer for themselves. Some may seriously look into Christianity and say this is a lie and others will confront Christianity and say this is the great secret of the Universe. Neither conclusion is necessary for proving that you are a man. The necessary question is were you willing to honestly stand up to the question and look into all the facts and logic behind Christianity and its relationship to a Good life and decide for yourself. To avoid the facts or to remain purposefully ignorant of what Christianity is and try to get some one else to tell you what you should believe is to be, as Lewis says, a rabbit, a creature who lives its life in fear of almost all things and does not stand up to anything lest it might die.
How often do we as Christians and as people act like rabbits? We are always looking for the easy way out. The way that involves us being as passive as possible and get the most reward. This is a corruption of our humanity. We are given innate desires to explore and to learn and above all to be moderately skeptical, to challenge all that is presented to us. We must learn to act much like the Spartans of 300 and face our Persian empires not cower in fear. After all if the question must be answered eventually would it not be better to find out the answer as soon as possible and face what is rumored to be coming and find out if the rumors are true or false rather than let our fear take away the dignity we have and turn us into lowly rabbits?
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Thanks for your post, Nolan. When you talked about our tendancy to be rabbit-like and take the easiest path, it reminded me of Lewis' essay on Bulverism. I think that laziness or rabbit-likeness is the reason that bulverism can even be a problem in society. The persn who resorts to bulverism rather than a logical arguement is being Lewis' 'rabbit', but so are all those who support him because he sounds good, rather than looking into what he is actually saying and realizing that it has nothing to do with the point that is being debated. We need to be carefull in all aspects of our lives that we do not become rabbits by chosing the path of least resistance.
ReplyDeleteI agree - it's totally amazing the way Lewis logicks things out. I would like to point out though, that none of us can always know if someone else is avoiding looking directly at the issue of God's existance and Christianity's validity. I think some people, like Lewis said, genuinely could not or were not able to believe; sometimes it is hard to tell between those that can't accept and those that just don't want to out of fear or shame. We should remember that either way, we are to love these people and trust that God will bring about good from their actions.
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