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FAITH

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 itas true the doctrines of Christianity That is fairly simple But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle ard faith in this sense as a virtue I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue - what is therea set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seeoodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad ht 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 goodthat if the huo on regarding it as true, until so it turns up In fact, I was assu that the human mind is completely ruled by reason But that is not so For exaood evidence that anaesthetics do not seons 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 ins insideto choke, and I a me up before I am properly under In other words, I loseaway my faith: on the contrary, ination and emotions The battle is between faith and reason on one side and eination on the other

When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this A irl of, his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with hey- his e and he starts thinking, &039;Perhaps she&039;ll be different this time,&039; and once ht 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 swio 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 sa anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells hiainst it That is not the point at which Faith co a ht of the evidence is for it I can tell thatto happen to him in the next feeeks There will come a mo a 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 hi 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 aainst Christianity turn up Those have to be faced and that is a differentabout ainst it

Now Faith, in the sense in which I as your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing e, whatever view your reason takes I know that by experience Now that I a looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable This rebellion of yourto come anyway That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue unless you teach your et off,&039; 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 nise the fact that your e 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 soious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life We have to be continually reminded of e 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 theument? Do not most people simply drift away?

Now I her sense and this is theI 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 realise that one is proud I want to add now that the next step is to make some serious atteh Things often go swily for the first week Try six weeks By that ti, as far as one can see, fallen back coan from, will have discovered some truths about oneself No ood A silly idea is current that good people do not knohat temptation means This is an obvious lie Only those who try to resist te it is After all, you find out the strength of the Ger in You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down A ives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not knohat 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 iht 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 co we learn from a serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues is that we fail If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exa 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 to our debt 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 soue belief in God, until he becoain 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 ive up They seeine 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 passHim in your debt

Then comes another discovery Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of iven you by God If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Hi that was not in a sense His own already So that e talk of ato God, I will tell you what it is really like It is like a sive me sixpence to buy you a birthday present&039; Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child&039;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 et to work It is after this that real life begins The o on to talk of Faith in the second sense