Mere Christianity

Reading Mere Christianity made me think a lot about what kinds of morals we live by. There is such thing as a moral law, and in one way or another we all follow some unwritten rules. I liked how Lewis compared these moral laws to playing the piano. There are somethings that can be rationalized, like if you play all the notes at the same time on the piano it sounds bad, but when certain things are played at the right time with other notes it sounds good. The law of nature tells us that sometimes things are wrong, thats when the notes sound bad together. 

Lewis also talked about the impulses in our lives. We all live our lives with impulses or instincts. Our impulses may at sometimes be right but its how we act upon those impulses  and determine the moral code of it. In class the example was brought up of a father wanting to kill someone who hurt his son, but acting upon that feeling is not the right answer. We need to leave things up to God to kill that person or not. If we find ourself with two instincts that are in conflict, it is up to us and God to decide between the weaker one, a lot of the time we feel like it is our duty to act and make the right decision but we need to remember to let God in.

Back to the metaphor of the piano, you can't just pick up on one feeling or instinct, just like you can't just listen to a song only by hearing one note. You need to look at the bigger picture in the whole situation, just like you need to listen to the whole piece of music in order for it to sound good. So many of us just focus on the differences between religion practices, Mere Christianity reminds us that we need to look at the whole picture and recognize our similarities as a whole christian family.