In Mere Christianity, originally published as “The Case for Christianity” when the world was at war in 1942, C.S. Lewis presents us with a powerful argument for Christian activism. His goal was clearly to help mobilize the forces of good against evil during the London blitz. Similarly, in the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu hero Arjuna is coached by Lord Krishna to battle against evil. Yet there are important differences to the approach both religions take to the problem of evil. Christianity tends to define the evil adversary primarily as an external force leading us into temptation and sin, while the Hindu-Buddhist tradition focusses on the many-fanged demons inside our heads essentially as an internal corruption or dysfunction of our minds.
Christianity builds on the Jewish notion that God is outside the world and separate from it. As Lewis puts it,
“Pantheists usually believe that God, so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost is God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite different. They think God invented and made the universe – like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say, ‘He’s put a lot of himself into it,’ but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in the same way that it is in his head, or even in his hands.”
I don’t believe it is true that Hindu philosophy would hold that if the universe did not exist, God would not exist either, but that is beside Lewis’ main point. Lewis’ real point is that “…God is quite definitely ‘good’ or ‘righteous,’ a God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another.” This assertion makes clear that (in the Judeo-Christian tradition) human beings are entrusted by God with a mission to fight evil and make the world a better place. From this understanding, the modern concepts of Christian Providence and progress have arisen: the notion that over time, we can and should improve the world actively by making it more good and less evil.
On the other hand, as Lewis notes, the Hindu-Buddhist view sees the world as infused by God. God is inside every mineral and every blade of grass, and He is in the “color purple” in a field of wildflowers as Alice Walker so poetically described Him in her novel of the same name. At the same time, however, the Hindu-Buddhist God is also outside the world in the sense that He is a transcendent Being of Light and Love that none of us can ever fully perceive. What Christianity regards as a fallen world, Hinduism and Buddhism see as a dualistic world of “maya” or illusion. The principal goal of each human life is not so much to improve the world by actively interfering with it as it is to influence it indirectly in a positive, uplifting direction by learning how to pierce the veil of illusion in an attitude of prayer and meditation. When we do this, we create an aura of peace around us that extends in ever-widening circles through society like tranquil ripples on a pond.
But why should Christians accept Lewis’ antagonism toward pantheism? As I noted in my July 18 entry, “Pantheism, Maya and the Movie ‘Avatar,’” director James Cameron effectively and compellingly explores the theme of pantheism in “Avatar,” and he was roundly criticized by the Christian right for equating the artist God with his Creation. Despite this stance, can’t Christianity be interpreted to be compatible with a pantheistic view? After all, when Picasso painted a canvas, wasn’t his artistic spirit inexorably expressed in every one of his brushstrokes? Didn’t he see himself in his creation? Didn’t he admire it as an offspring of himself, in fact as a part of him? Having recently seen an impressive retrospective of Picasso’s work at the Seattle Art Museum, I can report witnessing the artist’s genius – the divine spark – in every one of his two dimensional works and three-dimensional objects. Picasso said about his own work that he didn’t do it himself; instead, the spirit that he called “Painting” ruled him.
Certainly, Christianity perceives mankind as being emotionally at a remove from God – we are fallen creatures – but why this should mean that God does not still infuse our fallen world with his Spirit, I cannot imagine. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis is careful to outline a mainstream Christian theology that is, at least in theory, accepted by all denominations including the Church of England and Roman Catholicism. In that sense, his Christianity is orthodox in a general, widespread sense, understood and accepted by all denominations but particular to none of them. Yet this “orthodox” Christianity has been distilled over centuries from many divergent viewpoints. At least a few churches in an Early Christian movement that some scholars have argued was heterodox enough to have endorsed the concept of reincarnation certainly must have been open-minded enough to embrace pantheism.
Bird of Spirit 