In this chapter, Lewis asks an important and challenging question: “Is Christianity hard or easy?” From the outset, you must know that this is not an easy question to answer. I remember wrestling with this question myself even after becoming a Christian. I remember asking myself, “What do I have to give up to follow Christ? What will my life be like?” In other words, I was asking how restricted my life would be to “lay everything at the cross.”
Lewis is raising several important points. First, the natural man has a profound impact on how we see ourselves, the world around us, and the significance of the Gospel. What is the “natural man”? The natural man is the person bound by only self-imposition or cultural “norms”. Although we have a hint of what is right and wrong (the law of morality – c.f. chapter one), we actively avoid it. Imagine a place where man lived in absolute “freedom” from societal standards. There are no laws to obey and no one “passing judgement”. Turn on the television, look at the Twitter feed, or turn to your favorite news broadcaster. What do you see?
There is something about the natural man that works against the greater good of the world. But what makes Christianity different? Don’t many religions call people to deny themselves? Yes, other religions call for self-denial, but Christianity wants more – Christ wants all of you.
The problem is, as Lewis states, that we start with the natural man. When we do, everything we think and do is framed in that light. Lewis puts it this way: “But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes” (168). With this mentality, any call to say “No” to one’s self feels burdensome. Even if it feels doable, we may subconsciously tell ourselves “I can do this for a time” while secretly holding on to the hope that someday all of those deep desires and longings will be fulfilled. But imagine Christ calling you to die to the self?!
What makes Christianity different is not the self-denial but what is replaced with the self.
The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me ALL. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours” (169).
This is a radical departure from the teachings of other religions and philosophies. This is about your very personhood – your very personal, intimate being.
Why does this sound contrary to anything we have known? Why does this seem like the most difficult thing imaginable? Why is my natural response to say “No way!”? Why do I look this statement, and think, “Lewis was brilliant, but I think he lost his mind for a second.” I think Lewis summarizes the natural man’s mentality well. He says, “For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves,’ to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’ (170).
The natural man wants to retain those things which he/she make think is “defining” – those things which speak to who I am. But Christ says that all must die in order to have life in abundance. Does this sound outrageous and foreign? It did to me years ago, and at times, it still does. Dying to self is still a process, as it is for all who call upon the name of Christ.