The Shocking Alternative
Deborah Falcon
091457
TH151 – P
First Term Paper
The chapter that I chose to reflect on for this paper is Chapter 8 from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: The Shocking Alternative.
For most part, the heaviest question asked throughout this chapter is why evil exists, and why God allowed it to exist. A human being who is probably sick and tired of all the evil and suffering in the world would say that if only evil can just stop existing – if only suffering would stop. If only human beings had no instincts that would push them to do the wrong thing. I used to think this way; why can’t we exist in a world where evil is absent? After reading this chapter and listening to the explanations in class, I realized that evil actually makes way for love. I thought about how it would be much better for evil to exist, than for it to be non-existent but along with it, the absence of love. Several movies have already been made about a utopia – a sort of paradise where everyone is the same and there is only good, but the movie always takes a sour turn and ends up in chaos. I then think about some people who look as if they exist around this concept of evil: hurting other people, not caring about their bodies, swearing off God, thinking they are the masters of their own lives. The thing is, most of the time these people often look happy. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Sometimes it comes to a point where the temptation kicks on to be much like them. Gladly though, it has never fully consumed me. After much evaluation and some time ‘observing’ these people who seem to be having all the fun in the world, I discovered that their happiness, their so-called love, was fleeting. In a sense, it was not real, it was not true, and it was not pure. A phrase from the chapter then starts to make sense: “What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside
091457
TH151 – P
First Term Paper
The chapter that I chose to reflect on for this paper is Chapter 8 from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: The Shocking Alternative.
For most part, the heaviest question asked throughout this chapter is why evil exists, and why God allowed it to exist. A human being who is probably sick and tired of all the evil and suffering in the world would say that if only evil can just stop existing – if only suffering would stop. If only human beings had no instincts that would push them to do the wrong thing. I used to think this way; why can’t we exist in a world where evil is absent? After reading this chapter and listening to the explanations in class, I realized that evil actually makes way for love. I thought about how it would be much better for evil to exist, than for it to be non-existent but along with it, the absence of love. Several movies have already been made about a utopia – a sort of paradise where everyone is the same and there is only good, but the movie always takes a sour turn and ends up in chaos. I then think about some people who look as if they exist around this concept of evil: hurting other people, not caring about their bodies, swearing off God, thinking they are the masters of their own lives. The thing is, most of the time these people often look happy. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Sometimes it comes to a point where the temptation kicks on to be much like them. Gladly though, it has never fully consumed me. After much evaluation and some time ‘observing’ these people who seem to be having all the fun in the world, I discovered that their happiness, their so-called love, was fleeting. In a sense, it was not real, it was not true, and it was not pure. A phrase from the chapter then starts to make sense: “What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside