God’s Remedies: What God Did For Us After the Fall

And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded.

Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.

Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was — that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.

Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a Man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.

Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this Man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else.

And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this Man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

— from Mere Christianity

Excerpted with permission from A Year With C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works, by C. S. Lewis, copyright HarperCollins.

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Your Turn

Today, there are many, many religions that believe all roads lead to God. Many believe that God is whatever you make of Him — a little bit of this philosophy, and that appealing part of that belief system, a dash of eastern thinking, and whatever makes you happy and comfortable. But, that’s not what Scripture says. Jesus was clear that He was the one and only God in the flesh and He was the one Way to follow. What do you say to this Man? Come join the conversation on our blog! We want to hear from you! ~ Devotionals Daily