“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” C. S. Lewis

I have long struggled with this all-or-nothing dichotomy of Lewis’s: not with the logic of it, but with the truth of it.

“If a dog is a banana and a banana is a cat, then a dog is a cat” is a valid logical syllogism, but it is hardly true. The form of the argument is flawless but the premises are false and lead to a false conclusion. The error is not in logic, but in truth, and it is clear enough to see. The problem with Lewis’s dictum is more difficult to spot. Both premises are true; St Paul agrees with them in his magisterial reflection on the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). But, Lewis’ conclusion is clearly wrong in truth; there are those — and many of those — for whom Christianity is, at best, moderately important. I know because — Lord, have mercy — I am one of them. This class of people should not be, but we are, though most of us would not willingly claim membership in the class.

Now I was interested to discover that not even Lewis really agreed with his dictum as his essay Three Kinds of Men clearly shows:

There are three kinds of people in the world. The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them. In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them — the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society — and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier’s or a schoolboy’s life, into time ‘on parade’ and ‘off parade’, ‘in school’ and ‘out of school’. But the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them ‘to live is Christ’. These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His.

And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no ‘salvation’ by works done according to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.

The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort — it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us (C. S. Lewis (Walter Hooper, ed.), Three Kinds of Men, Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays, Harper Collins (2017), pp. 13-15).

Three kinds of men: (1) those who live entirely for their own sakes, (2) those who live entirely for Christ, and (3) the tertium quid of those who live grudgingly in between, living for self as much as possible while yielding to Christ as little as “necessary,” in other words, those for whom Christianity is of no importance, those for whom it is of ultimate importance, and those for whom it is moderately important.

There is an irony in this spiritual taxonomy. Only those clearly in one of the classes are likely to self-identify with that class: those for whom Christianity — and even the claims of natural law — is of no importance, those “who live for their own sake and pleasure.” They will often lie to others — they will try to lie to others — about their membership, but the truth is clear for all to see, and they know it. The group for whom Christianity is moderately important is more likely to self-identify with the “ultimate importance” class. And the saints, those for whom Christ is truly of ultimate importance, place themselves in the lowest of classes; St Paul called himself the chief of sinners.

Now, let me challenge Lewis a bit further. I believe the class who considers Christianity to be only moderately important is the largest class of all. And, it is the class to which the entirety of the New Testament was written. It is the class of which the Church is primarily comprised. It is the class that St Paul routinely — and non-ironically — called saints. If you doubt this, read I and II Corinthians and then re-read Lewis’s essay; the members of that church clearly acknowledged Christ’s claim on them but tried to pursue their own self interests as far as the limits of that claim allowed, and, in the case of the Corinthians, far beyond what that claim allowed. And yet they were saints, the beloved of God, the very stuff of whom the Kingdom of God is made. That is the great mystery of grace, that God considers as of ultimate importance those who consider him only moderately important, that Mercy will receive us even on those terms.