You’ve asked for ideas for Christmas gifts, devotionals, and books that will help you and your families to grow in the faith. A new generation of parents, young adults, and youth deserve introduction to an old book that has surprising implications for a modern world. C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity provides comfort for Christians asking hard questions, offers sound, gentle answers to those criticizing Christianity, and represents an excellency of writing style for readers hungry for beauty and wisdom. This article is but a brief overview to give you a taste of this classic book just in case you’ve always wanted to know more or have forgotten about it.

How Modern Christians Could Benefit from This Book

There are at least three ways Mere Christianity can bless any generation, and meet your needs for fresh reading that will help you grow your faith:

To Give You Comfort

For example, maybe you struggle when interacting with Christians who don’t seem to be very Christian. Lewis can help with that. He suggests that the world does not simply consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-Christians; rather people are moving in the direction of more belief or less belief. Of course, he explains this concept in greater detail, offering reassuring words to help you deal with the confusing or worrisome behaviors of others.

Another example is Lewis’s unique explanation of boundaries – an issue that is as relevant today (click here for my recent article explaining boundaries) – as it was at the time of this writing (mid-1950’s). He exhorts the reader to strike a balance, to not take on too much or too little responsibility for other members of the Body of Christ. Lewis promotes a middle path for your relationships – one that acknowledges both the unity of believers as one body as well as the freedom of believers to be different from each other, each person contributing what no one else can.

Or, for those moments when you feel skittish about eternity and have wondered about harps, crowns, and gold, Lewis will teach you in memorable fashion how such symbols express the splendor and joy of what is ahead. This book really does bring timeless and Biblical comfort to a lost world.

To Give You Helpful Answers & Help You Reach Non-Believers

Even though Mere Christianity was written decades ago, you’ll find good responses to a current culture that insists there is no Truth, such as when Lewis asserts: “If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.”

Or for another relevant example, maybe your kids can’t understand what’s wrong with the “Love is love” bumper stickers and billboards. It sounds so – well, loving.  But as Lewis explains, such phraseology really means “Love is God” which is quite different from the Biblical meaning of “God is Love.”  His teaching really is timely. Parents or grandparents, you can dust this book off your bookshelves, read and annotate this classic for yourselves, and keep it as a resource to help you catechize your children and grandchildren in Biblical truth.

And for those highly intelligent friends and family that need logical steps and sound reasoning, Mere Christianity makes an apt case for the gospel and Lewis’s other books will also impress sharp minds. Also, the gift of high-quality books just feel good to the touch in a digital age.

To Increase Your Library of Good Literature

With much of school-assigned reading actually being a cover for soft porn, such chaste, yet clever writing from another time is a refreshing place for students to land. And when parents are longing for influences to replace messages of entitlement and victimhood, studying excerpts like this from Mere Christianity is an assignment everyone can get excited about:

“If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’?…To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?”

Prayer & Blessing

“Beware less anyone cheat you…according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)