Book Two, Chapter 1: The Rival Conceptions of God

Book Two of Mere Christianity begins with a question that sounds easy until you try to answer it: do you believe in God, and if so, which kind? In Lewis's survey, one option is a God who sits beyond good and evil, the pantheist picture. The other is the God of Jews, Muslims and Christians, who judges evil. Lewis also faces the hardest objection head on: if the world holds this much cruelty and injustice, how can anyone believe in a good God at all?

Psalm 11 is a good place to test those pictures. David's friends tell him to flee like a bird to the mountains, because the foundations are collapsing and the wicked are taking aim at the upright. Then comes the turn in verse 4: "The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD's throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man." Notice what David claims. God is not remote and not blind. He is enthroned, and he is looking.

Now hold that up against a God beyond good and evil. Such a God would not be angry at anything, which sounds peaceful until you picture a victim. If cruelty doesn't register with God, then nobody is ever wronged in any final sense. Verse 5 sounds harsh: "his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." But read it as the other side of love. A God who cared for the oppressed and felt nothing toward the oppressor would be a strange kind of lover. The target is specific: people who love violence. Verse 6 borrows the fire and sulfur that fell on Sodom in Genesis 19, a reminder that God's judgment has landed on real evil before.

The psalm won't let us sit in the stands, though. Verse 5 begins, "The LORD tests the righteous." The same eyes that look at the wicked look at us. That is where choosing between pictures gets personal. A God who judges evil is a God who might judge mine. Lewis's book keeps returning to that tension, and so does the psalm. Yet verse 7 gives David his reason to stay put instead of running: "For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face." Goodness and judgment are not two moods in God. They are one character seen from two sides.

That doesn't answer every question about suffering, and Lewis's next chapters push further. For today the job is simpler: notice which God you have actually been assuming. Some of us quietly picture an indifferent God. Some picture an angry one who is never pleased. The psalm gives a third picture: a righteous king who sees, cares, and welcomes the upright into his presence.

If cruelty or abuse in your own story sits behind these questions, bring them to a pastor, counselor or trusted friend. Nothing in this psalm asks you to stay near anyone who harms you.