Mere Christianity
I would not presume to compare myself to C.S. Lewis and the depth of his thinking as he wrote "Mere Christianity". It took me a long time of development in my walk before I could make myself sit and read this excellent book all of the way through. So much of the book is concise, well-stated, yet thorough. Unfortunately, it is also relatively dated by the historical context in which it was written, so some of his analogies might be difficult for "boomers" or "generation X'ers" to relate.

There are those who say we are now in a "post-modern" era of thinking, particularly in the area of spirituality. Organized religion is demonized; "churches are full of hypocrites" is claimed; and "any path to God is acceptable" is championed as the appropriate philosophy upon which basis human peace and prosperity can be achieved. Unhappily for much of the world, that is just not so.

"Good" and "Evil" are NOT subjective; nor are they individual. Happy and unhappy may indeed be subjective and individual; but these are not the same as good and evil. When mankind tries to determine good and evil by some democratic process; it is always subject to the vagaries of individualistic opinion.

I submit that any creed which teaches the forceful or violent imposition of acceptance is inherently evil -even if it is based upon "truth". Any teaching that is not sufficiently compelling in and of itself, for which the benefits to its adherents is not self-evident, or for which those benefits are not readily available to any seeker and which cannot be available to humanity at large should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

Man is endowed inherently with a sense of right and wrong. Even the meanest of sociopaths can wants to be treated "fairly" and is likely to respond to "good" treatment and "bad" treatment in a like manner. As Lewis points out, every honest individual will admit that, at least on occasion, they do not always live up to their own sense of "right" and "wrong". The fact that many "organized religions" corrupt fundamental truths to excuse occasional failures and institutionalize them for the sake of control or power does not negate the fundamental truths that may be the basis of most of their teaching.

The fundamentals of Christianity are: 1) That God created man in His own image, male and female (so this must be a spiritual image, not a physical image. 2) That man did not and does not live up to the Godlike standard that God requires to live forever in His presence. 3) That God Himself provided a mechanism to atone (make up for) for man's not living up to His standard. 4) That that atonement must be accepted. 5) That the reason for the atonement is so that we can continually be made over into God's image walking in those same Godly footprints, and reach out to rescue all of mankind.

There is no hatred or violence in this teaching. There is no hypocrisy. There is no forced submission. There is no rejoicing in misfortune. There is no thirst for revenge. Everyone who accepts the atonement must continually remember the parable of the unjust servant who would not forgive his fellow servant a tiny debt after having been forgiven an insurmountable debt.
No social, criminal, nor economic slight excuses the behavior indicated by the unjust servant, nor does it excuse institutionalized wrongs. It is not that the Christian should not tray to correct any such wrongs - it is inexcusable for a Christian to participate in such wrongs. Rather, it is wrong to try to avenge or violently correct those wrongs against ourselves, for then we become the unjust servants. However, it is equally wrong to idly stand by and watch an innocent be subject to evil when we have the power to intervene. We simply must not do so in a harsh or vengeful manner.

The challenge that we have is how to do this, and to encourage each other to do this on a daily basis. An approach to how to do this on a social and economic basis can be found in Charles Sheldon's "In His Steps" - readily available as either an audio, e-book, or hard copy; and even an updated version of this over 100 year old Christian novel classic.

Think this through, and compare it with the teachings of other religions and with that of extremists of virtually any religion, and comment if you would.