“Horrid Red Things”

Big idea

Summary

Lewis takes his odd chapter title from a remark by a schoolboy who, on being told what Christians believe about the Blood of Christ, objected that it sounded like nothing more than 'horrid red things.' Lewis uses the anecdote to make a broader point: every abstract or spiritual truth has to be grasped through some mental picture, and that picture is almost always cruder, more physical, and more open to mockery than the truth it is meant to serve.

He extends this to a wide range of doctrines: talk of God's 'wrath,' of Christ's atoning 'blood,' of heaven as a place 'above,' or of angels with wings, all involve mental pictures borrowed from ordinary sensory experience, because that is the only kind of picture human minds have available. Ridiculing the picture — pointing out how crude or even faintly comic it sounds when stated baldly — does nothing to disprove the underlying doctrine, since the doctrine was never identical with the picture in the first place; it is what the picture is used, however imperfectly, to point toward.

Lewis's practical counsel is that believers should hold their own mental pictures more lightly, recognizing them as necessary but always inadequate aids, while not letting an unbeliever's mockery of the picture pass for a refutation of the doctrine itself. He notes that this problem cuts both ways: sophisticated modern theology, in trying to escape crude pictures altogether, sometimes drains a doctrine of definite content until nothing recognizably Christian is left, a danger he will return to more fully in the next chapter's discussion of 'religion' in the abstract.

Key points

• Every spiritual or abstract truth has to be expressed through some mental picture drawn from ordinary sensory life, and that picture will almost always sound cruder than the truth it serves.
• Mocking the picture (such as 'horrid red things' for the Blood of Christ) does not refute the doctrine, because the doctrine was never simply identical with the picture used to convey it.
• Believers should hold their mental pictures of doctrine lightly, as necessary aids rather than as the truth itself.
• The opposite danger also exists: theology that tries to escape all concrete pictures can drain a doctrine of definite content until little recognizably Christian remains.

Illustrations & analogies

• The schoolboy's complaint about 'horrid red things' for the doctrine of Christ's atoning blood is the chapter's guiding illustration: a crude picture provokes ridicule, but the ridicule lands on the picture, not on the truth the picture was reaching for.

For reflection and discussion

1. Can you think of a Christian doctrine you find easier to defend once you separate the concrete image people usually attach to it from the underlying truth it points to?
2. Where do you see the opposite danger Lewis warns about — teaching that becomes so abstract it no longer says anything definite?