Reflections on God … Man … Life
As part of my teaching responsibilities for my church, I have an adult Sunday class that I offer ten months out of the year. The goal of this class is to dig deeply into Scripture. In September, I began a series on 1 Corinthians 13, the famous Love Chapter. It has taken three months to navigate it in as detailed a fashion as I can, and the final session is this Sunday. I began the series with C. S. Lewis’s… Read more »
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34-35 I am a person with strong views, both theologically and with respect to history and government (my specialized field of study). It’s hard sometimes being a person who holds to strong views because whenever you come across contrary views, the temptation is… Read more »
Love is such a misunderstood word. Every good thing that emanates from God can and has been perverted. Some expressions that we call love are just the opposite. C. S. Lewis gives us an excellent, and disturbing, example of this in The Great Divorce. In the fanciful tale of a bus trip from hell to the outskirts of heaven, Lewis lays bare all the roadblocks people set up that keep them from acknowledging God and His truth. One episode involves… Read more »
Re-reading any work by C. S. Lewis is hardly a waste of one’s time. I go back continually to what he has written because I keep finding new treasures, even in passages that I already know to some extent. For instance, in The Four Loves, there is a part that is often quoted—I have quoted it—yet I forgot the context in which Lewis penned it. It’s in the final chapter, the one on “Charity.” The greater context is the concern… Read more »
In my recent re-reading of C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, I came across a section that I had forgotten, which deals with one’s love of country—both the positive and negative aspects. This had a particular appeal to me as I prepare to teach American history once again to university students, many of whom are rather blank slates when it comes to knowledge of the past. “We all know,” Lewis begins, “that this love [of country] becomes a demon when… Read more »
The Magician’s Nephew was the Narnia book that took C. S Lewis the longest to write. He conceived it as a way to explain the origin of Narnia, as well as an imaginative answer to how a wardrobe could have such magical powers and why a lamp-post seemingly pops up in the middle of a forest. I believe he succeeded admirably. As I’ve explained in previous posts, I have been preparing to teach the Narnia series at my church. Doing… Read more »
Jesus gave His followers some very difficult instructions—at least, we seem to make them difficult. Sadly, one of the most difficult seems to be this one: Love One Another. This commandment is truly that: a commandment. It’s not just a good suggestion. When the world sees those who proclaim faith in Christ at each other’s throats, we undermine the Gospel message. Sadly, history shows Christians (or at least those claiming to be Christians) persecuting and even killing one another. In… Read more »