Reflections on God … Man … Life
Last week, I attended a C. S. Lewis conference in Montreat, North Carolina. It was a welcome respite from my regular routine of teaching and grading. To be clear, I love teaching (not so much the grading), but there are times of refreshing when one can simply sit and listen and take in what the Lord wants one to hear. This was one of those times. Some of the most accomplished Lewis scholars were there as presenters. In the photo… Read more »
“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a message on Facebook saying that I was going to take a break from commenting on Donald Trump. My rationale was that no one is going to be convinced to examine their unalloyed support of a man who doesn’t deserve to hold the highest office in the land. I hoped for a respite. Yet Donald Trump doesn’t give anyone a respite. Shortly after my stated desire to ignore him, he was credibly accused… Read more »
Whittaker Chambers, in his autobiography Witness, writes about his days in the Communist Party prior to his disillusionment with it and his eventual rejection of that false vision of mankind, history, and the future. In it, he offers a portrait of one man by the name of Harry Freeman who was the perfect example of the Communist mindset. Here’s how he described him: No matter how favorable his opinion had been to an individual or his political role, if that… Read more »
One book I always include in my C. S. Lewis course is his Abolition of Man. It’s a weighty book, and I sometimes wonder if my students will be able to grasp its message. Yet I also believe it is worth requiring it because the message is so relevant, even more so today than when the book was published during WWII. The overall theme is the replacement of the natural law God has implanted within his creation with whatever new… Read more »
My students finished reading C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters this week. The final letter includes one of the most profound insights Lewis has ever offered as to what happens when a Christian dies. Even though it is described through the eyes of a demon (or perhaps because it is described in that way), one can get a glimpse of the glory that awaits those who have found the narrow path and remained faithful. Wormwood’s “patient” has died in a… Read more »
Pastor Robert Jeffress is one of Donald Trump’s most fervent evangelical defenders. He has recently tweeted the following: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” What bothers me about this tweet is the exaltation of a man to the point that removing him from office would be tantamount to the kind of division… Read more »