Reflections on God … Man … Life
C. S. Lewis had a way of taking a concept and giving it new life, sometimes simply by illustration, other times by making sure we have the correct definition of that concept. Take humility, for instance. To the world at large, the word conjures up an image of weakness or some kind of constant self-belittling. Yet humility is actually a source of spiritual strength; neither does it mean one has no value. That’s never true in God’s eyes. Here’s how… Read more »
The ongoing problem with humanity is not that we are so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good; rather, it’s the opposite: we’re so earthbound that we’re no good to heaven. We keep thinking that this world that we see around us, and those who populate it, will fulfill all our hopes. If we think that, we are terribly off-base. “The settled happiness and security which we all desire,” remarked C. S. Lewis, “God withholds from us by the very… Read more »
“The place for which He designs them [human beings] in His scheme of things is the place they are made for.” That’s C. S. Lewis commenting in The Problem of Pain regarding human desires. “When they [humans] reach it [the place God has made for them] their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over.” Yet human beings universally set their desires on the wrong things. We want… Read more »
I’m sure everyone has heard the complaint against some Christians who, we’re told, are “too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” While that may sound rather clever, and it may be easy to pick up on the refrain because, after all, this is the world we live in, it nevertheless doesn’t hold up under close examination. History itself denies this cliché. C. S. Lewis can always be relied upon to make us rethink popular slogans. He tackles this one… Read more »
We love to talk about heaven. Hell, not so much. We get glimpses of both eternal destinations in Scripture, but not the full picture of either. C. S. Lewis is well known for perceiving both in imaginative ways. On the subject of hell, we naturally think of The Screwtape Letters, where in his preface he tells us, “We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance,… Read more »
We imagine images such as the one above: ethereal, somewhat fanciful, perhaps. We really don’t know. We’re so tied to this world; our imaginations are so limited. C. S. Lewis described it this way in his Mere Christianity: Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to… Read more »
“Your soul has a curious shape,” comments C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. What does he mean? “It is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance,” he explains. And if that explanation leaves you scratching your head, he tries another analogy: “Or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.” Lewis is pointing to the uniqueness of God’s creation of each one of… Read more »