Tag: Lewis

The Lewisian View of Democracy

  

My doctorate is in history. My teaching career included seven years in a graduate school of government, showing how history needs to be taken into account when considering the function of government and public policy. And of course the basis for everything I have taught has been Biblical principles. Therefore, it’s not hard to understand why I maintain an active interest in politics and current affairs. I seek to educate others in those principles and hope to see them influence… Read more »

The Unnaturalness of Death

  

Death is something we all have to face. For most of us, it is faced first in the loss of someone we know and love. Ultimately, we have to face it in our own lives, recognizing that it is inevitable, not something we can avoid forever, although in Christ we know it isn’t final, that there is an unfathomably wonderful forever on the other side of that fearful doorway. Yet death was never meant to be. It is an intruder… Read more »

The Compulsory “Cure”

  

I wonder how often I’ve said, “This is one of my favorites,” when speaking of something C. S. Lewis wrote? I’ve probably used that phrase for far too many of his writings, so that it loses its impact when repeated. Yet it always remains true of one particular essay, “Is Progress Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” Out of the many insights contained therein, here is one that stands out to me: what Lewis identifies as “the changed relation… Read more »

The Real Church of Jesus Christ

  

The Church of Jesus Christ consists of all those who have received the truth about themselves and their relationship with God. It consists of those who have seen the awfulness of their sins, who have come to the Cross in repentance and faith for the forgiveness of those sins, and who have thereafter dedicated their lives to serving the One who gave His life for them. Those who have done so are the actual Church, and that Church has only… Read more »

Aggravate Schism or Heal It?

  

My study of C. S. Lewis’s correspondence has been primarily his letters to Americans. While one of my delightful projects for the future is to read all of his letters, I’ve only grazed the surface of those outside his American connections. I have noted, though, some of his correspondence with his Catholic friend, Don Giovanni Calabria. The Anglican-Protestant Lewis kept up a lively and friendly interchange with that friend. Some of those letters deal with the divisions in the church… Read more »

A Society with No Sense of Sin & Guilt?

  

What’s perhaps the biggest deception in our day that keeps people from getting their lives right with God? I want to draw from three C. S. Lewis writings to offer one possibility—a possibility that I think is far closer to a probability. In Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, the path to establishing a relationship with God is clearly laid out: Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to… Read more »

The Question of the Dishonest Question

  

“Can’t I lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” That’s the question posed by many people. Is it an honest question or one that simply seeks to avoid truth? C. S. Lewis deals with it in his short, yet insightful, essay, “Man or Rabbit?” It can be found in God in the Dock. Lewis clears away the unhelpful underbrush of the query and reveals the path such a person asking the question is attempting to follow. As he does… Read more »