Reflections on God … Man … Life
Another C. S. Lewis book that I read recently—for the first time—is Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. One section speaks directly to me with respect to a hard time I’m going through at the moment. We would like the world to be predictable, something we can manage according to our expectations. Lewis says we have to lay that expectation aside: But is it not plain that this predictable world . . . is not the world we live in?… Read more »
Last Saturday, I wrote about how C. S. Lewis warned against what he called a type of “band-wagoning,” in which we can, at the expense of our principles, decide to become part of a system with which we say we disagree. He continues the discussion in Reflections on the Psalms with what he believes are more subtle forms of the problem that can easily deceive us. Many people have a very strong desire to meet celebrated or “important” people, including… Read more »
In Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis takes aim at people who jump on bandwagons for their own personal benefit. In a chapter he titled “Connivance,” he writes of those in ancient Judea “who fleeced their fellow-countrymen to get money for the occupying power in return for a fat percentage” of the take. He was, frankly, astounded by the attitude he witnessed in one young man who had studied at Oxford. The man had been an avowed socialist during… Read more »
During my sabbatical year in 2014-2015, I finally had the time to fulfill a dream—research and write about C. S. Lewis. Out of that sabbatical emerged a book-length manuscript that I hoped would find a publisher. That hope has now come to fruition. A Christian publisher, Wipf & Stock, has accepted my manuscript, and the probable date for publication is late summer-early autumn. My goal in this book was to shed light on how Lewis has influenced/impacted Americans. No one… Read more »
I’m not a seminary-trained theologian. Everything I’ve learned about Scripture is the result of deep personal interest inspired by a desire to get closer to the One behind the Scripture. That’s why, as a young man just out of college (with a degree in radio, TV, and film production), I spent countless hours with a cassette-based course learning Koine Greek. (Anybody remember cassettes?) Some might say that I shouldn’t be so theological in my commentary because I don’t have the… Read more »
I think I’m doing what C. S. Lewis wanted readers of his Reflections on the Psalms to do: I’m reflecting. He provides such good material for reflection as he shares insights in this little book. For instance, he refers to how the psalms always talk about seeing the beauty of the Lord, yet it’s not the Lord directly that the typical Jew saw, but rather the rituals in the Temple or some other aspect of the outward symbols of God’s… Read more »
C. S. Lewis, writing in Reflections on the Psalms, contrasts the anger displayed toward evil men in some of the psalms with the apparent lack of vindictiveness found in some pagan writings. Does this reveal a better spirit among the pagans? Not so, he says. He gives a personal example to illustrate how lack of anger can often be the worst response. During WWII, he was taking the train one night (as he often did, traveling to speak and then… Read more »