Tag: Lewis

Lewis : Willing Slaves of the Welfare State

  

C. S. Lewis didn’t write a lot specifically about civil government because that wasn’t his priority. Yet when he did write on the subject, he was lucid and devastating with respect to how government can become a terror to individuals. One of his essays in God in the Dock is entitled “Is Progress Possible?” but the subtitle really gets to the point of the essay: “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” He knew whereof he spoke, writing this in 1958… Read more »

Lewis: Great Moral Teacher?

  

I love how C. S. Lewis compares Jesus to other religious leaders in history. In an essay called “What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?” Lewis lays out the claim Jesus made that He was indeed God, as opposed to simply a great moral teacher: On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most sane and humble of men. There… Read more »

Lewis: Interrupting “Real Life”

  

Do you ever find yourself complaining to God about all those “things” that keep getting in the way of what you want your life to be? If only, we tell ourselves, all the distractions of life could be removed, we could really live. We even get quite spiritual about it and confidently assert we would be so much better Christians without all those distractions. In one of his letters to a friend, C. S. Lewis addressed this, calling out this… Read more »

Lewis: Reflection on the Incarnation

  

In one of his letters, C. S. Lewis reflects on when God became man in the person of Jesus. Why did He not come as a type of superhero, impervious to physical harm and devoid of emotion? It’s because He sought to be like us and to reveal the heart of the Father: God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility… Read more »

Lewis: Flippancy vs. Humor

  

There’s a world of difference between real humor and cocky snarkiness. I think C. S. Lewis caught that distinction well in The Screwtape Letters as senior devil Screwtape instructs junior devil Wormwood on how to twist the character of the human he is trying to drag into hell: Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of… Read more »

Lewis: The Humble Person

  

Do we really understand what is meant by the word “humility”? There is a popular misconception about that word that C. S. Lewis identifies well in Mere Christianity. He also paints an alluring portrait of how true humility appears: Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody…. Read more »

Lewis: From the Portraits to the Original

  

Human love. What is it, exactly? Is it a lesser love than love for God? Does it get in our way of loving Him? Or is it a manifestation of His love? Do we set aside any human loves we have experienced when we enter His presence at the end of this earthly existence? This passage from C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves is one to be read slowly, in order to capture the fullness of what he is saying…. Read more »