Reflections on God … Man … Life
In his Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis lays out what he believes should be a measuring line for how Christians are to give to those in need. Here is his guideline: Charity—giving to the poor—is an essential part of Christian morality. . . . I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditures on comforts,… Read more »
C. S. Lewis abounded in friends, those with whom he could spend many hours enjoying their company. In one of his letters, he wrote, “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?” He also hinted at the value of friendship in an essay on Hamlet, when he said, “The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” He expressed perhaps his most penetrating… Read more »
Last Saturday, in my weekly C. S. Lewis post, I quoted him on the subject of free will. He had quite a lot to say on that doctrine, and I like what he has said. Therefore, I’m giving him a wide berth today by relating a passage from Mere Christianity that makes the point even more forcefully than the quote I used last week: God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or… Read more »
The age-old controversy over free will continues to plague us. I have very settled views on the matter. Some of what I believe on this is enunciated quite well by C. S. Lewis in a couple of his works. For instance, in The Problem of Pain, he zeroes in on the one who is truly accountable for evil entering into this world: Man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not… Read more »
C. S. Lewis can often take a Scriptural principle and, just by the shading of his words, help us see it in a new light. And he’s always very practical when doing so. On the difficulty of forgiving others, for instance, he reminds us why it is essential that we do so: To forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we… Read more »
I like the way C. S. Lewis deals with sin and forgiveness in the following passages. First, he unfolds how people often, but erroneously, think of it: If you had a perfect excuse you would not need forgiveness: if the whole of your action needs forgiveness then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call “asking God’s forgiveness,” very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this… Read more »
Not all of C. S. Lewis’s writings are explicitly Christian, yet he brings a clarity to any subject that is drawn from his Christian convictions. One of his favorite subjects, naturally, was education, since he spent a lifetime teaching and tutoring students at Oxford and Cambridge. I find this particular Lewis commentary in an essay titled “On the Reading of Old Books,” to ring true. See if you agree. I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if… Read more »