Reflections on God … Man … Life
Some people have a concept of God that is so vague as to be meaningless. They conceive of Him as an omnipresence of some kind, but not as a real Person. C. S. Lewis, in his Miracles, tackles this misconception: If anything is to exist at all, then the Original Thing must be, not a principle nor a generality, much less an “ideal” or a “value,” but an utterly concrete fact. We must beware . . . of paying God… Read more »
C. S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, one week before his 65th birthday. Most people didn’t notice his death since that was also the day of the JFK assassination. Lewis probably would have liked the anonymity of his passing. In those 65 years, which spanned from just before the beginning of the 20th century to the dawn of the space age, he saw society transformed. One of his final essays, written in the year of his death, showed he… Read more »
There’s just no getting around the existence of God. The apostle Paul says people have to actively suppress the truth of His presence, and they do so to avoid the idea they are accountable for their actions. One of the psalms says a person has to be a fool to believe there is no God. C. S. Lewis has his own unique way of expressing these Biblical truths. In his book Miracles he declares, God is basic Fact or Actuality,… Read more »
God is not the Force of the Star Wars saga. Neither is He some vague “idea” floating around out there. He’s not Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist Oversoul. He is a Person; in fact, more of a person than either you or I. In one of his essays, “On Obstinacy in Belief,” C. S. Lewis shows how we need to come face to face with that reality: To believe that God—at least this God—exists is to believe that you as a… Read more »
Man, in his sinfulness, will go to any length to excuse himself for what he has become. One of the favorite hobbies of modern man is to push the blame for the problems of the world onto God. In his essay, “God in the Dock,” C. S. Lewis describes this attitude: The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge; God… Read more »
Here’s a very timely reminder from C. S. Lewis that God is not some convenient prop we can use to achieve whatever else we want in life or eternity. He, in fact, is the goal of life; knowing Him is what it’s all about. As Lewis states it in A Grief Observed, the most personal of all his books, as it deals with the loss of his wife, He [God] can’t be used as a road. If you’re approaching Him… Read more »
One of my all-time favorite C. S. Lewis quotes—and that’s saying a lot, considering there are so many that could qualify—is found in a sermon he gave called “The Weight of Glory.” He preached this in 1942 at the Oxford Church of St. Mary the Virgin. I’ve been to Oxford only once, but on that brief visit, I entered that church and climbed to the top to see spectacular views of the university below. What transpired in its pulpit, though,… Read more »