Reflections on God … Man … Life
I recently spoke at a C. S. Lewis conference about the significance of The Screwtape Letters. This is obviously one of the best-known works by Lewis and continues to hold a strong fascination in the minds of those who have read it. Americans have loved it ever since it was first published. In my presentation, I thought I would begin with what ostensibly could be called a “catchy” title. Catchy, yes, but also quite accurate. I did provide a general… Read more »
While I cannot recall the precise order of my initial reading of C. S. Lewis’s books, I do know that his science fiction offerings must have been near the beginning. First, I have always loved science fiction; second, the realization that a Christian author wrote such things had to have piqued my interest. It’s possible The Screwtape Letters came first, but I had to have read what is commonly called “The Space Trilogy” during that same period. I, along with… Read more »
This past week in my C. S. Lewis course, we have been discussing The Screwtape Letters. Every time I return to these letters, I see greater depth than before, and for some of my students, this is their first foray into the infernal world Lewis created to highlight Christian truth in an unusual way. The letters themselves obviously are the focus as we discuss, but I started by reading to them from his preface to the 1961 edition, which came… Read more »
Every Wednesday evening since early January, I’ve had the joy of teaching a class on C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. A local Episcopal church invited me to do so, and I accepted the offer with relish. A group of eager learners comprises this class (approximately fifty each week), which has made it one of the highlights of this new year for me. I’d read Screwtape a number of times over the years. Lewis himself famously commented that a really… Read more »
I’ve been teaching a Screwtape Letters class at a local church on Wednesday evenings. It’s one of the highlights of my week. Although I’ve read this wonderful C. S. Lewis book a number of times, this is the first time I’ve attempted to discuss it with a group paragraph by paragraph, and the interaction with members of the class over Lewis’s key points has been illuminating. Nearly every paragraph offers some pearl of meditation that could conceivably fill up my… Read more »
World War I devastated Europe and decimated the male populations of Britain and France. C. S. Lewis served in that war, even though, having grown up in Northern Ireland, he wasn’t required to do so. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he doesn’t spend a lot of time describing his wartime experience, but what he does relate is striking: The war—the frights, the cold, . . . the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing… Read more »
“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement,”” advised C. S. Lewis, “where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” Lewis wrote those words in his preface to the 1961 edition of The Screwtape Letters. Although Screwtape is, in one sense, a comical devil, Lewis never lets his readers forget what lies at the heart of hell: the self, with… Read more »