Tag Archives: C.S. Lewis

August 15, 2015

C.S. Lewis and the Butterfly Effect

By John Paine
C.S. Lewis

Why would C.S. Lewis take the time to correspond with a young American girl he did not know? Would his four letters, including the one he wrote to her just 11 days before his death, have any consequence?

In our culture we are taught to swing for the fences. Blast the game-winning home run high over the center field wall. Instant gratification and recognition. Great work if you can get it.

But a life lived in obedience to God is seldom like that. It’s much more like the butterfly effect—where one small change can make a big difference in the way things turn out. Consider the chain of events in the following story.

  1. In the 1960s, a somewhat under-appreciated (at the time) Cambridge don, deep thinker, and writer of children’s literature gets a fan letter from a 12-year-old American girl. Despite all he has going on, he takes the time to write back to her.
  2. The young girl begins to read some of his other work, including his Christian writings. She writes more letters, he writes back.
  3. When he dies, only a small number of friends attend his funeral.
  4. Through subsequent publishing he becomes one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20th century.
  5. Because he took the time to write to the little girl, his corpus has a profound effect on her faith and her ability and desire to defend her Christian worldview.
  6. The little girl grows up, marries a small town preacher, and has a profound effect on him.
  7. The small town preacher becomes one of the most influential Christian writers and thinkers of the 21st century.

For the whole story, read this article.

We really don’t take enough time to correspond with people. Taking the time to write someone can have significant and lasting consequences—much more so than hitting a dramatic home run.

HT: Marion Paine, David the Older

2 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Witnesses

November 20, 2013

Imagination: ‘Jack’ Lewis

By Clarke Morledge

I was just a few months old when the death of President John F. Kennedy shook our nation 50 years ago. But everyone who knew of the Kennedy assassination at that time knows exactly where they were at the moment when they heard the news. Like 9/11 in our day, the story of the Kennedy tragedy shaped a generation. However, there was another cultural event on November 22, 1963 that was overshadowed by the Kennedy shooting:  the death of C. S. Lewis.

Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis: famous Christian of the 20th century, influential apologist, and still today a popular author of children’s fantasy… and yet, I often wonder how much the Christian church has truly been been shaped by the life and work of this Oxford don.

As my fellow Veracity blogger, John Paine, confesses, Lewis can sometimes be a little hard to get in sync with.  From another angle, I pretty much boycotted reading Lewis years ago precisely because he was so popular back then. Many evangelicals seem uncomfortable today about the legacy of this tobacco-smoking, British intellectual Anglican. But both John and I have now come to deeply appreciate Lewis more and more.

What does Lewis have to say?  If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be imagination.  It was a vision of a Biblically-informed imagination that brought this atheist to faith, a man filled with animosity towards his father, and who had a very odd, even scandalous relationship with a much older woman. Lewis endured the mindless insanity in the French trenches of World War I, but he rarely talked about it. Lewis, like any human that I know, had moral failures and terrible skeletons haunting him in his closet. But it was the creative energy of thinking about the love story of the Bible, God’s relentless pursuit of bringing a rebellious and alienated people into relationship with Himself, that broke through Lewis’ cynicism, despair, and denial.

We need more of C. S. Lewis’ vision of a Christian imagination today in Christ’s church.  Many Christians get so absorbed by the literal truth of the Scriptures that they forget about the revelatory power of the figurative, the transcendent beauty of a turn of a phrase, the deep wisdom of Biblical poetry, the whoop and wharf of story, and the subtle Truth of myth.

I think Lewis can still help us with that.

I have been listening to a wonderful and provocative audio book by Alister McGrath, C. S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet.  In promoting the book, McGrath gave a series of lectures, including the following sponsored by the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas in the spring of 2013.

May we as followers of Jesus be shaped by the imaginative vision of C. S. Lewis.  His friends knew him as “Jack”.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Witnesses

November 5, 2013

Animal Death and Suffering Before the Fall?

By Clarke Morledge
From the Royal Society, a graphic showing how a 2008 fossil discovery demonstrates the link between the modern turtle and its ancient ancestors. Is there a sufficient theological reason to reject mainstream science, or Biblical reason to accept it?

From the Royal Society, a graphic showing how a 2008 fossil discovery demonstrates the link between the modern turtle and its ancient ancestors. Is there a sufficient theological reason to reject mainstream science, or Biblical reason to accept it?

When Abraham Lincoln was a small boy, he would sometimes join his friends in doing cruel things to animals. But he was uneasy about it and eventually Lincoln’s conscience kicked in. Once when schoolmates began to torture a turtle, Lincoln intervened and scolded his friends for committing a horrible act of wrong.

Human sympathy for suffering animals runs deep. I am one of those people who slow down on the highway… or even stop… when I see a helpless and confused turtle trying to cross the road. Now just consider this idea for a moment: according to mainstream science, most of the animals that have ever lived belong to species that have long ago become extinct. A lot of turtles have been “run over” by the relentless progress of evolution.
Continue reading

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Topics

October 14, 2013

C.S. Lewis, Myth, and the “E” Word

By Clarke Morledge
C.S. Lewis on the cover of Time magazine, 1947. Did he ultimately find "Evolution" to be compatible or in conflict with Biblical faith?

C.S. Lewis on the cover of Time magazine, 1947, perhaps the most popular Christian apologist of the 20th century. Did he ultimately find “Evolution” to be compatible or in conflict with Biblical faith?

A few years ago, a series of letters written by C. S. Lewis back some seventy years ago came to light that has given scholars some questions as to the Narnian’s changing views regarding the “E” word. By the “E” word, I mean … “evolution”.

The “E” word is generally something you do not say in polite company around many evangelical Christians, unless you want to say something negative. Here at Veracity, we have no qualms over discussing topics related to the “E” word. Yet the stakes are high, as many students of Scripture have noted. Some say that evolution is the greatest threat to the truthfulness of the Christian message. Others, to varying degrees, say that evolution is at least partly, if not fully, compatible with Christian belief.

How do  you sort this all out?  It sure would be helpful to know what one of the most popular Christian apologists of the last one hundred years, Oxford’s C. S. Lewis, might have thought about the matter.
Continue reading

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Topics

August 26, 2013

C.S. Lewis: Christian Champion … or Contrarian?

By Clarke Morledge
C.S. Lewis. Died on the same day as President John F. Kennedy and author Alduous Huxley.

C.S. Lewis. Died on the very same day that President John F. Kennedy was shot.  The author of Brave New World,  Aldous Huxley, died on that day as well:  November 22, 1963 (Wikipedia image, photo by Arthur Strong, 1947)

In 2013, we remember the 50th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis. Though his death back then was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I would argue that at least for followers of Jesus, C.S. Lewis has had a far more profound and lasting influence than even JFK…. but how well did he do as a theologian?

Lewis was clearly the most popular Christian apologist of the 20th century. His works have been cited as a major factor in the conversions to faith of numerous prominent Christians, ranging from the scientist and U.S. National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins, to the British atheist and molecular biologist turned theologian, Alister McGrath. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books remain bestsellers among children’s fiction, several of the books having been portrayed in big-budget, major motion pictures. He was a member of the Inklings, a group of Oxford scholars that included such literary luminaries as J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, and (indirectly) Dorothy Sayers, the inspiring visionary of the classical Christian education movement. Lewis’ classic introduction to Christian faith, Mere Christianity, is also the slogan for a major Christian magazine, Touchstone, and his writings form part of the “canon” of many homeschooling curriculums.

For any Christian living in the past fifty years or more, Lewis has been big stuff. However, where does Lewis stand now in the mind of 21st century Christianity? Oddly enough, his legacy is somewhat controversial among some Christians.
Continue reading

6 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Apologetics, Witnesses