Barry's Blog

The Oxford don C.S. Lewis, although he died on the same day as President John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley (November 22nd, 1963), continues to impact millions of people through his writings, and the award-winning movie Shadowlands, based on his life (starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger) has brought much acclaim his way. Lewis, a devout atheist until his early thirties, became a follower of Christ, and through his writings in subsequent years, was often referred to as the "apostle to the skeptics" for our contemporary world. Anthony Burgess, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said of Lewis: "C.S. Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way." Here are a few of his insightful thoughts about life and faith.

"The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in..." -"Is Christianity Hard or Easy?", Mere Christianity 

"The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one...but the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a green house does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."  - "The Practical Conclusion," Mere Christianity

"I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only  fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present with us: it is the very sign of His presence..." -Letter to a former pupil, 20 January, 1942, from Letters of C.S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper

"When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good. a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right...Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either." -"Morality and Psychoanalysis," Mere Christianity 

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. -"Hope," Mere Christianity 

"At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." -"The Weight of Glory," in  The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

For FinishingWell,

 Barry Morrow

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