VERY decision you make is a vote you cast for the type of person you want become.” This quote hit me in the face this morning as I listed to my favorite news app. It’s true, in so many ways we become the sum total of our daily decisions. They add up. But for the Christian, there’s another power at work that transcends our will power.
ILBERT Keith Chesterton seems to be the ideal Christmas icon. He’s jolly. He’s plump. But in his 1926 Christmas essay, all he wants to talk about are damnable Christmas errors.
OST Christians consider C.S. Lewis to be a warm symbol of the holiday season, expecially since he included “Father Christmas” in his first Narnia story. Yet, a deeper lookin in his diary, letters, and essays shows Lewis was more of the Grinch. What do you think?
OW are we to make sense of humanity in our day. Neuroscientists often reduce humans to brains, leaving no room for personhood. Philosophers regularly deny the will, rejecting the idea that humans can make real, meaningful decisions, and thus have moral accountability. Scientists often discount immaterial human values and regard them as illusions.
N July of 1963 C.S. Lewis was in a coma for abour twenty-four hours. It looked as though he might die. “I can’t help feeling it was rather a pity I did revive in July,” Lewis wrote his best friend Arthur Greeves, “I mean, having been glided so painlessly up to the Gate it seems hard to have it shut in one’s face and know that the whole process must some day be gone thro’ again, and perhaps far less pleasantly! Poor Lazarus!”
ELL, at any rate, we now have less chance of dying of cancer,” quipped C. S. Lewis in response to learning of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, knowing that his own country was on the brink of joining the war. As a World War I veteran, he knew the ugliness of combat. And for a man seldom without a pipe or cigarette, he also understood the risks of cancer. His droll response to the Nazi campaign illustrates that his life was indelibly marked by both war and cancer. And it’s difficult to tell which had the greater impact.
G. Wells and G. K. Chesterton were dear friends despite their categorically different worldviews. After Chesterton’s death, Wells said, “From first to last he and I were very close friends . . . I never knew anyone so steadily true to form as G.K.C.” They maintained a love and respect for one another even as they often challenged one another in print.
wish your project heartily well,” wrote C. S. Lewis to Christianity Today, “but can’t write you articles.” Carl F. H. Henry, founding editor of the magazine, had in 1955 invited Lewis to contribute to the magazine’s first issue. Lewis declined. Henry was not, as the saying goes, “a day late and a dollar short.” He was over a decade late, and no dollar amount would have mattered, as Lewis gave the lion’s share of his royalties to charity.
HERE seem to be no stones left unturned in the life of C. S. Lewis. We even have his diary from his early to mid-20s in print, published as All My Road Before Me. I think most of us would cringe at the notion of inner thoughts from our young adult years being made public. Can the man have no privacy?
