C.S. Lewis, in this surviving episode of a radio address on the BBC during WWII, reads a portion of what would become “Mere Christianity”.
Listen to his voice and inflection in all its English glory! 🙂
Tag Archives: c.s. lewis
Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: …We are far too easily pleased…
A Stunning Visual Approach to C.S. Lewis
If you want a whole new way of seeing the works of C.S. Lewis, check out this Youtube channel I stumbled across recently. This artist takes readings of classic Lewis works and illustrates them—as they are being read! To watch the story unfold visually as well as rhetorically adds a new level of depth. I love how C.S. Lewis unswervingly engages his culture from a Christian worldview. He has inspired generations with his creativity, Logic, and faithfulness. If you are seasoned Lewis veteran, or movie-introduced rookie, check out this innovative method to hear and see this classic christian author in action.
For the full Youtube channel with thirteen videos click here: CSLewisDoodle.
Here is a sample of a his videos. (note the playlist selector in the top left, you can choose a topic)
Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: Which Level of Importance?
Our feelings come and go, His Love for us does not.
The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him. – C.S. lewis, Mere Christianity 
Saturdays with C.S. Lewis – Atheism Turns Out To Be Too Simple
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.
Quotes from Mere Christianity, Part 15
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 38-39.
Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: Why the Next Generation is Rejecting Christianity
If we had noticed that the young men of the present day found it harder and harder to get the right answers to sums, we should consider that this had been adequately explained the moment we discovered that schools had for some years ceased to teach arithmetic. After that discovery we should turn a deaf ear to people who offered explanations of a vaguer and larger kind — people who said that the influence of Einstein had sapped the ancestral belief in fixed numerical relations, or that gangster films had undermined the desire to get right answers, or that the evolution of consciousness was now entering on its post-arithmetical phase. Where a clear and simple explanation completely covers the facts no other explanation is in court. If the younger generation have never been told what the Christians say and never heard any arguments in defence of it, then their agnosticism or indifference is fully explained. There is no need to look any further: no need to talk about the general intellectual climate of the age or the influence of mechanistic civilization on the character of urban life. And having discovered that the cause of their ignorance is lack of instruction, we have also discovered the remedy. There is nothing in the nature of the younger generation which incapacitates them for receiving Christianity. If any one is prepared to tell them, they are apparently ready to hear.
C.S. Lewis, “On the Transmission of Christianity,” God in the Dock 115 (London, 1946).
Saturdays With C.S. Lewis: We All Make Excuses
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their [math] wrong; but [Right and Wrong] are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication tables… I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired.That slightly shady business about the money—the one you have almost forgotten—came when you were very hard-up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done—well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister (or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at it—and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that [these excuses] are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952, this edition: 2001) 7-8.
Saturdays With C.S. Lewis: Screwtape Refuting Prayer
My dear Wormwood,
But since your patient has contracted the terrible habit of obedience, he will probably continue such ‘crude’ prayers whatever you do. But you can worry him with the haunting suspicion that the practice is absurd and can have no objective result. Don’t forget to use the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ argument. If the thing he prays for doesn’t happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don’t work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and ‘therefore it would have happened anyway’, and thus a granted prayer becomes just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective.
Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (originally 1942; this edition: Harper Collins, 1996) 148.
Saturdays With C.S. Lewis: Christian Worldview
We all have a lens through which we see and interpret the world around us. Anyone who claims to be “neutral” or to simply “let the facts speak” has a misunderstanding about how reason functions. There must always be a framework, a worldview, through which we package and understand information. C.S. Lewis understood this.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis
He understood that through the reality of Christ we best understand everything else! No really…Everything: from God, spirituality, relationships, finances, self worth, work ethic, parenting, you name it and it is best understood in the light of Biblical Christianity.
The question is, what worldview framework are you working within?
-Adam
adamlickey.com 