“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right,” C.S. Lewis states in “The Shocking Alternative” chapter of Mere Christianity. He continues, “Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad.” This, of course, leads to the question of why God made such a choice in… Read more »
One of the reasons I enjoy teaching about C.S. Lewis and sharing his thoughts is that he is so good at putting deep thoughts into words that should communicate well with almost any audience. One doesn’t have to be an academic to figure out what he is saying. In one of his essays, “Christian Apologetics,” he offers this guidance: He continues in that same essay with sound advice for anyone seeking to present Christian truth: “You must translate every bit… Read more »
C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has become a classic in the history of books explaining the Christian faith. I have begun teaching this classic at my church on Wednesday evenings. People can come in person, watch on Zoom, or watch the sessions later after the video is uploaded. The interest is high: 60 have now participated in the first session and others will undoubtedly let me know later that they have watched the first video. It’s a blessing to have this… Read more »
The task before us as Christians is how to navigate in a culture that is either opposed to God’s truths or indifferent to them. The first is open hostility; the second is apathy. Sometimes, when facing the hostile part of the culture, we tend to become “culture warriors,” using the world’s weapons in our battle against that hostility. To do so is to undermine our Christian witness. We don’t win anyone over to the truth by acting in an unchristian… Read more »
I’m currently teaching a course at my church that I’ve titled “Being Christian in a Non-Christian Culture.” I laid out five questions at the beginning of the course to show what I hope to accomplish through this teaching. They are the following: What is the Church and what is its mission? How are Christians supposed to interact with the culture? What is the proper relationship between the Church and the State? What has happened to the Christian witness to the… Read more »
Two years ago this month, this book took its place alongside the multitude of books about C.S. Lewis. Each author hopes to find a niche for his topic; my co-author, Jamin Metcalf, and I believed we had settled on an aspect of Lewis’s life and writings that few others had emphasized: the fact that Lewis not only was a masterful apologist for the Christian faith, a wonderfully imaginative writer of fiction, and a superb analyst in his primary field of… Read more »
July and August are my months “off” from teaching, but they aren’t months off for preparation. Although I’m constantly preparing year-round, the absence of teaching during this time allows a greater concentration on what I’ll be doing over the next year. Much of it has to do with C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. Last month, I received a pleasant surprise when I was contacted by the Wade Center about an article that I had sent in a couple… Read more »