Thank You, God, for C.S. Lewis

Thank You, God, for C.S. Lewis As I write today, it is November 22, 2013. President Barack Obama has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of former President Kennedy, who was tragically slain on this date fifty years ago. The newspaper is featuring this sad episode from the nation’s history; we should as Americans reflect and mourn Jack Kennedy’s unnecessary and brutal assassination. I think of another who passed away in England on this same date: the great thinker and writer C.S. Lewis. He genuinely possessed one of the finest and clearest thinking minds of the Twentieth Century, and his books continue to sell in the millions annually. Some of you may be asking, “What are his books?” Some of the more popular ones are The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. These have both been made into blockbuster films. But my favorite book is Mere Christianity, a series of radio lectures given to the British people during the dark days of the Second World War. These lectures, now published as a book, provide clear, logical, sensible reasons to believe in Christianity and the hope it provides. Oddly, there was a time when the young C.S. Lewis was not a Christian and made no pretenses about it. Actually, he was an atheist. But through the influence of Oxford friends J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Hugo Dyson, Lewis first became a theist and then a Christian, “the most reluctant convert in all of England” he would call himself. He spent the rest of his life lecturing and writing at Oxford and Cambridge. He became an ardent proponent of “mere Christianity”, the essence of the faith. He was emphatic in the belief that if Christianity is fiction, then it has no importance, but if true, has eternal and utmost importance. He has written in regard to Christianity, “The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” He also desired to make the Christian message appealing and meaningful to children and did so with the writing of the Narnia series, which famously features Aslan, the lion who is a picture of Christ. In the first of the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan sacrifices his life for the sake of a traitor, but is resurrected and returns to defeat the white witch and restore peace to the land of Narnia. One of the positive traits of these works, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in particular, is that they are not fairy tales denying reality. Anyone, child or adult, who reads the story will come to grips with stark realities such as violence, pain, adventure, heroism, betrayal and death. The world is presented as it really is, not as we wish it were. So today, while our country mourns the passing of President John Kennedy, I also mourn the passing of C.S. Lewis. But along with the mourning, I commend his works to you. Purchase or borrow his books. Read them. Learn from them. You will be entertained, enlightened, encouraged and helped. And you will say, as all who have read Lewis say, “Thank you, God, for C.S. Lewis.”