C.S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis “Jack”

 

Early in his Christian life, C.S. Lewis (CSL) struggled with the idea that God demands our praise and commands us to give Him glory. However, he soon realized that this “stumbling block” was due to his misconception of God and a misunderstanding of what praise really is. He writes in his book, Reflections on the Psalms,

 

“The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless …shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least…Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.…I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what we indeed can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

 

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

 

While God as our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer certainly deserves our praise, isn’t it amazing again to realize His lovingkindness towards us, as in commanding us to give Him praise, He is offering us the supreme in joy and fullness of life. It makes you want to shout out loud and share the goodness of God with others.

 

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10.[1]

 

This is where we end up with CSL, or as he preferred to be called, Jack.

 

How did this CSL come to be and what are a few truths we can learn from his life?

 

Childhood

 

Born in Belfast, Ireland November 29, 1898.

 

Died November 22, 1963 (same day as JFK was assassinated).

 

Son of Albert James and Florence Augusta Lewis.

 

Brother of Warren Hamilton Lewis (Warnie).

 

WWI Veteran. Wounded in action. Would lose his buddy, Paddy Moore, to combat and would take on the care of Paddy’s mother and sister after the war until Mrs. Moore’s death (she would make fun of his conversation to Christianity when it happened and he still patiently cared for her and loved her as his own mother).

 

Fellow of Magdalen College at Oxford where he tutored English Language and Literature from 1925-1954.

 

Chair of Medieval Literature at Cambridge 1954 until his death.

 

At the age of 4, young Clive Staples Lewis went to his mother and demanded that the family call him “Jacksie”. So the name “Jack” stuck and those who knew him called him “Jack”.

 

He was baptized into the Church of Ireland (which is part of the Anglican Church) at St. Mark’s by his grandfather, who was vicar of the church, on January 29, 1899.

 

The Church Makes Minimal Impact

CSL makes it clear that the Christian teachings he was exposed to as a child at St. Mark’s had little impact on him.[2]

 

“I was taught the usual things and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church. I naturally accepted what I was told but I cannot remember feeling much interest in it.”[3]

 

CSL lost his mother early as a child to cancer and his father’s faith had little impact on him.

 

This is perhaps due to their (that is Albert and CSL) approaches being vastly different. Albert’s defense of the faith consisted of the “charm of the tradition” and the “verbal beauty of the bible and the prayer book.

 

At the age of 14 CSL talks about becoming an “effective believer”. What he means by that is that he began to seriously pray and read his bible and made attempts to obey his conscience.

 

Don’t let that confuse you. This was an external effort to live with external integrity the things he was told should be done.

 

One of CSL’s traits is that he had to do in habit what he was supposed to be. CSL was radically “consistent”. He sought to do what we said he believed.

 

So he did the practices of Christianity, and they made him better morally, but he would soon abandon this effort. He was not a Christian, and he would tell you that he was not a Christian.

 

Losing his mother to cancer when he was 9 (you see this in Digory Kirk in The Magician’s Nephew when his mom is sick and gets healed by a magic apple from Narnia as opposed to CSL watching his mother die) and a strained relationship with his father was hard and, no doubt, contributed to his hardening spirit.

 

“Lewis explains that when he was 9, he approached God, or rather his idea of God, with neither love, nor awe, nor fear. At this time he did not view God as Savior or even as Judge but merely as a sort of Magician, an entity who, if requested in the proper way – something CSL tried very hard to do – would grant whatever was requested of him. The young CSL expected this genie-like Magician, after having granted the petitioner’s wish, to then go back into his bottle until needed again, allowing life to go on as usual”.[4]

 

So, we are not surprised that at the age of 16 CSL was confirmed at St. Mark’s church and took his first communion although being an atheist and in a state of total disbelief.[5]

 

How did this happen?

Speaking of his systematic religious education he would later say as a Christian, “…Remember how much religious education has exactly the opposite effect to that which was intended” (p. 16).

 

Two reasons for this statement:

First, the boarding school system was, in my words, the law of the jungle.

(Early British Missionaries sent their kids away to boarding schools. As early as the 1960’s, children were being mistreated in missionary boarding schools ex. New Tribe’s Missions)

 

You can see his thoughts on this in the Chronicles when Jill and Eustace are bemoaning the awful social place they find themselves in at school right before entering into Narnia.

 

CSL was often mistreated by either the headmaster (his first school was ran by a madman, for reas) or students in this so called “Christian religious education” mistreated him. There are other passages where CSL bemoans the state of education in the Chronicles. Often he bemoans their ability to teach people the ability to think. Rather they opt for rules and laws.

 

Second, CSL likely is referencing the fact that much of his religious education had little to do with “metaphysics” (the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.). Metaphysics is quite important to Christianity and much of his religious education was on “how to act Christianly” not “what is ultimately true” that will then determine how one needs to act.

 

Being told how he was to feel actually hindered his ability to uniquely feel.

 

He would later write an essay about how he came to first write the “Chronicles of Narnia” and in that essay titled, Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said, “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as it if were something medical (this reminded him of the hushed conversations he had to try to hear about his mother when she was dying and which is mentions Digory Kirk had to try and make out). But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency.”[6]

 

In other words, the dressings put on the faith by extra-biblical requirements and cultural trappings could hinder the potency of the faith.

 

CSL was exposed to the gospel as a child, but it was presented in a way that did not communicate its true power, its real potency, and so paralyzed his religious development for a long time.[7]

 

As stated, by the time CSL is 16 he has become an atheist.

 

Much of this can be attributed to his 1) schooling (parents would often send boys to boarding school), some of which was awful for him from the 2) harsh treatment administered by leaders and some from 3) his inability to fit in athletically and some of it from 4) the unsatisfactory nature of the intellectual stimulus and the powerlessness of the hushed, stain-glassed “ought” nature of what he grew up with.

 

CSL was an avid reader. He read everything he could get his hands on.

 

Much of education by this time history, and therefore many of the books he read, had been molded around a naturalistic worldview. Much of this reading without the ability to be taught how to think would, perhaps, contribute to the development of his worldview.

 

This is not an admonition to not read. Rather, read and learn how to evaluate properly.

 

This atmosphere, this culture, shaped the young atheist.

 

You can find what CSL was like in the Chronicles in characters like Edmund, Trumpkin the dwarf (Prince Caspian) and Eustace Scrub.
We see Edmund’s arrogant and haughty spirit toward the faith filled Lucy who speaks of other worlds as one of the ways CSL reveals who is was prior to meeting Jesus.

 

We see Trumpkin’s refusal to believe in Lions and Emperors across the sea as CSL’s skepticism.

 

We see Eustace’ insistence on facts and statistics and unbelief in his cousin’s talk of other another world as CSL’s belief of where truth was found (not outside of himself but from within and in only what can be observed).

 

There are many others, but these are but a few of the examples of how CSL deals with various modes of unbelief in the Chronicles.

 

How did CSL Come to Faith in Jesus? Process of regeneration and the role of “Joy”.

From age 16 in 1914 until 1925, CSL would seek his fame as a philosopher and literature professor and do so with an arrogant bent against people of faith.

 

It would be, however, people of faith and the writings of people of faith that would be some of his greatest influence.

 

From 1925-1931 there would be a process of awakening.

 

He says, “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady and unrelenting approach of Him home I so earnestly desired not to meet”.[8]

 

CSL would speak of God’s pursuit of him in the language of a chess player who was being out played by a master chess player.

 

He would write about God closing in on “checkmate”.

 

What brought this almost 6-year process on?

1. Providential circumstances

With his initial degree in philosophy, CSL went back to get another degree in English because there were no positions open in the academic world for philosophy. But with many opportunities in English and literature, Lewis decided to go after another degree. His father agreed and allowed him to continue school at his expense.

 

His degree in philosophy enabled him to be the sharp thinker he was.

 

His degree in English shaped him into the writer he became.

 

“Had there been an immediate opening in philosophy, Jack would never have gone into English and might never have written his fictional works such as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia. But had he gone into English first, he would have lacked the training that enabled him to write such apologetic works such as Miracles, The Problem of Pain, and Mere Christianity”.[9]

 

2. Intelligent Christians like Nevill Coghill and JRR Tolkien.

While getting his degree in Philosophy, CSL became friends with men more sharp than him like Nevill Coghill who could not only hold his own but sharpen and challenge even the most avowed atheist in the classroom and also happened to be a thoroughgoing supernaturalist and a Christian.

 

CSL would become friends with JRR Tolkien, who would become one of the “Inklings” (a writing club that birthed and helped edit TLOTR and the Chronicles as well as other works; this group included Tolkien, Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams) as well as a fellow WWI veteran. Tolkien was a Christian and quite the apologist as well.

 

These Christian men would stay up late discussing philosophy and other disciplines while doing so through their lens of the faith with their atheist friend CSL.

 

Tolkien and Coghill were experts in their field and used their expertise to affect CSL while sincerely being friends.

 

These men were domain engagers before we had heard of the language of domain engagement.

 

3. Christian authors George MacDonald, GK Chesterton and George Herbert. (Not George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and John Stuart Mill, who all shared his naturalistic worldview)

 

Lewis commented that as he read for his enjoyment and his work that even the books had turned against him!

 

He was referring to the Christian authors he loved to read.

 

“George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too…But the most alarming of all was George Herbert. Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment; but the wretched fellow, instead of doing it all directly, insisted on mediating it through what I would still have called ‘the Christian mythology’”[10]

 

These Christian authors writing and dialoguing in the public square had a profound impact on CSL.

 

4. Joy

The central story to Lewis’ life is about nothing else than the pursuit of “Joy”.

 

Joy is described as a special kind of longing that he had felt since childhood for something he could not quite put his finger on.

 

The concept of “Joy” in his writings is a bit mysterious. It’s hard to gather what he exactly means, and that could be an entire work of its own.

 

“Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again. In this longing/desire there is a deep bliss that can also be colored by a feeling of sadness or sorrow, but the kind of sadness that we want.”[11]

 

One of my favorite attempts Lewis makes to articulate what he means by “Joy” is in The Problem of Pain: “You may have noticed that the books you really desire are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words…You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life…Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction…, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side?…That something which you were born desiring, and which beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for.”[12]

 

Lewis comes to describe this longing that haunted him and disturbed him as a longing for heaven (the fully established kingdom of God), our true home. No wonder he/we only get glimpses; we are beset with the curse and evil entities that do not want to us experience a longing for the kingdom (See The Screwtape Letters).

 

This thing he called “Joy”, and he always capitalized “Joy”, was fleeting and seldom experienced. Crazy how they captivated him like they did.

 

God was moving in on “checkmate”.

 

He tells of a few instances where he experienced “Joy”.

 

One was in a toy garden he made from a “biscuit tin” (cracker tin).

 

Another was in the “longing” he felt for the mountains north of their home when a child and the desire to go there. He would say that those mountains taught him “longing”.

 

Another was a book called The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter. Potter would also write The Tales of Peter Rabbit.

 

It would be “Joy” that was long missing and a desire for “Joy” that would be key in turning the tide.

 

These Christian authors, these stimulating conversations and the circumstances would be more satisfactory than his own worldview.

 

The “Master chess player, his great “Adversary” was making his move to transform this atheist.

 

CSL would also refer to God as a master “Fisherman” that was able to close in on his prey.

 

How did God put CSL in checkmate?

 

CSL traces his faith journey like this: “On the intellectual side my own progress had been from ‘popular realism’ to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity.”[13]

 

Another and simpler way to look at the process the Lord Jesus took CSL through is to talk about his move from naturalism to supernaturalism and from there to theism and from there to Christianity.

 

We can’t unpack this process. It’s too technical and would be a biography sermon in itself.

 

One component of the shift is worth mentioning.

Owen Barfield helped to demolish what they called “chronological snobbery”. This is the belief that newer is better and thus right.

 

Lewis would lament later that in naturalism one is never taught to ask if something is true. Naturalism simply wants to know if it is out of date and what is new, and obviously, better (naturalism leading to evolutionary thinking). His Christian friends would continue to challenge his conclusions based on truth not on if it was up to date.

 

CSL would capture “chronological snobbery” in the first letter Screwtape pens to young Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters. What one must do to their patient is to keep them from wondering if something is true or false but whether or not it is up to date.

 

This process of God closing in order to put CSL in check would take 6 years, and on a September motorcycle ride to a zoo with Warnie (CSL in the side car) the process would be complete. By the time they arrived, he had made the leap from theist to belief in Jesus as the Son of God.

 

CS Lewis as a Christian

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.[14]

 

This is one of my favorite quotes from CSL because it captures his finding “Joy” and where that desire is fulfilled.

 

Some would say CSL was one of the 10 most influential people of the 20^th Century. I would agree.

 

Psalm 19

Psalm 19 was his favorite Scripture passage.

 

This Psalm leaves us understanding that God’s voice is going out through created order, and no doubt CSL heard that call of general revelation through created order, experienced it as “Joy”/longing, and it would be one of the key ways the “Master Chess Player” brought CSL to himself.

 

Giving most of his earnings away

Because of his convictions that were shaped by the Scriptures, CSL would give away the majority of his royalties from his books.

 

He would care for the poor.

 

He fought for animal rights.

 

CSL was engaged in domains before we started calling them domains!

 

Caring for Mrs. Moore

CSL would care for Mrs. Moore, Paddy’s mom, until her death and do so at his expense.

 

Remember, Paddy, was one of CSL’ friends from WWI that was killed. He had promised he would take care of her.

 

He would write later about how when one is following Jesus that the household can handle lots of challenges but when one prepares to attend church it upsets the whole order of things.

 

HOW TRUE!

 

He was writing in particular about how Mrs. Moore would complain about his faith and how his leaving for church made it hard on her since she would be alone.

 

He would love her and care for her just like his own mother, however.

 

Writing/Inklings

The Oxfor Inklings met for 15 years (1934-1949).

 

This crew of CSL, JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, would meet and read aloud their works, give feedback, change and publish their works.

 

Such works as TLOTR from Tolkien would come from these meetings. The Chronicles of Narnia would also be tossed back and forth in these meetings.

 

In the 1940’s CSL would publish 17 books. One, in particular, would be a collection of writings he would read on the radio that would later make up Mere Christianity.

 

During this time and before in the late 1930’s these broadcasts would come on after Winston Churchill spoke to the nation during the bombings of London.

 

CSL’ voice of calm and comfort from a Christian worldview was such that there is one report that even in pubs the bartenders would have everyone get quiet because “this bloke is worth listening to.”

 

One, among many reasons, people (even non-Christians) love CSL regarding his apologetic works is this:

“When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of a translator – one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand.”[15]

 

CSL would be criticized by the “professional theologians” for his simplified language and simple explanations of complex doctrines.

 

He would reply, “What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround him in his own city? One thing at least is sure. If the real theologians hand tackled this laborious work of translation about a hundred years ago, when they began to lose touch with the people (for whom Christ died), there would have been no place for me.”[16]

 

Chronicles

From 1950-1956 CSL would write The Chronicles of Narnia.

 

He had already begun to understand that through fiction, one could steal past objections to doctrines and a lack of care for doctrines and could teach understanding of those doctrines through story.

 

CSL provided an account for how he came to write The Chronicles of Narnia:

“One thing I am sure of. All my seven Narnian books, and my three science fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first, they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. The picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’ At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why He came. But once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after Him.”[17]

 

CSL was adamant that the Chronicles were NOT allegory. They are supposals. Not everything in the Chronicles represents something in our world. He would say, “Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.”[18]

 

The Chronicles are so nuanced that I can’t even begin to draw connections for you. You just have to read them.

 

My favorite, The Horse and His Boy, is so loaded that I can hardly say the title without getting the slightest bit emotional.

 

But that is what he wanted. CSL believed that if the book could only be enjoyed by an adult it was not a good book.

 

When Shasta finally calls out to that Lion that had been stalking him along the journey, “Who are you?” and gets the reply, “One who has waited long for you to speak”.

 

Shasta talks about how he is the unluckiest boy in the world to have been met by so many lions. Aslan replies, “I do not call you unfortunate…There was only one Lion…I was the Lion.”

 

The Horse and His Boy highlights the providence of God for those who have had or are having hard times.

 

Spiritual Truths in the Chronicles

1. Evil rarely appears as evil but usually comes disguised as something else.

 

2. Help often comes in an unanticipated form – in a manner so strange that it may look like help only when looking back on it.

 

3. Real community is made up of different types of individuals with different gifts and abilities.

 

4. Celebration, joy and merriment are central to life, not elements reserved only for holidays and vacations.

 

5. The self-centered life is not glamorous, fun, or exciting but leads to death and destruction.

 

6. The virtuous life is an adventure – but one that will involve hardship – and the only path leading to genuine happiness and true fulfillment.

 

7. God is holy!

Throughout the Chronicles CSL works to mediate/reduce the coziness that some Christians may feel toward God. He has Mr. Beaver describe Aslan to the children: “Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”[19]

 

After the children actually meet Aslan, the narrator comments, “People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.”[20]

 

We don’t high five God, although we come near and are dearly loved. We bow with white knuckled, joyful fear that he can extinguish us but loves us. We need to hold those things in their proper tension. That’s a small and incomplete introduction to God’s holiness.

 

One Final Little Bit of Fun

CSL received a letter from a mother in the States named Mrs. Krieg. She had written to him in concern that her son loved Aslan more than Jesus. His response really says something about his intention in creating the character of the Great Lion:

“Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving him more than he ever did before.”[21]

 

Applications

1. Don’t take for granted the experiences of youth with your children. They are being spiritually shaped for the kingdom or contrary to the kingdom.

 

2. Expose your children to the supernatural kingdom, a kingdom worth longing for. Learn to cultivate “holy longing”.

2.1. Do this by reading Matthew 13 to them and talking about the ways Jesus illustrated the Kingdom.

 

2.2. Be careful with the administration of entertainment and “amusement” (a – not/no; muse – to think; Thus to not think).

 

Overdone entertainment can begin to replace feelings of longing for transcendent things with cravings for dead things.

 

A people besieged by entertainment will have a hard time feeling the longing for “Joy” or the other world of the kingdom calling to us through deep and other worldly or kingdom desires.

 

2.3 Encourage them to read and play, particularly imaginary play. That’s proven healthy and a way to cultivate the soul for the reality of the kingdom that is already and not yet.

 

3. Read your children stories that create longing for another world. Don’t let them be overly infatuated with this present cursed order of things.

3.1. Read your children The Chronicles of Narnia.

3.2. Read the Jesus Story Book Bible to your children.

3.3. Read the bible to them.

 

4. Avoid cold and meaningless traditionalism (not meaningful and transcendent traditions).

4.1. Cultivate traditions that point to the eternal and supernatural kingdom. (Make sure Christmas is all about Jesus and his rule with no mixed messages…observe how CSL portrays Father Christmas in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe; Study Easter and the resurrection and the hope that we too will rise again like Jesus did…make it fun…get creative…)

 

5. Don’t stop reading children’s stories and good mythology.

CSL believed that good reading was reading that would captivate a child’s imagination and attention.

 

Good, solid, virtuous stories carry us away to another world that helps to cultivate longing in the soul and that longing, for the Christian, is a good instrument to keep us longing for the kingdom.

 

6. Surround yourself with people who will help you be better and will graciously help you grow.

 

7. Include people outside of the faith in your small groups and be their friend. You may have the next great author that you are mentoring.

 

8. Pick a CSL book and read it together in your RL groups. There are some challenges in his theology that need some unpacking, but what he got right, he got so right that we can work past his hiccups.

 

9. Don’t be fooled into believing that good and deep spiritual reading has to be technical and difficult and not fun.

 

[1] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), pp. 93–97

 

[2] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 14.

[3] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), 21.

[4] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 40.

[5] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 15.

[6] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 12.

[7] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 17.

[8] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), 111.

[9] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 116-117.

[10] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 114.

[11] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), 16.

[12] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2001), 130.

[13] C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 200.

[14] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan Pub., 1952), book 3, chapter 10.

[15] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 180.

[16] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 181.

[17] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 192.

[18] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 195.

[19] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983), 80.

[20] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983), 126.

[21] Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, 198.