Coffee with Lewis: this deplorable walk
January 13, 2010
Who wouldn’t enjoy a walk with C.S. Lewis? That depends on a lot of things. Over at Scriptorium Daily, Fred Sanders shares a letter from C.S. Lewis about a walk that didn’t go very well. I’ll let Sanders take it from here:
In second volume of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Books, broadcasts, and the War, 1931-1949), Lewis tells a story about taking a terrible walk with somebody named Kenchaw, somebody with whom Lewis seemed to have nothing in common and nothing to talk about. “That Kenchaw man,” he calls him, in a letter to his brother Warnie who is serving in the military in Shanghai. Lewis writes the letter (dated March 20, 1932) with obvious relish in sharing a good yarn with his brother, but it really does sound like an awful walk. Lewis had only been a Christian for about a year, and this letter has plenty of the Read the rest of this entry »
Coffee with Lewis: a little blacker
July 2, 2009
Lewis writes this in Mere Christianity. It speaks to a characteristic of too much of our political discourse these days from pundits and talk radio. It also speaks to many of our personal relationships as well. Don’t read this if you don’t want to feel some sharp conviction:
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”
In the Westminster Larger Catechism, the lengthy answer to the question ‘What sins are forbidden in the ninth commandment?’ contains these two phrases: ‘scornful contempt’ and ‘fond admiration,’ which are essentially the same sin–seeing only what we want to see in other people. ‘Scornful contempt’ is what Lewis described. It is what David experienced that he poured out to the Lord in Psalm 35:
But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered;
they gathered together against me;
wretches whom I did not know
tore at me without ceasing;
like profane mockers at a feast,
they gnash at me with their teeth…For they do not speak peace,
but against those who are quiet in the land
they devise words of deceit.
They open wide their mouths against me;
they say, “Aha, Aha! Our eyes have seen it!” [Psalm 35:15-16,20-21]
Coffee with Lewis: love turned into Charity
January 19, 2009
This from The Four Loves:
The invitation to turn our natural loves into Charity is never lacking. It is provided by those frictions and grustrations that meet us in all of them; unmistakable evidence that (natural) love is not going to be “enough”–unmistakable, unless we are blinded by egotism. When we are, we use them absurdly. “If only I had been more fortunate in my children (that boy gets more like his father every day) I could have loved them perfectly.” But every child is sometimes infuriating; most children are not infrequently odious. “If only my husband were more considerate, less lazy, less extravagant”…”If only my wife had fewer moods and more sense, and were less extravagant”…”If my father wasn’t so fernally prosy and close-fisted.” But in everyone, and of course in ourselves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness. The necessity of practising these virtues first sets us, forcesus, upon the attempt to turn–more strictly, to let God turn–our love into Charity.”
Coffee with Lewis: Better for nothing than for a nuisance
December 11, 2008
Here’s a Sweet Dropper Christmas tradition [which, being interpreted, means, 'I posted this each of the last two years and can't come up with anything better.']. Enjoy the leftovers.
It’s Friday. There must be another Christmas party to attend–I hosted one last night. There must be another little gift to buy. Who’s going to be so favoured as to receive one of my signature fruitcakes? C.S. Lewis wrote a short essay for the December 1957 edition of the publication, Twentieth Century. Under the heading, ‘What Christmas Means to Me,’ Lewis launches a scathing attack on the ‘commercial racket’ that overwhelms the season–NOT because it isn’t ‘religious,’ but because it drains our energies and undermines the merry-making, and hospitality that ought to characterize the season:
The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity. Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children. But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers. Neither of these circumstances is in itself a reason for condemning it. I condemn it on the following grounds.
1. It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You have only to stay over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it [in the commercial sense] in order to see that the thing is a nightmare. Long before December 25th everyone is worn out—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry-making; much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act. They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.
2. Most of it is involuntary. The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own. It is almost a blackmail. Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we hardly remember) flops unwelcomed through the letter-box, and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?
3. Things are given as presents which no mortal ever bought for himself—gaudy and useless gadgets, ‘novelties’ because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before. Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?
4. The nuisance. For after all, during the racket we still have all our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labour of it. We are told that the whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade. It is in fact merely one annual symptom of that lunatic condition of our country, and indeed of the world, in which everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things. I don’t know the way out. But can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers? If the worst comes to the worst I’d sooner give them money for nothing and write it off as a charity. For nothing? Why, better for nothing than for a nuisance.
From C.S. Lewis, “What Christmas Means to Me,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 304-305.
Coffee with Lewis: a secret Master of Ceremonies
November 20, 2008
This is from Lewis’ chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves:
…in Friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others…At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.
Love of country and love of neighbor
October 28, 2008
This piece by Robert Thomas Llizo appeared in yesterday’s Scriptorium Daily:
Patriotism Firmly Rooted in Mid-Air
It brought to mind C.S. Lewis’ insightful discussion patriotism in The Four Loves. Lewis anticipated the erosion of the kind of patriotism Llizo is advocating. (Both the current U.S. administration and its rivals get skewered, so if you have no stomach for such prophesying, you may stop reading now):
Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for “their country” they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up…I may without self-reighteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds–wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine–I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nosense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.
Lewis speaks to the necessity of love of home and heritage and traditions as an essential ingredient in a patriotism that does not take on a ‘demoniac form’ that shouts the name of Christ and does the works of Molech.
Coffee with Lewis: the horror of the Same Old Thing
October 9, 2008
This is from letter 25 of The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape advises junior demon Wormwood,
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. The all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call “Christianity And.” You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, at least let them be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.
It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Christianity And…Enviromentalism, Republican politics, Classical Education, End-Times Predictions, Self-Esteem, Prosperity…ad nauseum.
Coffee with Lewis: there is no other stream
September 24, 2008
I think a great deal of setup and explanation would ruin this. To dissect it is to kill it.
“Are you thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m DYING of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I-could I-would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to-do anything to me, if I come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“O dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
- C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, 1953
Coffee with Lewis: humiliation for the humble
September 18, 2008
Let’s cut to the chase. Lewis was extraordinarily funny. Why does that matter? Is there not something gracious and edifying about laughter? I don’t mean the cutting, biting, derisive laughter, but the free expression of a cheerful heart made glad by God and thus discerningly amused by what he has done and is doing. Back in 2006 I blogged about such here. The excerpt below is from a secondary source: Surprised by Laughter: the Comic World of C.S. Lewis, by Terry Lindvall:
Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego….Only the truly humble belong to this kingdom of divine laughter…Humor and humility should keep good company. Self deprecating humor can be a healthy reminder that we are not the center of the universe, that humility is our proper posture before our fellow humans as well as before almighty God…”I suppose,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “we should mind humiliation less if we were but humbler.”
Coffee with Lewis: to love or not to love?
September 8, 2008
From The Four Loves:
To love anything at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to amke sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. the only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. [121]
