C.S. Lewis on Sacrificial Giving

“I do not believe one can settle on how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them."

– C.S. Lewis

Real Humility

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: be will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.  

Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"There is no other stream"

The birds had ceased singing and there was perfect silence except for one small, persistent sound, which seemed to come from a good distance away. She listened carefully, and felt almost sure it was the sound of running water.

Jill got up and looked round her very carefully. There was no sign of the lion; but there were so many trees about that it might easily be quite close without her seeing it. . . . But her thirst was very bad now, and she plucked up her courage to go and look for that running water. . . .

The wood was so still that it was not difficult to decide where the sound was coming from. It grew clearer every moment and, sooner than she expected, she came to an open glade and saw the stream, bright as glass, running across the turf a stone's throw away from her. But although the sight of water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she didn't rush forward to drink. She stood as still as if she had been turned to stone, with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason: Just on this side of the stream lay the Lion. . . .

How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first.

"If you're thirsty, you may drink." . . .

For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again,

"If you are thirsty, come and drink." . . .

It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. . . .

"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. . . . The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. . . .

"Do you eat girls?" she asked fearfully.

"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.

"Oh 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 

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” - (John 4:13-14 ESV)

A Channel of Adoration - How To Give Thanks

C.S. Lewis:

Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility…. But aren't there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them "bad pleasures" I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean "pleasures snatched by unlawful acts." It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory…. I have tried since…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…. Gratitude exclaims, very properly, "How good of God to give me this." Adoration says, "What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!" One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

(From Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, as quoted in When I Don't Desire God.)

Love is Certainly Dangerous, But The Lack of is Even More So

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make 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.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York, 1960), page 169.

A 1-Sentence Summary of Each of Screwtape’s Letters

Get the book here. 

• Make him preoccupied with ordinary, “real” life—not arguments or science.
• Make him disillusioned with the church by highlighting people he self-righteously thinks are strange or hypocritical.
• Annoy him with “daily pinpricks” from his mother.
• Keep him from seriously intending to pray at all, and if that fails, subtly misdirect his focus to himself or an object rather than a Person
• Don’t hope for too much from a war [in this case, World War II] because the Enemy often lets our patients suffer to fortify them and tantalize us.
• Capitalize on his uncertainty, divert his attention from the Enemy to himself, and redirect his malice to his everyday neighbors and his benevolence to people he does not know.
• Keep him ignorant of your existence, and make him either an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist who regards his cause as the most important part of Christianity.
• Make good use of your patient’s series of troughs and peaks (i.e., “the law of undulation”), and beware that the Enemy relies on the troughs more than the peaks.
• Capitalize on trough periods by tempting him with sensual pleasures (especially sex), making him content with his moderated religion, and directly attacking his faith as merely a “phase.”
• Convince him to blend in with his new worldly acquaintances.
• Understand the four causes of laughter (joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy), and shrewdly use jokes and flippancy.
• Don’t underestimate the power of “very small sins” because “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one.”
• Don’t allow him to experience real pleasures because they are a touchstone of reality.
• Make him proud of his humility; use both vainglory and false modesty to keep him from humility’s true end.
• Make him live in the future rather than the present.
• Encourage church-hopping.
• Encourage gluttony through delicacy rather than excess.
• Convince him that the only respectable ground for marriage is “being in love.”
• Understand that the Enemy does not genuinely love humans (but we don’t know what his real motive is).
• Don’t give up if your direct attacks on his chastity fail; try to arrange a desirable marriage.
• Convince him to use the pronoun “my” in the fully possessive sense of ownership (e.g., “my time,” “my boots,” “my wife,” and “my God”).
• Understand that the Enemy has filled His world full of pleasures and that you must twist them before you can use them.
• Encourage him to embrace a “historical Jesus” and to treat Christianity as merely a means to a political end such as social justice.
• Confuse him with spiritual pride for being part of an elite set.
• Replace “mere Christianity” with “Christianity And” by increasing his horror of “the same old thing” and thus increasing his desire for novelty.
• Sow seeds of “unselfishness” during his courtship.
• Twist his prayers.
• Guard his life so that he grows old because real worldliness takes time.
• Defeat his courage, and make him a coward.
• Capitalize on his fatigue, and manipulate his emotions with the word “real.”
• His end is inexplicable, but we must win in the end.

(HT: Andy Naselli)

Piper and Keller Talk C.S. Lewis

RSS readers, click through to view.

2013 Desiring God National Conference - C.S. Lewis

Great promo video. Beautiful.

"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world."

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more. 

Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.

- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 118-119

The Tweetable C.S. Lewis

1. 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. 
2. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
3. If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
4. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
5. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
6. The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
7. We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
8. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
9. God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.
10. Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
11. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
12. True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.
13. Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
14. Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.
15. Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it.
16. He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.
17. The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
18. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
19. God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.
20. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

You can still get a bio of him for super cheap as an eBook.  Click here.

(HT:  Christians in Context)

"He helped me to see things which if we didn’t have them, we would pay a million dollars to have."

John Piper on C.S. Lewis:

To wake up in the morning and to be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the coldness of the wooden floor, the wetness of the water in the sink, the sheer being of things (quiddity as he called it). And not just to be aware but to wonder. To be amazed that the water is wet. It did not have to be wet. If there were no such thing as water, and one day some one showed it to you, you would simply be astonished.

[Lewis] helped me become alive to life. To look at the sunrise and with say with an amazed smile, “God did it again!” He helped me to see what is there in the world—things which if we didn’t have them, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He convicts me of my callous inability to enjoy God’s daily gifts. He helps me to awaken my dazed soul so that the realities of life and of God and heaven and hell are seen and felt.

A Short Documentary on C.S. Lewis

Interesting video here.

An Interview with Alister McGrath Concerning C.S. Lewis

Trevin Wax asks five questions to Alister McGrath concerning his new book about C.S. Lewis.

• There are many well-known biographies of Lewis currently available, including several from those who knew him personally. What prompted you to take on this task? What did you feel was missing from the other treatments of Lewis’ life?
• What was your method in writing? How did you start and sustain such a mammoth project?
• You paint Lewis as a “reluctant prophet” and also an “eccentric genius.” Some fans of Lewis may never have thought of him in these terms. Why is Lewis’ reluctance and eccentricity important for those seeking to understand his life and legacy?
• You make the case that Lewis was wrong regarding the timing of his own conversion, first to theism and then to Christianity. How did you arrive at this conclusion and why do you think the timing is important?
• You graciously point out the weakness in Lewis’s writings as well as the shortcomings of his personal life. Why is it important for us to keep these things in mind as we study his work?

Click over to read the responses.  

The Secret To Freedom in Life

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.  Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original:  whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before), you will, nine times out of ten, become original without having noticed it.  The principle runs through life from top to bottom.  Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.  Lose your life and you will save it...  Nothing that you have not given will be really yours...

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 190

There is Still a Way

Kevin DeYoung:

C. S. Lewis was right. Jesus cannot be just a good, moral teacher. He said so many audacious, outlandish things that he must either be a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Jesus was not just one of many pointers; he was the point. Not just a prophet, but the fulfillment of all prophesy. Not just a lord, but the Lord of lords. Not just a godly man, but the God-man.

Our world suggests that there are any number of saviors, and they are not all religious or “spiritual.” The world says, “Here’s what will give you purpose. Here’s what will give you meaning. Here’s what will help you feel like a better person. Here’s what will deal with the guilt you have in your life. Here’s what will give you satisfaction.” The list of saviors is ever expanding: technology, art, diets, sex, entertainment, education, morality, humanitarianism, sincerity, hard work, patriotism, politics. But according to God’s Word, they do not save.

This has always been the offense of Christianity: that we are guilty of sin; we are all in need of a Savior; and the only Savior who can truly save is Jesus Christ the Lord.

This was the message that is proclaimed over and over again in the early church. It didn’t matter if the Apostles were talking to Jews or Gentiles, servants or masters, ordinary people or religious people or the highest ranking official in the Romans Empire. The message was the same. Still is. Repent. Believe. Look to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sin. Submit yourself to him. Open your heart to him. Trust in him. Look to him for the hope, the healing, the new life that only he can give.

The scandal of Christianity is that there is only one way. The good news is that despite all of our selfishness and all of our stubbornness and all of our sin, there is still a way.

Read the rest. 


Books by Kevin DeYoung:

• The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
• Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will
• What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission
• The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism
• Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

Be Careful What You Wish For When Asking for Immediate Justice

Dorothy Sayers:

“Why doesn’t God smite this dictator dead?” is a question a little remote from us. Why, madam, did he not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such a cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why sir, did he not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty bit of financial trickery? You did not quite mean that? But why not? Your misdeeds and mine are none the less repellent because our opportunities for doing damage are less spectacular than those of some other people. Do you suggest that your doings and mine are too trivial for God to bother about? That cuts both ways; for in that case, it would make precious little difference to his creation if he wiped us both out tomorrow.

Click over to read Randy Alcorn's reflections having to do with this quote.


Books by Randy Alcorn:

• Heaven
• If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil
• Money, Possessions, and Eternity
• The Treasure Principle: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving (LifeChange Books)
• Heaven for Kids
• Safely Home

The Wisdom of Puddleglum

Chris Brauns:

Of all C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair, is my favorite. At one point in the Silver Chair the characters are deciding whether or not to obey Aslan. When Puddleglum suggests that they should obey Aslan, a girl named Jill responds, “Do you mean you think everything will come right if we do [obey Aslan].”

Puddleglum responds, “I don’t know about that. You see Aslan didn’t tell [us] what would happen. He only told us what to do. . . it may be the death of us. . . but that doesn’t let us off from obeying Aslan.”

Lewis’ point was that Christians should obey God even when it looks as though obeying him will make our lives more difficult. We must trust God’s word, rather than how we think things will turn out.

The Bible is full of examples of men and women when they didn’t know how it would turn out. Daniel didn’t know that the lions wouldn’t eat him when he was ordered not to pray. David didn’t know for sure if he could win against Goliath. Shadrach, Meschach and Abendigo didn’t know that they would be spared death in the fiery furnace. They courageously told the king:

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.4 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:15-18)

They followed God’s word, even when it required great risk.

If there is an area in your life where you know that obedience is needed, then stop worrying about how things will turn out and obey God. Entrust yourself to the sovereign God of the universe.

Book by Chris Brauns:

• Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds
• When the Word Leads Your Pastoral Search: Biblical Principles and Practices to Guide Your Search

The Scrubbing of the Dragon Scales

Michael Kelley posts one of my favorite sections from all of C.S. Lewis' writings.  So vivid.  So wonderful.  So painful.

Get the book here.

7 Concepts From C.S. Lewis

Great summary of some of the way's C.S. Lewis' writing has shaped us. I am thankful for these.  Click over to check it out.

(HT:  Joe Carter)

C.S. Lewis on Heaven

C. S. Lewis, in an August 1956 letter to a certain Mrs. Johnson:

The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.

(HT: Dane Ortlund)