Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018
First published in the United States by HarperOne in 2018
Christian Reflections. Copyright © 1967 by C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Published by Eerdmans
God in the dock. Copyright © 1967 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Published by Eerdmans.
How to be a Christian. Copyright © 2018 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Source ISBN: 9780008307158
Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008307165
Version: 2018-07-19
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Preface
On Working Out Your Salvation
On Being Concerned about More Than the Salvation of Souls
On the Dangers of Pointing Out Faults in Others
On Living Today While Expecting the Second Coming Tomorrow
On Forgiveness as a Necessary Practice
On Denying Oneself While Loving Oneself
On Doubts and the Gift of Faith
On the Appeal and Challenges of Home Life
On How We Spread the Christ-Life Within
On What It Means to Say, To Live Is Christ
On the Christian Art of Attaining Glory
On Not Feeling Threatened When Christianity Remains Unchanged While Science and Knowledge Progresses
On the Importance of Practicing Charity
On What It Means to Be Part of the Body of Christ
On Practical Matters on Being a Christian Today
Source Works
Footnotes
About the Book
About the Author
Also by C. S. Lewis
About the Publisher
Preface
Yes, doctrines are extremely important. Christians need to grapple with beliefs before we understand that we are empowered by Jesus to live in a new way. But understanding these ideas is a doorway, one that requires us to start walking in order for the ideas to have any meaning. Even the apostle Paul, the grandfather of most Christian theology, reminds us that faith, even if perfect, ends up a mere clanging bell if it is without love. And love can only be expressed by actions.
I say all this because (1) this is what I learned from C. S. Lewis and (2), ironically, Lewis is best known as the foremost defender of Christian ideas in the twentieth century. In other words, one might assume that Lewis might be a main cause for the notion that Christianity is essentially a body of ideas, given the success of his apologetical works, but that would be missing the nature of his ideas.
When I meet with scholars and theologians, almost all of them confess that Lewis played a significant role on their path toward their vocation. Yet, despite his popularity, when it comes to whose work scholars study, we hear the names of Barth, Hauerwas, Bonhoeffer, Wright, Pagels, Armstrong, Ehrman, and others, but seldom Lewis. I attend the annual joint conventions of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, where twenty thousand religion scholars descend on that years metropolis and hold sessions on every arcane subject you could imagine (and many I could not imagine), and yet I am surprised how seldom the name C. S. Lewis shows up on the schedule. Why is that?
I think it is because Lewis never presented his ideas as some new heroic paradigm but only as a summary of mere Christianity, what most Christians have always
believed. And Lewiss wisdom does not work best as a grand theory but rather as, what I would call, wisdom on the journey. In other words, it is only by walking down the path of the Christian life that what he teaches seems to make sense and become useful.
I still remember the light bulb going off when reading Book 4 in Mere Christianity where Lewis explains that by becoming a Christian we have signed on to the task of God making us perfect and anything short of this sometimes-painful process would be admitting that God is willing to give up on us, that God does not love us fully. Well, that ordered my young mind in a whole new way, reminding me that becoming a Christian was a path, not a one-time event, and that those closest to me and thus most affected by my imperfections, would be the main classroom God uses in this clean-up operation.
Another light-bulb moment was reading Screwtapes masterful meditation on gluttony. I had always thought of gluttony as a ravenous obese soul devouring everything in his pathi.e., not me. But in The Screwtape Letters, Lewis uses the human subjects mother and her lustful obsession with wanting a slice of bread properly toasted as the model of gluttony. Maybe I wasnt as non-gluttonous as I had thought. It is in these moments, when dealing with the nitty-gritty of what it means to live out the Christian faith, that Lewiss insights seem so deep, rich, and helpful.