Blog 104 –  8.27.15

The lady who introduced me to C.S. Lewis was my English Lit. Professor in Bible college. I saw her in the campus book store one day and she cornered me and I figured she was going to lecture me for slacking on some assignment but she completely disarmed and sort of alarmed me. She called me a name I had never been called before nor since. She called me (Wait for it, wait for it – Do I have you on the edge of your chair?) She called me an intellectual. Now I know that is still a dirty word in some circles but from a college professor it is sort of a compliment. She said I had a good mind and a responsibility to challenge it and use it for the greater good. She took a book off the book store shelf and said, “You  need to read this guy.”

The book was I think either Mere Christianity or The Problem With Pain by C. S. Lewis. I took the bait, the challenge, I bought and read the book. And then I read everything I could find in print by C. S. Lewis. I confess for the first few years of reading Lewis I always had to have a dictionary nearby because his vocabulary was larger than mine but I loved his mind and mine was opened by his thoughts. One of my favorite sayings is: “Haven’t changed your mind lately? Read a book.”

When I say I read everything I could find by him in print, I mean it literally. I even read a book called, Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis which consisted of his letters to a lady over the course of several years. She was a fan of his books and she wrote to him and he wrote her back answering her every letter. What a guy. Man I wish I had known of him before he died on my thirteenth birthday. President John F. Kennedy also died on that day and Aldous Huxley, author of A Brave New World. I was not reading much at that age, not much of an intellectual. Ha! But I would have loved to have written him and gotten a letter back from him.

C.S. Lewis is most famous for two of his books The Screwtape a Letters and Mere Christianity. Since the recent well made movies of several books in his children’s books The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis has come to be well known to a younger generation. He also wrote a space or science fiction trilogy. Lewis was and is an interesting, prolific, and thought provoking author.

Isn’t that what the best authors do – provoke you to think. The better teachers and professors have always done that – challenge us to think deeper, to question our beliefs, to get outside our comfort zones. Faith, I am afraid, is for many just an excuse for lazy thinking or letting others do our thinking for us. We are trained by the advertisers, the political hacks, the con men as it were that there is only one best product, best brand, best candidate, best deal – the one they are touting.

It is not a sin to question your beliefs. I say it is a sin not too. If you have not changed your thinking in twenty years you are just not paying attention. I know it is taboo to question other people’s beliefs but your own you have a duty to question. While I am here I just have to pick on the Conservative Christians a bit who believe the King James Version of the Bible is the self same one Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles wrote and read. As a poet few appreciate the beauty of the KJV more than I do. But, folks the 1611 King James Version like Tide, the detergent that has been New and Improved so many times that it has to be the best most perfect detergent on the market (if you believe the ads anyway), has been changed so many times that the Twenty Third Psalm reads like German in the original version. Am I the only one who has a problem with people trying to live like it was 1850 or even 1950 today?

It is foolish to look back on some time past and refer to it as “the good ole days” this my friends is the good ole days. Today is what we make it, by our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. A long time friend and follower of my blog texted me recently that though he did not agree with 100% of what I write he was 100% blessed by my writings. I emailed him back that if he or anyone agreed with me 100% I would question their intellect.

I do not agree with 100% of what C.S. Lewis wrote but I got a blessing and found an encouraging word in everything of his I ever read. If you only read one book by C.S. Lewis I recommend a small book called The Great Divorce, and no it is not about marriage. If you read it and can honestly say it was not worth your while I will reimburse you the cost of the book and repay you at your current hourly wage for the time you spent reading the book. Just comment to me where ever you read this and I will contact you as to where I should send the funds. That is the best money back guarantee you’ll ever get.

Your friend and fellow traveler, fan of C.S. Lewis,
David White