A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save. – Irish-English author and poet C.S. Lewis was born on this day in 1898. (died 1963)
Every so often, I tell myself I need to be reading more C.S. Lewis. Of course that’s along with saying I need to read more Bonhoeffer and Chesterton. Don’t even get me started about Hemingway and Faulkner.
But Lewis has been an inspiration since I first read The Great Divorce for a college English class. That’s when I also met Aslan in a wonderful place called Narnia. So, while it’s never frequently enough, I often turn back to the wisdom of Lewis.
While his theological works and essays are some of the most brilliant, I suppose I will always be partial to the Narnia stories. It was at that point in college that I began a collection of lions which I still maintain in my office today.
No silly, not real lions. Those are in the back yard. Or the nursery.
In The Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy is speaking of Aslan, the lion who in these stories represents Christ.
Of Aslan, Lucy says, “He’s not a tame lion. But he is good.”
And isn’t that just as true of our God? He’s not exactly what you’d call tame, but he can tame the seas. He’s not tame. But he is gentle. He is good.
Simple. Brilliant.
I have reading to do.
“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
– C.S. Lewis
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