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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/22/2003 2:06 PM (GMT -6) |   | This describes the life of C.S. Lewis and his relevance for today.
dlw
Op-Ed Contributor: A Mind That Grasped Both Heaven and Hell
November 22, 2003
By JOSEPH LOCONTE
WASHINGTON
Forty years ago today, as the world mourned the
assassination of an American president, the passing of the
20th century's most influential Christian writer was hardly
noticed: Clive Staples Lewis, professor of English
literature at Oxford and Cambridge, died on Nov. 22, 1963.
In his ability to nurture the faithful, as well as seduce
the skeptic, C. S. Lewis had no peer.
Lewis was an atheist for much of his adult life, an
experience that may have helped immunize him from the
religious cliché, the reluctance to ask hard questions, the
self-righteousness of the zealot. "Mr. Lewis possesses the
rare gift," according to an early reviewer, "of being able
to make righteousness readable." Lewis was not a
theologian, but he expressed even the most difficult
religious concepts with bracing clarity. He was not a
preacher, yet his essays and novels pierce the heart with
their nobility and tenderness.
The lessons found within his writings continue to resonate
today. In fact, it's hard to imagine a time when the need
for sane thinking about religion was more momentous. Cite
an act of terror, from the sniper shootings in Washington
to the bombings in Baghdad and Istanbul, and faith is close
at hand. Many are now tempted to equate piety with venality
- or worse - and it's here that Lewis may have the most to
teach us.
Born in 1898, Lewis reached maturity in the 1930's, when
Europe was being convulsed by the rise of new tyrannies:
communism in Russia and fascism in Spain, Italy and
Germany. At the same time, trends in psychology and
theology were discrediting Christian doctrines of sin and
repentance. The "root causes" of international disorder
were said to be social and political arrangements, like
runaway capitalism or the flawed Treaty of Versailles. But
Lewis, like his friend J. R. R. Tolkien, knew the trouble
lay deeper, and marshaled his literary imagination to
explore it.
In a harrowing scene from his science fiction novel
"Perelandra," the protagonist, Prof. Elwin Ransom, battles
a mad scientist horribly disfigured by his lust for power.
Lewis writes: "What was before him appeared no longer a
creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to
which will was attached only as an instrument." The
Christians, Lewis argued, were right: the mystery of evil
was rooted in the tragedy of human nature. Pride, and the
poisoned conscience it created, functioned as the engine of
the world's woes. Unchallenged, it led to a "ruthless,
sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the
mark of Hell."
Many modern liberals dismiss Lewis's concept of the
diabolical as a "medieval" superstition. Yet many religious
conservatives seem to make evil the brainchild of God
himself. For them, all individual and social sin -
including the terror of Sept. 11 - is the perfect will of a
Divine Judge (as the Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed at the
time). Lewis disagreed: Evil is always man's doing, yet it
is never his destiny. The power of choice makes evil
possible, but it's also "the only thing that makes possible
any love or goodness or joy worth having."
While Oxford agnostics howled, Lewis gave BBC talks on
theology that were a national sensation. Even his beloved
children's stories, "The Chronicles of Narnia," ring with
biblical themes of sin and redemption. No one did more to
make "the repellent doctrines" of Christianity plausible to
modern ears.
Nevertheless, Lewis acknowledged that religion easily
becomes a device to exploit others - sometimes, as in the
case of sexually abusive priests, at the very steps of the
altar. The pretense of piety, he said, has left a record of
violence that should shame every honest believer. "Of all
bad men, religious bad men are the worst," he wrote in
"Reflections on the Psalms."
Yet, unlike the cynic, Lewis refused to blame the faith
itself for the shortcomings of the church. Instead, his
writings offer bright glimpses into the moral beauty of
divine goodness, what Lewis called "the weight of glory."
It is this vision of the Holy, he observed, that has
produced many of the masterpieces of art and music. This
same vision motivates the faithful to risk everything to
relieve the world's suffering: caring for plague victims,
defending the rights of children, guiding slaves to
freedom, breaching war zones to feed the poor.
"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," he wrote in "Mere Christianity," one of
his best-known works. "It is since Christians have largely
ceased to think of the other world that they have become so
ineffective in this." In an era when God himself seems to
be on trial, that's a timely message - for the half-hearted
pilgrim as well as the devoted doubter. Probably just what
C. S. Lewis had in mind.
Joseph Loconte, religion fellow at the Heritage Foundation,
is editor of the forthcoming "The End of Illusions:
America's Churches and Hitler's Gathering Storm, 1938-41.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/opinion/22LOCO.html?ex=1070531516&ei=1&en=a993534000859173
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/26/2003 12:56 AM (GMT -6) | | | Glad you posted this, Dave. I saw it on a breeze through. | | Back to Top | | |
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