The Life and Writings of CS Lewis Paulo F. Ribeiro, MBA, PhD

Calvin College

Engineering Department

Caledonia Christian Reformed Church

March 16, ADCaledonia, MI

The joy of the Lord is our strength. Neh. 8:10

The Apologist's Evening Prayer

From all my lame defeats and oh! much moreFrom all the victories that I seemed to score;

From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalfAt which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;

From all my proofs of Thy divinity,Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.

Lord of the narrow gate and needle's eye,Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its wine. In it God shows himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one. What He does is learned from what He is.”

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30 YearsDec 17, 1977

Introductory Words

Good Morning. Thanks for the opportunity

Presentation: Brazilian Style – Audience Participation (Encouraged):Talking Points - - - -

Why Lewis:The most important Christian writer of the 20th century.A man who has had, and is having, a profound impact on our world.Lewis wrote about many different subjects with a truly integrated Christian Perspective (theology, politics, education, English literature, children’s stories, science fiction, etc.): The Pubs went silent.

Politics: crime, obscenity, capital punishment, conscription, communism, fascism, socialism, war, vivisection, the welfare state, the atomic bomb, tyranny, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" has had had on theories of punishment. The prevailing idea was that prisoners were sick people who needed therapy--and that included all the techniques that modern psychology and technology could bring to bear to achieve behavioralmodification. Sentences were open-ended, and the prisoner was not released until he was "cured.“ Lewis objected strenuously. Prisoners, he said, need to be punished, not "cured" in that sense. The sentence must be fixed, so that the prisoner knows at least the approximate date of his release. Treating the prisoner as a patient robs him of his dignity and constitutes an unwarranted assault on his personality and character.

Introductory Words

I discovered C.S. Lewis when in college (1974). Since then I have read and re-read almost everything he wrote. He has had a tremendous influence on me in several ways (just ask my wife). She says: “too much!”

-He has helped to overcome make modern ills, among them chronological snobbery and the temptation to be relevant, original.

-He has helped me to think more objectively by his rigorous, precise, penetrating logic, vivid, lively, and playful imagination.

-He has helped me to have a better sense of the real world.

-He shows my insensitivity and inability to enjoy God's daily gifts.

- Possibly one of the most gifted English writers of last century.

-He always points me to the ultimate source of Joy: Christ.

-His theology may not be perfect, but the practice was exemplary.Among the books I have read and enjoyed with much profit are: Mere Christianity, Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, Miracles, Pilgrim's Regress, Poems, Letters to an American Lady, Letters of C.S. Lewis, The Narnia books, Out of the Silent Planet, That Hideous Strength, Experiment in Criticism, God in the Dock, The Four Loves, The Weight of Glory, and everything else.

Introductory Words - Chronology

Childhood in BelfastSearch for JoyBoarding Schools: Campbell, Cherbourg and MalvernWT KirkpatrickOxfordWarReturn to OxfordConversionInklingsTutor and LecturerWorld War II and the Emergence of the ApologistThe Royal Air ForceDomestic Life at the KilnsCharles Williams and the InklingsWritings – Writings – and NarniaDiscovered by AmericaJoy Gresham – And A Grief ObservedCambridgeFinal Days

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Introductory Observations

• Fascination with Lewis started in 1974 (University in Brazil)

• Started with Theological writings – then my wife and children brought me into Narnia

• Spent Four years in England & read everything Lewis wrote which consolidated my appreciation

• Became a CS Lewis freak (according to my children)

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The Author: CS Lewis • Born in Belfast in 1898. • Educated in England (prep school – Oxford University)• Army in 1917, saw front-line combat• Returned to Oxford, graduated in 1922 and became a fellow

of Magdalen college in 1925. • An atheist in his boyhood - converted to Christianity in 1931.• Wartime religious talks on the BBC, plus some other

theological books brought him fame (+Narnia)• Was part of the Oxford literary circle (the Inklings) whose

members also included J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. • In 1957 he married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American

with whom he had corresponded with. Joy was suffering from cancer at the time of their marriage – she died in 1960.

• Died on November the 22nd 1963 - same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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The Author: (Jack)• Clear thinking and writing – Captivating.• Came from the outside • He has helped me to overcome chronological snobbery, post-

modernism, etc. His writings: precise, penetrating logic, vivid, lively, and playful imagination.

• Taught the English language to sing – (Kreeft: “What Christian ever made Latin dance as Augustine

did? What Christian ever taught English to sing as Lewis did? Their words are like diamonds, full of light yet full of heaviness; full of grace and truth.”)

• I found the perfect marriage: Brazilian Music & Lewis’s English• He always points to the ultimate source: Christ.• His theology was not perfect, but his practice was exemplary

(almost Reformed)

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The Author: (Jack)•Premature reader and writer (from a bookish family)

•In Surprised by Joy Lewis tells of his first stories of dressed animals”•He was between 7 & 9 years old when he wrote a full history of Animal-Land, complete with map and colorful illustrations (Boxen)•Boxen, however, did not have much to do with Narnia, except for the anthropomorphic beasts, it had the tiniest hint of wonder.

•Suffered from an undefinable desire (romantic longing)

"The Christians are right; it is Pride that has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together; you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.“

Mere Christianity

Introductory Words

I relate to C.S. Lewis' story in Surprised by Joy in many respects: the experiences of the painful, melancholy, yet "joyful" yearnings (he calls sehnsucht).

Although the scenery was very different: tropical ocean, samba, soccer … “there is no sin on the south side of the equator,”

I still suffered from the stabs of joy… there was an immediate connection.

Several years later I found myself not far away from the land of Narnia (PhD at University of Manchester 1982-1985).

I became a “freak” (according to my children): house, cars, everything-Lewis-Narnia …. Is this an American thing? Then I am glad to be an American.

“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”

The Weight of Glory

Traits and Virtues

•Clarity•Veracity•Charity•Humility

•Joy•Militant Intellect

•Brilliance•Reasonableness

•Struggle with Loss

Owen Barfield when describing Lewis's writing style and attractiveness:

" . . . somehow what he thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything."

Feeling Intellect(Mind, Heart, Emotions, Will)

Beyond reason – into vision, joy, love

His Main Battle Grounds

1 – Needs of the West: Theology in Popular Language, Allegory, Fiction, and Children’s Story.

3 – The Devil: Screwtape Letters4 – Fighting Moral Subjectivism: (MC, Abolition of Man, Poison of Subjectivism)

5 – Longing for Joy: Surprised by Joy and The Weight of Glory6 – Selling Hell: That Hideous Strength, Great Divorce7 – The Problem of Pain8 – Theological Modernism9 – Love10 – Building Bridges (Past and Future)

Love + Suffering + Joy = Power released by splitting the atom of the Trinity in the cup Christ drank on Calvary

Themes and Passionate TopicsJoy - As a rationale for heavens

The Validity of Reason - Reason as participation in the divine Logos

The Objectivity of the Natural LawThe Epistemological Reliability of the Imagination - Especially when realized in the

forms of metaphor, symbolism, and myth, to establish meaning, the antecedent of truth.

The Solidity of the Supernatural World and Its ImminenceThe Law of Undulation - Which reminds us that states of feeling come and go and are not the essence of religious

devotion.

The Law of Inattention - Which tells us to appreciate the essence of things and of looking away from the self.

Chronological Snobbery - As the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the

assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.

Look At and Along Everything by Contemplation and EnjoymentObedience is Our Main JobBulverism - The idea that an argument can be refuted simply by virtue of attributing motive to the person who has made it.

The Inner Ring Syndrome - The temptation to compromise ourselves, from small things like joke-telling to big

things like political corruption, in order to be accepted by power-brokers.

Verbicide - the Killing of Words by Inflation, Imprecision, or Equivocal Use of Partisan Purpose

Truth

Obedience

Sacrifice

Pleasure

Beauty

Sex

Goodness

Joy

Reason

Adoration

Enjoyment

Love

Imagination

SelfForgetfulness

Courage

Faithfulness

Desire

Vision

Meaning

Duty

Vocation

Law

Virtues

Eternal

Friends

Honesty

BooksPain

Prayer

Humility

Contentment

Truth

Obedience

Sacrifice

Pleasure

Beauty

Sex

Goodness

Joy

Reason

Adoration

Enjoyment

Love

Imagination

SelfForgetfulness

Courage

Faithfulness

Desire

Vision

Meaning

Duty

Vocation

Law

Virtues

Eternal

Friends

Honesty

BooksPain

Prayer

Humility

Contentment

Interesting facts about Lewis:

Accent: Oxford with an Irish tinge

Voice 1 Voice 2 Voice 3

Number of books sold …

Breath of subjects …. (*)

1947 Time Magazine article

Declined honors from Winston Churchill

Adored In America (all over the world, we are working in Brazil …)

Sharing Time???

(*) APOLOGETICS, EDUCATION , CHILDREN’S STORIES, ETHICS, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, FRIENDS, LONGING, "MERE CHRISTIANITY“, MODERNISM AND SECULARISM, MYTH AND IMAGINATION, SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

The Many Sides of Lewis:

Lewis, the distinguished Oxford literary scholar and critic;

Lewis, the highly acclaimed author of science fiction and children's literature;

Lewis, the popular writer and broadcaster of Christian apologetics, the Knight of Orthodox Christianity (Champion of Mere Christianity);

Lewis, the soldier and faithful friend (from Arthur Grieves to Tolkien)

Lewis, the masterful teacher and tutor;

Lewis, the private man and with family problems (Father, Warren, Mrs. Moore)

Lewis, the romantic yet rationalist (Baptized imagination)

Lewis, the thoroughly converted man (The Pilgrim’s Regress)

Lewis, surprised by marriage (the “Joy” of his life)

Lewis, the aggressive debater and humble/gentle man

Lewis’s Appeal

Invitation to meditation

Natural point of contact: longing for meaning

Avoidance of the technical jargon of the theologians.

Allow me to illustrate the power of the apologetics of longing with a testimony.

A few years ago I introduced CS Lewis to an engineer in Virginia who was going through an existential crisis. I presented him a copy of Mere Christianity.

…. After several months after reacting against some of the statements he came to me and said, I am in the hall, Paulo ….

In another case, I presented a copy of the same book to a Brazilian Professor (nominal catholic) ….

Two months later, he could not control his excitement … he told me that he had introduced Lewis to another friend who was seriously looking for some spiritual answers.

Interdenominational Appeal

Almost Reformed

“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.”

"Whatever they were, they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; nor did their enemies bring any such charge against them. On the contrary .... Calvinism was not too grim, but too glad, to be true.

Interdenominational Appeal

Lewis on Calvinists and Puritans

“It sprang from the refusal to allow the Roman distinction between the life of religion and the life of the world. Calvin's picture of the Christian was less hostile to pleasure, but then Calvin demanded that every man should be made to live the fully Christian life.”

“This will at least serve to eliminate the absurd idea that ElizabethanCalvinists were somehow grotesque, elderly people, standing outside the main forward current of life. In their own day they were, of course, the very latest thing. Unless we can imagine the freshness, the audacity and the fashionableness of Calvinism, we shall get out whole picture wrong. It was a creed of progressives, even revolutionaries."

Lewis calls "the shape of my early life."

Summary

Less an autobiography more an account of his religious ups and downs from childhood

From an almost lack of religion in his early experience ...

Of his hectic efforts in boarding school to create a satisfying spiritual realization

Of his retreat into atheism ..

The long and painful return through nature, spiritualism and philosophy to Theism and finally to Christianity.

Surprised by Joy:

•Father, Albert James Lewis, was a lawyer and mother, Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis, a descendent of clergymen, lawyers, and sailors.

•Father - sentiment and passion

•Mother irony, coolness and the capacity for happiness.

•Lewis description of his father not very positive.

•Lewis's mother died before he was ten, but she had already started him in French and Latin.

The Development of a Tough And Holistic Christian Mind

Surprised By Joy

•Lewis and his brother (three years older) were left alone in a large house and spent endless hours in their respective imaginative worlds of Animal-Land and India

•Lewis learned Sehnsucht (sen-zart), - longing from looking out of the nursery windows, but there were not genuine religious experiences.

•The house was rich in books and the brothers read widely. They lived almost in their imagination.•One day the young Lewis stood beside a currant bush in flower there suddenly and mysteriously arose in him "as if from a depth not of years but centuries" the memory of an earlier happy morning. Though it happened in an instant of time, he felt that "in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened tome was insignificant in comparison.“

•It was the beginning of his search for joy.

Surprised by Joy

•At ten, Lewis was sent to school in hated England. Under the tutelage of Oldie, who flogged his boys with and without excuse but taught them to think logically.

•At twelve, he went to Campbell College, not far from the Lewis home in Ireland, but his stay was cut short by illness which gave him happy weeks on his own.

•From 13 to 15 he was back in England at a small prep school he calls Charters. Here at last he began to love the English countryside, but here he also lost his faith, and his simplicity.•Other things which led him to atheism were the occultism imparted to him by a matron at the school, a natural pessimism, and particularly the reading of H.G. Wells, and Sir Robert Ball.

•At fifteen he won the classic scholarship to "Wyvern" College, located in the same English town as Charters.

Surprised by Joy

•Though Lewis's brother had attended Wyvern and liked it, he himself concluded that this school, like most other such college in England, produced not the understanding and fraternal man described in its catalogue but rather a "bitter, truculent, skeptical, debunking, and cynical intelligentsia" dominated by social struggle and priggishness.

Arthur Greeves

•One of the few valuable assets of Wyvern was Smewgy, a hard but courteous teacher and taught his boys to be scholars without being pedants.•In religion Lewis at this time suffered the conflict, as he says, of maintaining that God did not exist and being angry with him for not existing.

•Lewis prepared for university entrance under the tutorship of a tall, lean shabbily dressed but ruthlessly dialectical man named W.T. Kirkpatrick in Surrey. He found this the happiest period of his life.

•He read abundantly in literature of all sorts, including much of Homer and other Greek authors in the original. His atheism was strengthened.

“In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. . . . God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous. “

Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy

•With Barfield in particular he debated violently and learned much. It was he who destroyed forever in Lewis the easy belief in "chronological snobbery,"

•He also convinced Lewis that abstract thought can give indisputable truth and is therefore a different sort of from experience of the senses.

•Finally Lewis was forced to conclude that logic itself participated in a cosmic Logos. He also became convinced of a cosmic Absolute but did not assume it would ever get personal.

•Lewis was twenty-three when he finishes Greats and, because he could find no position, decided to remain for a fourth year at Oxford.

•Almost immediately he was drawn to a brilliant young man named Nevil Coghill and was shocked to discover him a Christian and thoroughgoing supernaturalist.

Surprised by Joy

•At the same time it dawned on him that all the authors on whom he could really feed (Macdonald, Chesterton, Dr. Johnson, Spencer, Milton) saw things through Christian eyes.

•Even the most religious of the Pagans (Plato, Virgil...) had some of the same quality. They had roughness and density of life.

Magdalene College

He still thought Christianity only a myth, a good philosophical framework on which to hang Absolute Idealism.

•He became a temporary lecturer for a year and was then elected a Fellow of Magdalene College in 1925, when he was 26 years old.

•Christians now began to appear all around him - men like Dyson, Tolkien ..

•He re-read Euripides' Hippolytus and Joy returned to his heart.

Surprised by Joy

•Lewis thought that nobody could be safe from God if this man were not. 

•There followed a time in which all the strands steadily platted themselves into an invincible whole in which Lewis's inner being. It seemed to him that God was surely after him as a cat searching for a mouse. 

•You must picture me, he says, alone in that room in Magdalene, night after night, feeling whenever mind lifted even for a second from work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I earnestly desire not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. 

•It was in the Trinity Term of 1929 that he capitulated. As he knelt down in prayer and admitted that God was God, he felt himself the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

Tolkien

Williams

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?

This walk in the grounds of Magdalen College was the site of a long conversation between Tolkien, C.S.Lewis and Hugo Dyson, after which C.S.Lewis became converted to Christianity.

Surprised by Joy

Book I - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the

Meaning of the Universe

An Engineering PerspectiveA Flow-Chart Approach

Mere Christianity

Do you believein the existenceof a Moral Law?

No

Yes

Is there anythingor anyone

behind the Moral Law?

No

Yes

What Kind:A Force(Power)?

Yes

No

Are you trickingme with a

religious talk?

We are trying to findtruth and the meaning of

the universe.

Are youinterested?

Yes

No

A Force/Power is a sort of atame and convenient God .

An inconsistent Power

End of theStory

End of theStory

End of theStory

End of theStory

A God ?

No

Yes

No

Mere Christianity

How can we find out more about the thing behind the moral law and

the meaning of the universe?

Looking into the The Universe He Made

Looking inside ourselves,where He wrote the moral laws

He is a great artist

He is quite merciless.The universe is

a very dangerous place.

But you cannot knowa man by looking at the house he built.

The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking that God is “good”

in the sense of being soft and nice..The Moral Law is as hard as nails.If God is like the Moral Law, then

HE IS NOT SOFT.

Do you want to proceed?at your own

risk?

No

Yes

End of theStory

End of theStory

End of theStory

The Moral Law ells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

Mere Christianity

Is He an ImpersonalAbsolute

Goodness ?

If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless.

Yes

No

Absolute Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way

you react to it. God is the only comfort and supreme terror

Yes

Have you brokenthe Moral Law?

Do you think you need Forgiveness?

No Yes

No exceptions, or allowancespermitted.

Is He a Personalabsolute

Goodness ?

Christianity tells how the demands of the Moral Law,which we cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how

God Himself becomes man to save man from the disapproval of God.

End of theStory

Beginning of Chapter 1 of the Great Story ...Which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better

than the one before.

End of theStory

Do you want to find out more

about God

End of theStoryYes

No

Mere Christianity

Into Narnia

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Into Narnia and its Makings

•Fairy Tales – Tolkien’s influence (the Gospels contain a story of a kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories: Marvels, beauty, mythical, symbolic, allegorical, etc.)•JRR Tolkien (-) and Roger Lancelyn Green (+) Reactions •A Series Which Almost Never Was

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The Makings of Narnia

•Lewis: Not very familiar with children (Letters to Children)•What is it: Allegory, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Myth ?•Jack: Defended Fairy Tales: Fantastic Creations – Mythological Figures & Father Christmas•How it all Begun (16 years old)

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The Makings of Narnia

Why Fairy-Tales?

“Hence a man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his fifty-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth than scorned and pitied for arrested development. If I spend some little time defending myself against these charges, this is not so much because it matters greatly whether I am scorned and pitied as because the defense is germane to my whole view of the fairy tale and even of literature in general.”

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The Makings of Narnia

For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime. It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing, or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars. And I think St George, or any bright champion in armor, is a better comfort than the idea of the police.”

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The Makings of NarniaAre These Books for Children or Adults?

• "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally worth reading at the age of fifty. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all."

• “The boy does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little more enchanted." The child reading the fairy tale is delighted simply in desiring, while the child reading a "realistic" story may establish the success of its hero as a standard for himself and, when he cannot have the same success, may suffer bitter disappointment.”

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The Makings of Narnia

Is It Right to Mix Theology and Fairy-Tales? (Personal)

• “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find so hard to feel as one told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings … But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not steal past these watchful dragons?” I thought one could.”

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The Makings of Narnia

• Relation to our world– Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve

• The British humor– Is Man a Myth– Tea Parties– “Huge Jug of Beer for Mr. Beaver”

• The Idea of Aslan – Lewis’s Greatest Religious Achievement– Analogies: symbol of power, lion, king in an animal

world• LWW Fall 1950 – Cautious Reviews – The Future

– The New Movie is Creating Controversies– Philip Pullman, Charles McGrath (New York Times)

• Pre-Baptism of Imagination.

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The Makings of Narnia

The Dedication of the LWW:

My Dear Lucy,I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be

Your affectionate Godfather, C.S. Lewis

The Irony: Lewis did not live long after all and Lucy – a young ballet dancer, musician and teacher was struck with paralysis and unable to reach any upper shelves at all. Her long winter came early in life. But when Aslan shakes his mane, we shall have

spring again.

Prince Caspian

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The Magic Never Ends

• The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited . . . .

Final DaysIn the Shadowlands and Beyond

“There was one candle on the coffin as it was carried out into the churchyard. It seemed not only appropriate but also a symbol of the man and his integrity and absoluteness and his faith that the flame burned so steadily, even in an open air, and seemed so bright, even in the bright sun.”Peter Bailey at Lewis’s funeral

In Summary

It is the way Lewis thoroughly integrated his Christian faith into his scholarly work that leaves the largest legacy and which has impressed me and blessed me most.

Lewis taught me... how to long for God and seek true joy. How to integrate a Christian worldview with my vocation, my family life, and my inner self.

If you go to Lewis for ultimate answers you will be disappointed. In all his writings, Lewis always pointed to Christ.

The impact of Lewis on my life has been great. He has challenged me to grow in my faith so that I’m not afraid to engage spiritually and intellectually with a world hostile to God. But above all he has taught me that the power of the imagination is one of the greatest tool we have to bridge the gap into the secular mind. My tropical-Latin-culture- mind found in Lewis a way to conciliate samba, soccer, engineering, theology, joy … which is consistent with a Reformed worldview.

“You’ll never get to the bottom of him.” JRR Tolkien

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“And the elderly lady in my adult education class on the Chronicles of Narnia who answered my question about what had attracted each of the students to the Narnia books and to a course on them by saying that they had saved her sanity and her daughter's soul. When she was "sweet sixteen" her daughter had said to her, "Mother, I hate you and this whole family. I especially hate your God. I never want to see you again," left for California, and became a drug addict and a prostitute. Her mother said, "I knew she would come back to us and to God because I had read her the Chronicles of Narnia when she was ten, and she had loved them. And she did.”Peter Kreeft