Christian Writers Today Should Take Note
C.S. Lewis’ works have been translated into over thirty languages, and millions of copies have been sold worldwide. Even fifty years after his death, the majority of his forty plus books are still in print and his words are still leading souls to Christ.
1) Why not?
Who is the most popular Christian author apologist of our age?
- Who do preachers of all Christian persuasions quote the most?
- Who wrote the classic children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia?
- Whose book, Mere Christianity, has led so many souls to their savior?
- Who showed us how the enemy works in us in The Screwtape Letters?
- Who took us on a bus ride to heaven in The Great Divorce and clarified our choices?
- Who blasted us off to Mars and Venus in The Space Trilogy before we even knew ET? C.S. Lewis Books
2) His works are life changing
- Lewis scholar, Andrew Lazo, writes in Mere Christians, “Until I read Lewis, I had never known how to combine the best thinking and the deepest believing . . . Lewis taught me how to think.”
- Author Randy Alcorn writes, “Lewis’s fingerprints were all over me. If George MacDonald baptized Lewis’s imagination, Lewis baptized mine.”
- Actress, author, and broadcaster Anne Atkins writes, “Other Christians seem to present life as they think it ought to be; Lewis presents it as it is.”
- Publisher Leonard G. Goss writes, “Lewis became my mentor of the spirit, the mind, and the imagination.”
- Professor, editor, and author Don W. King writes, “It seemed Lewis had written books that scratched all my itches.”
3) He was human like us
- “Jacksie” suffered the sorrow of losing a mother at a young age
- Sent from Ireland to boarding school in England, Jack suffered taunts because he was not a jock
- Jack lost most of his dear friends in WWI, and was himself wounded
- He set out to be a poet, but became an Oxford don and tutor, but failed to make professor till late in life and at Cambridge
- He instilled courage in the British people with BBC broadcasts during WWII
- He died on November 22, 1963, the same day as John F. Kennedy, causing the world to ignore the passing of the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century
- He still continues to encourage believers in the faith, turn atheists to Christ, and delight children of all ages
- Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Sean Connery were knighted, but not Lewis
4) A role model to Christians
- He revealed his vulnerability through a young boy’s sorrow and his discovery of joy in Surprised By Joy. He shared his grief of losing his wife in A Grief Observed.
- When asked how he researched for The Screwtape Letters, he commented he didn’t have to go further than his own black heart to know the evil mind.
5) His works are resoundingly relevant today
- In That Hideous Strength, Lewis explored the dangers he perceived in the 1940’s of the coming domination of science. Some sixty years later, how much more the danger?
6) Lewis revealed a whole new world to me
- I stepped through the wardrobe into Narnia and have never looked back — I am a Lucy
- In Mere Christianity, I learned what Pride looks like
- In The Screwtape Letters, I recognized the evil behind those taunting thoughts I often ask myself, “Where did that come from?”
- In The Great Divorce I came face-to-face with facets of my nature, asking, “What will I not give up to gain heaven?”
- In The Weight of Glory I learned that there truly are no ordinary people. And, “All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations [heaven or hell].”
This great man remained in the shadows except when defending his faith. His legacy endures. The more you read Lewis, study his work, and learn of the man, the more you are drawn into his world and to his God.
Draw close to Lewis and you will draw closer to God
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