"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Having completed Mere Christianity, Matt and I take this episode to discuss the book as a whole, share some of our favourite parts, as well as what it was like to read a book “in public” over the course of a year…
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Episode 42: Mere Christianity Retrospective (Download)
[Verse 1]
He is justice
He is mercy
He is spotless
Yet carried me dirty
He is jealous and gracious
Pursuant and patient
Always been brutally kind
He is gentle
But you can’t tame Him
[Chorus]
There is no one (No one)
No one (No one)
No one like Jesus
He has (He has)
He has (He has)
No rival
No one (No one)
No one (No one)
No one like Jesus
He has (He has)
He has (He has)
No equal
[Verse 2: Crowder]
He’s a king
He’s a servant
Voice of thunder
I hear Him whisper
He gives beauty for ashes
Gave His life in compassion
Always, we’ve been on His mind
He was buried
But Hell couldn’t hold Him
[Bridge]
My whole life, I heard ’em say
“You ain’t ever gonna make it boy”
Stop, replay
Them kinda words change the way I pray
No more “God is good, God is great”
I’ve been down before, I mean real low
But don’t judge my past, we all friends though
Forgiveness was the key I was missin’ bro
But my God is big, Jericho
So I stand with my fist held high
And my eyes gazed on the Most High
Lord, pour out Your love and Your glory
I know You supporting me, You the authority
I’m right where I’m supposed to be, You have a plan for me
Hope and a future, You said it so candidly
So as day after day goes by when y’all ask me to testify
I point my hands to the sky, my God
C.S. Lewis & the Catholic Church is a book which investigates a fascinating question: why didn’t C.S. Lewis convert to Catholicism? After all, many Catholics who read Lewis discover a faith which they very must recognize as Catholic (with a capital “C”). One of his best friends, Tolkien, was a Catholic, he possessed a robust sacramental theology, believed in Purgatory and went to confession regularly. Why did he not “swim the Tiber”?
Joseph Pearce takes the reader through a tour of several of Lewis’ works, particularly The Pilgrim’s Regress, Surprised By Joy, The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity, tracing the threads of Catholic thought which can be found there, as well the points of contention with the Catholic Faith. He also digs into Lewis’ Ulster background, seeing what prejudices may have been deeply laid in his childhood.
One nice addition to this book was the appendix, which recounted the stories of those devoted to Lewis who eventually converted to Catholicism, including his own secretary, Walter Hooper. Lewis may have never formally entered into communion with the Bishop of Rome, but it becomes clear that his writings nevertheless influenced others in their journey “home to Rome”.
In our C.S. Lewis reading group, we are currently working through “Surprised By Joy”, the spiritual autobiography of C.S. Lewis. In it, he mentioned some of the authors he loved as a child, one of which was E. Nesbit.
Edith Nesbit wrote many books, but a particularly popular trilogy was The Psammead Trilogy, the first of which was Five Children and It, where the children find a sand fairy who will grand them wishes. I read this book as a child and loved it (although I seem to recall loving the sequel even more) and I wanted to see if it still retained its charm for me as an adult.
Five Children and It is definitely still an enjoyable read as an adult. The language and society of the book has rather aged. There is one chapter where American Indians are portrayed and the dialogue isn’t exactly in line with present-day political correctness. Despite this, it’s easy to see why Lewis loved these books and how they fired his imagination, both as a child and as an adult.
In case you were thinking of doing something like this over the next few weeks…
Since I posted a clip of Ben Shapiro earlier this week, I thought I’d also share this video I came across which outlines what we can learn from the way he argues:
As an aside, I disagree with the video’s author on the point about abortion. Firstly, nothing which Ben says about the unborn is not biologically, scientifically correct. Secondly, many pro-choice advocates would concede these descriptions, favouring instead the argument that the woman’s choice to end the life of her child trumps the child’s right to life.
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you
Werner Heisenberg (Father of Quantum Mechanics)