Discovering C.S. Lewis

I remember a quote that really impacted my life in a huge way.

I was a young believer and I was reading C.S. Lewis and Lewis had an amazing quote that said this, and it will be kind of the basis for the show today, quote, To be ignorant and simple now, not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground, would be like throwing down our weapons and betraying our less educated brethren, he said uneducated, but less educated brethren who have under God no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Now this is Lewis.

Good philosophy must exist if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered. Now with that quote we welcome you to today's edition of TNG Radio. Alex McFarland here along with Dylan Burrows. And Dylan, let me ask you, at what point in your Christian life did you discover C.S. Lewis? Well it's interesting because unlike many people who have grown up reading C.S. Lewis, I didn't really find him or discover him until my college years, and people were talking about C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia, and I thought, what am I missing? So I went out and got some of the books and began to read them, and I realized at that stage these were children's writings with a powerful spiritual message.

And it stuck with me ever since that time when the films came out and became popular. I remember how many youth groups and how many churches were engrossed in this idea of taking out the spiritual themes and seeing how they applied. And still today we can discover many lessons from this man who wrote such enduring words years ago.

Well exactly, exactly. And on this show today, because with Truth for a New Generation, all of our conferences and our broadcasts and writing, we are trying to encourage people to sure, learn how to defend the faith. 1 Peter 3.15 says, be ready always to give an answer. But I guess one of the heartbeats of the ministry, too, is to call people to attend to their knowledge and the life of the mind, to grow, yes, obviously in the Word of God, the Bible and the Word of God is paramount.

We don't ever put the word of man on par with the Word of God. But C.S. Lewis is a really, really important Christian leader of the last hundred years. And you know, summertime people are going to go on vacation, they often buy a book.

We want to encourage you to make some space in your mind and on your bookshelf for C.S. Lewis, because he really is kind of a unique writer, a very, very significant writer. It was our privilege earlier this year to have Douglas Gresham Lewis, his adopted son, come for about three days and be a part of a conference we were putting on. And it was an amazing thing to hear Gresham talk about the Chronicles of Narnia that were written for he and his brother.

And he was a teenager when C.S. Lewis died, but Lewis's impact on his life is amazing. And Gresham is kind of like the curator of all things Lewis.

Gresham himself is a devout follower of Jesus, and he just held 2,800 students in rapt attention as he spoke. But he said it was kind of an ongoing challenge to introduce new audiences to C.S. Lewis, because some of his writings are really deep.

Dylan, I know you've probably, like myself, had people that say, hey, I'm going to get into C.S. Lewis, I'm going to read Mere Christianity, which is a very important book. It really was an outgrowth of a series of broadcasts he did at the invitation of Winston Churchill during World War II. Churchill put Lewis on the BBC one night a week to talk about God and Christianity and morality and prayer and many of those scripts, the broadcast talks, became Mere Christianity. But a lot of Mere Christianity is pretty tough sledding, isn't it?

I mean, it's pretty deep stuff, isn't it? I think you would consider it apologetics material today, almost academic in nature for much of it, and it takes a little bit of effort to wade through it and understand some of the older language as well as the concepts for today. But it is some of the most powerful reading you will discover from that time period regarding a defense of your faith, and it's been a basis for many other books in a similar regard in our generation. So I'm excited to talk about C.S. Lewis and the impact he's had.

One reason I get excited about C.S. Lewis is this idea that he wasn't some monastic who lived in a cave. He was someone who lived out his faith in academia. He was a professor at one of the top schools in our world during his time and spoke out about his faith despite the critics around him. He did.

It's interesting. One of the quotes, Lewis, he was very good at summarizing things, and he said, �History begins in a meeting with God such as Abraham had as he was called out of Ur. It develops into a union and communion with God such as Paul describes in these words, �I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.� From Abraham to Paul to our very own lives, Lewis was really good at sort of summarizing things. Let's briefly tell you a little bit about his story. He lived 1898 to 1963. His mother died when he was just 10 years old, and he was raised by his father who I think was a decent provider but pretty distant, emotionally distant from Lewis and his brother Warren. Even when Lewis was wounded in World War I as a soldier and he was recuperating in the hospital, his dad didn't even come to see him in the hospital. And so Lewis at one time said, and some of you will probably really resonate with this quote, but Lewis at his childhood was filled with long hours and long hallways. He said, �I'm the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of pipes and cisterns, and wind under the shingles on the roof, and also time alone with endless books.� Now if you've ever been to your grandmother's house and had a day where you're quietly reflecting on old things and reflecting on you and time and where is your place in the world, you get the sense that Lewis really thought about those things. And as a boy he read endlessly and he said nothing was off limits.

All the books he and his brother could read, whether or not they were really age appropriate, and he became a lifelong learner. He went to war in World War II, was wounded, and was really a war hero, came back and finished his education at Oxford, became a professor, Dylan, as you alluded to, but he was an atheist for most of his life. And maybe in the next segment we'll talk about his conversion from atheism to Christianity, but around age 33 he became a believer and a follower of Jesus and would ultimately be, some say, the most important Christian writer of the 20th century and one of the most significant Christian writers ever.

And we'll continue our look at Lewis and why we ought to be familiar with his work when T&G Radio continues. Anywhere near Cary, North Carolina, you need to join best-selling author and apologist Dr. Alex McFarland, Christian apologist and talk show host and founder of Stand to Reason, Greg Kochel, and the president of Heroes of the Cross, and pastor of Colonial Baptist Church, Ben Lecourt, at Colonial Baptist Church, on Sunday, July 22, for the Reasons to Believe apologetics conference, because apologetics isn't a conversation of one. Your teens and millennials will learn how to protect and defend the great truths of Christianity, how to navigate through hostile learning environments in college and high school doing more than just surviving. It's the Reasons to Believe apologetics conference at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, North Carolina, Sunday afternoon, July 22. Doors open at 2.

Conference begins at 2.30 and wraps up by 6. Learn more at truthforanewgeneration.com. First Peter 3.15 tells us to be ready always to give an answer for the hope we have.

We're instructed to be prepared to defend our faith. This is Alex McFarland for the Life Answers Teams, students we train at North Greenville University, a leading Christian college in South Carolina. The Life Answers Teams are made up of students who will inspire and equip your congregation. These apologetics teams we train speak in churches to youth groups and train Christians of all ages to address key issues of our times from a biblical perspective. Like is there a God?

Is the Bible true? What about gender and moral issues? Call me at 864-977-2008 and we will arrange for the Life Answers Team to come to your church and give a presentation that will benefit your people for years to come. 864-977-2008 and always with us. Welcome back to Truth For A New Generation with Alex McFarland and Dylan Burrows. We're excited to be with you, but I also want to mention along the way the coming Truth For A New Generation Conference.

It's coming up September 14th and 15th just outside of Nashville, Tennessee in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We want you to make plans to be there. We're going to be there with Josh McDowell, Jay Warner Wallace, who is a former cold case detective and the person behind cold case Christianity. We also have Tina Marie Griffin, a pop culture expert and the counterculture mom and many others with us. So check all that out at truthforanewgeneration.com.

And here we are to continue our discussion as we talk about C.S. Lewis, his enduring role, and we've talked a little bit about his personal life, but we want to get into this section of his original writing. This was a man who is known for writing in at least six different genres, Alex. Tell us a little bit about some of the works that he has written and what the significance of them are today for us. You know, he was a guy who used his talents and abilities for God.

He really did. And to write in so many genres, he wrote fiction, he wrote literary history, and he himself was a professor of literature and how to do literary criticism. I don't mean being critical, but I mean as in a commentator. So literary history, literary criticism, theology, spiritual growth. He wrote biography. He wrote philosophy. And of course, most famously of all, he wrote apologetics. Now his fiction works, and as you said, it really is a truly original body of writing. The Chronicles of Narnia, which are children's stories but just overtly based in Christianity.

Aslan the Lion, who is a picture of Jesus Christ. He wrote the Space Trilogy, Paralandra and Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength. It's funny, the fans of the Space Trilogy will fiercely argue with the fans of Narnia on which is a better series of books. He wrote the Screwtape Letters, which even many non-Christians, even many atheists love this series that's like a conversation between an elder demon coaching an apprentice demon, and you might say, how in the world is that something a Christian should know about? Because it really illustrates the reality and the dynamics of spiritual warfare.

It really does. Overtly Christian, his books on literary criticism, An Allegory of Love, a Study of Medieval Literature, and Experiments in Criticism, still to this day are used as textbooks in English literature departments around the world. He wrote on the Psalms, he wrote on prayer, he wrote very famously one of his well-known books, A Grief Observed, about how he processed the death of his own wife and that book has been a comfort to tens of thousands of people. He wrote a book on the four loves, the four Greek words that speak of love, which are storge, phileo, agapeo, and eros.

And the four loves he recorded for I believe a Methodist denomination, and that's among the only existing examples of his voice on tape. And that in itself, besides being a really good series on the uses of the word for love, shows his prowess with the Greek language. He wrote biography, his own story Surprised by Joy, and then really to another degree the book The Pilgrim's Regress, which was the first book he wrote after his conversion, is really a history of Western philosophy and how it had deviated and gone from theism and a creator to pantheism to not only coming back to belief in a creator god but Mother Kirk, K-I-R-K-E, Kirk being an Anglican word for the church, and the pilgrim in Pilgrim's Regress, as opposed to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, but in Lewis's biographical Pilgrim's Regress, how he comes back to Christ and the church. But then famously, and this is where we want to spend the bulk of our time, Lewis wrote, and oh boy was he original in his approach, he really was very original, apologetics. And Dylan, let me ask you this, as an apologist and theologian and prolific author in your own right, you discovered Lewis probably in college, as you said. Did any particular area of apologetics that he addressed make a big impact in your own writing and speaking?

Well, it is interesting, because on the academic side, mere Christianity, I believe, was by far the most influential in my life, talking about how Christianity provides an answer to so many of the ultimate questions in our lives today, and in a way that someone who came from his background being trained at Oxford and teaching in some of the top schools of his time could communicate with both the secular and a Christian audience and make sense and be compelling in his arguments. But personally, it wasn't his apologetics writing that was most helpful to me. It was actually a book you mentioned earlier, The Screwtape Letters. It's a very short book. If you wanted to find a book to start with, wouldn't recommend it necessarily for a young child, but The Screwtape Letters is a collection of 31 letters written by a senior demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood to explain different ways to tempt a person who would follow Jesus. And for me, at that age, when you're going through different temptations and struggles, and you realize this is speaking directly to some of the things that I face in daily life, that was influential to me. I began reading what the Bible says about spiritual warfare and temptation and how Jesus dealt with temptation in Matthew 4, and those things were influential in my life in a way that was even more powerful than any of his apologetics writings. Exactly.

And let me say, for C.S. Lewis, the man had an intellect that was just amazing. Brilliant, brilliant Oxford professor, and yet, yes, he believed that Satan was real, that demons are real, heaven, hell are real, Jesus Christ is truly God incarnate. You know, things that nowadays so many people probably would scoff at as being, oh, you don't mean to, in the 21st century, you really believe in the Trinity, you really believe in Satan?

Absolutely. Lewis unequivocally recognized the reality of the things that the Bible presents as very, very real spiritual dynamics, didn't he? He did, and it's refreshing to me because so many times today in academics you see this divide between faith and between intellect. God challenges us to love the Lord our God with all of our mind, and we do that by study, we do that by learning, and as C.S. Lewis did, being a voracious leader of different topics, different themes, and we hope you'll stick with us in just a moment as we talk more about C.S.

Lewis here on Truth For A New Generation Radio. For centuries, the Bible has inspired humanity and shaped the very world we live in. But how do we know this book is the Word of God and not merely the words of men? What we believe about the Bible is based on what we believe about its source. The God Who Speaks explores the evidence of the Bible's inspiration and authority through some of the world's most respected biblical scholars. We have essentially a dual authorship, so it's true to say that Paul wrote Romans.

It's equally true to say that God wrote Romans. He says, we saw this, and that sets the Bible apart from almost everything else in the ancient world and its religious pantheon of gods and goddesses. The God Who Speaks is a feature-length documentary from the American Family Association, available now at TheGodWhoSpeaks.org. Hey, if you are anywhere near Cary, North Carolina, you need to join best-selling author and apologist, Dr. Alex McFarland, Christian apologist and talk show host and founder of Stand to Reason, Greg Kochel, and the president of Heroes of the Cross and pastor of Colonial Baptist Church, Ben Lecourt, at Colonial Baptist Church on Sunday, July 22nd, for the reasons to believe apologetics conference, because apologetics isn't a conversation of one. Your teens and millennials will learn how to protect and defend the great truths of Christianity, how to navigate through hostile learning environments in college and high school doing more than just surviving. It's the reasons to believe apologetics conference at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, North Carolina, Sunday afternoon, July 22nd. Doors open at 2, conference begins at 2.30 and wraps up by 6.

Learn more at TruthForAnewGeneration.com. Welcome back to our program on C.S. Lewis here at TNG Radio.

Alex McFarland, Dylan Burrows. Let me say a couple of things quickly. I've got a great, very full speaking schedule through the fall of 2018, and you can find that on my website, AlexMcFarland.com. And then, as you mentioned, Dylan, the conference is coming up at TruthForAnewGeneration.com. But let me encourage you folks, as you plan your church's calendar, consider doing an apologetics worldview conference if you would like to talk about that. We want to help you because we want your people to be equipped to defend the faith, and we especially want your young people to be equipped and excited and empowered to live for Christ, to stand for Christ.

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Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27404. Dylan, talking about the apologetics of C.S. Lewis, mere Christianity huge. The problem of pain, that was one of his books on what some say is maybe the most perennial apologetics issue, is if God is real, if God is love, why is there pain and suffering? Miracles, can God act in the world?

C.S. Lewis said, of course. If God did the great miracle of creation, God can certainly reach in and part the Red Sea. The abolition of man, how the universality of moral knowledge proves there has to be a God. If there's a moral law, there's a moral law giver. He really did, he was, and I don't say this lightly, he was an original thinker.

Oh my goodness, a truly original canon of work he left behind. But here's the reason that we would encourage you to familiarize yourself with Lewis. Number three, a consistently biblical perspective on life and apologetics. And Lewis said this, he said, regardless of one's education, it is impossible to decide whether Christianity is true or false if you do not know what it is about.

Now what he meant by that was, some people, it's not that they've rejected Christianity necessarily, but they don't really even know what the Gospel entails. So isn't it amazing, here's a guy that devoted so much of his time to trying to help people. He was a great theologian, great intellect, but bottom line, Lewis was an evangelist, wasn't he?

C.S. Lewis He certainly was, but in his own unique way. We think of the term evangelist many times as this person who speaks in a stadium or in a church congregation and everybody raises their hand or walks down at the end and their lives are changed and live happily ever after. But he had a different kind of impact on our culture.

We see it primarily through his writings, but also, like you said, through his letters, through his teaching, now through films that have gone on long after his death. And it gives me encouragement to recognize that God uses each of us in a unique and special way. And I want to just mention that to you who are listening today.

Maybe you think, well, C.S. Lewis is great, but how does that apply to my life? He has been a man who has been used by God in a special way because of his talents to impact others, just in the same way God has equipped you in unique and special ways to change the lives of others. It may not be through literature, but you have something that God has put inside of you and we want to encourage you to live it out, to develop it as much as you can, like C.S. Lewis did in his own career, and to use it for God's glory and for the betterment of the lives of those around you. So as we wrap up here in these last couple of minutes, Alex, let's talk a little bit about how this information applies to us, what we can do with it, and how we can impact the lives of those in our communities and our family today.

Oh, well, great point. You know, Dylan, at the beginning I shared that very famous quote where he said, you know, good philosophy must exist because if for no other reason, bad philosophy must be answered. Now, a lot of ministries use that quote, and it's true, you know, good truth has to be proclaimed in order to answer bad information. Lewis had another sentence, though, and he said this, the learned life is then for some a duty.

Now, friend, let me say this. To be saved, turn to Jesus. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, Romans 10.13, and that's true, and we believe that and we preach it.

Salvation is a free gift that you receive. But Christian growth really is a discipline that you've got to work at, and let me challenge you to be a reader and a learner and remember the stewardship of the mind. I guess, Dylan, if there's one thing that Lewis might inspire us to is the stewardship of the mind, to be growing in our knowledge of Jesus and grace and truth and the Word. And to familiarize yourself, you know, Lewis was very, very knowledgeable on some of the great thinkers of history from Aristotle to Aquinas, and you might think, why should I learn about Greek thinkers that have been dead for 2,000 years?

Well, because as R.C. Sproul said, ideas have consequences, and many of the trends in culture are due to philosophies and ideas that have been ruminating around for decades, if not centuries. Lewis challenged his students to think something out to its logical end.

He would say, to the end, the absolute ruddy end, quote unquote. And I do think, Dylan, a lot of people, even young people, they'll jump on bandwagons and do things without really thinking about the logical implications. So Lewis says the life of the mind for a Christian is really kind of a duty, isn't it? Yes, and I love the saying that people see better when they stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them.

And C.S. Lewis is a great example of the kind of person that we can learn from to go farther in our own lives as we follow Jesus today. And we thank you for being with us here at Truth For A New Generation. Join us at truthforanewgeneration.com and join us again next time on Truth For A New Generation. Truth For A New Generation, in association with Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, exists to equip Christians with a biblical worldview through conferences and camps. For information about upcoming events, visit truthforanewgeneration.com or give us a call at 877-YES-GOD-1. That's 877-YES-GOD-1. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Evangelistic Ministries, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com or truthforanewgeneration.com. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG radio.