Clive Lewis - A Year with C. S. Lewis - 365 Daily Readings from his Classic Works

25 We Couldn’t Make It Up 25 We Couldn’t Make It Up Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match—all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go further from the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four, one has two, some have none, and one has a ring. Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. —from Mere Christianity January 1917 Lewis (age eighteen) returns to Great Bookham, Surrey, and William T. Kirkpatrick (“the Great Knock”) to prepare for Responsions, the entrance examination for Oxford University.

26 Not Like a River but Like a Tree 26 Not Like a River but Like a Tree We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good. —from The Great Divorce , Preface 1942 The Oxford University Socratic Club, Somerville College, Oxford, holds its first meeting. Lewis serves as its first president.

27 Being Good 27 Being Good Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam—he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out. That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it. —from Mere Christianity 1964 Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer is published by Geoffrey Bles, London.

28 Finding a Balance

29 A Slip of the Tongue

30 Proceed with Great Caution

31 My Lifeline to the Temporal

February

1 Swimming Lessons Are Better

2 Just a Bit of My Own, Please

3 Count the Cost

4 Begin Again Daily

5 A Critical Distinction

6 Father and Son

7 The Spirit of God

8 Ever New Constructions

9 With a Bit of Coaxing

10 Unequal Love

11 A Good Infection

12 What Christianity Offers

13 The Absurd Claim

14 Not a Matter of Opinion

15 No Shortage of Good Ideas

16 Two Quick Clarifications

17 Bad Gas

18 Competition Rather Than Courtesy

19 Fixed Laws of Nature and Freedom of Will

20 The Holy Eraser

21 Voluntarily United

22 Second-Guessing God’s Wisdom

23 The Core Corruption

24 Human Will, the Weak Point of Creation

25 Becoming Yourself

26 A Real Right and Wrong

27 The Rules

28 Impulse Control

29 Not Moral Perfection

March

1 Morality: A Quick Lesson

2 The Moral Dilemma

3 Just Deserts

4 The Impulse for Vengeance

5 Face the Bad

6 The Truth About Ourselves

7 Time Does Not Cancel Sin

8 Bad Company

9 Virtues in Different Ages

10 Enemy-Occupied Territory

11 A Simple (Albeit Comical) Argument for Christian Theology

12 So What About God’s Authority?

13 Our Imperfect World: Creation in Process

14 Our Imperfect World: Creation Corrupted

15 Once Begun …

16 Correcting Our Arithmetic

17 With Every Choice

18 Understanding Evil

19 The Essential Vice

20 The Proud Competitor

21 How Marriage Reconciles

22 Too Proud to Know God

23 Forget Yourself

24 Dictatorship of Pride

25 A Humble Fault

26 Diabolical Pride

27 School Pride

28 Point of Contact

29 The First Step

30 Humility 101

31 Humility, the Wrong End

April

1 Humility, the Right End

2 The Primary Sin

3 The Gentle Slope to Nothing

4 Closer to God—or Closer to Hell?

5 A Matter of Meanings

6 The Unselfishness Game

7 Half-Hearted Desires

8 A Gradual Turning

9 The Horror of the Same Old Thing

10 The Demand for Novelty

11 The Thrill Is Gone

12 My Time Is My Own

13 Uninspected Assumptions

14 Nuances of Ownership

15 Mine, Mine, Mine

16 A Mother’s Love

17 Domestic Tyranny

18 God at Her Elbow

19 Signs of Attrition

20 Unravelling Souls

21 The Secret Thread

22 The Hint of More

23 A Most Complete Wife

24 A World Starving

25 Welcome to the Family

26 Part of the Mystical Body

27 To Become Really Doggy

28 The Right Job

29 Two Final Points

30 Troughs and Peaks

May

1 Servants Who Become Sons

2 … And Still Obeys

3 At Just That Point in History

4 The Great Weapon

5 The Very Pattern of Reality

6 New Life

7 Vicarious Needs

8 It’s Not Fair

9 Full Surrender

10 With God’s Help

11 Nice Is Not Enough

12 That Some Day We May Ride Bare-Back

13 Recognizing Christ’s New Men

14 Imagine Being Who You Really Are

15 My Own Personality

16 All Good Masters Are Servants

17 God’s Arrangements

18 Blessed Matter

19 Carriers of Christ