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C. S. Lewis—Mere Christianity Bible Explorers Fall 2011.
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C. S. Lewis—Mere Christianity Bible Explorers Fall 2011
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Ireland.
He is well known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, and both authors were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings".
Lewis had been baptized in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence.
Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England".
His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956 he married the American writer Joy Gresham, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45.
His death came one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he died on 22 November 1963 – the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same day another famous author, Aldous Huxley, died.
In addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction, Lewis is regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time; Mere Christianity was voted best book of the twentieth century by Christianity Today in 2000. Due to Lewis's approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion, he has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics."
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...
Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.