Quotations
Quotations
I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
Of course you're right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts; at least, in the way a picture is better than a map.C.S. Lewis, from a 1953 letter to a child
Being Christian
Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
'Joy'
Only a moment.
O! but we shall keep
C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage, I,XV
Our vision still. One moment was enough,
We know we are not made of mortal stuff.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we desire anything else.C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for".C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still "about to be".C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
Conversion
My own position at the threshold of Xianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You wish it were true; I strongly hoped it was not. At least, that was my conscious wish: you may suspect that I had unconscious wishes of quite a different sort and that it was these which finally shoved me in.C.S. Lewis, in a letter of 14 December 1950
He is not proud ... He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to him because there is "nothing better" to be had.C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
'Good news'
When the apostles preached, they could assume even in their Pagan hearers a real consciousness of deserving the Divine anger ... It was against this background that the Gospel appeared as good news. It brought news of possible healing to men who knew that they were mortally ill. But all this has changed. Christianity now has to preach the diagnosis--in itself very bad news--before it can win a hearing for the cure.C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Problem of pain
Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us ... While what we call "our own life" remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make "our own life" less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain
I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made "perfect through suffering" is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Being part of God's plan
Lewis saw different kinds of good in the world. There was "simple good" performed by good people; but Lewis believed that God is also able to exploit "simple evil" for his own purposes, which turns it into "complex good".
A merciful man aims at his neighbour's good and so does "God's will", consciously co-operating with "the simple good". A cruel man oppresses his neighbour, and so does simple evil. But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good--so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool.
For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Love vs. kindness
By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness ... by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all".C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Aslan
"He'll be coming and going," [Mr Beaver] had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down - and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion."C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe