CS Lewis

cs lewis on sex and masturbation

The evidence seems to be that God sometimes works such a complete metamorphosis and sometimes not. We don’t know why: God forbid we should presume it went my merit.
He never in my unmarried days did it for me. He gave me–at least and after many ups and down, the power to resist the temptation so far as the act was concerned. He never stopped the recurrent temptations, nor was I guarded from the sin of mental consent. I don’t mean I wasn’t given sufficient grace. I mean that I sometimes fell into it, grace or no.
One may, I suppose, regard this as partly penal. One is paying for the physical (and still more the imaginative) sins of one’s earlier life. One my also regard it as a tribulation, like any other. The great discovery for me was that the attack does not last forever. It is the devil’s lie that the only escape from the tension is through yielding.
… Disgust, self-contempt, self-hatred–rhetoric against the sin and (still more) vilification of sexuality or the body in themselves–are emphatically not the weapons for this warfare. We must be relieved, not horrified, by the fact that the whole thing is humiliating, undignified, ridiculous; the lofty vices would be far worse.
Nor must we exaggerate our suffering. We talk of ‘torture’: five minutes of really acute toothache would restore our sense of proportion! In a word, no melodrama. The sin, if we fall into it, must be repented, like all our others. God will forgive. The temptation is a darn nuisance, to be born with patience as long as God wills.
On the purely physical side (but people no doubt differ) I’ve always found that tea and bodily weariness are the two great disposing factors, and therefore the great dangers. Sadness is also a danger: lust in my experience follows disgruntlement nearly always. Love of every sort is a guard against lust, by a divine paradox, sexual love is a guard against lust. No woman is more easily and painlessly abstained from from, if need be, than the woman one loves. And I’m pretty sure purely male society is an enemy to chastity. I don’t mean a temptation to homosexuality: I mean that the absence of ordinary female society provokes the normal appetite (CS Lewis, Yours, Jack, 307-308).

We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want.
“He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).
“Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.” --CS Lewis; The Four Loves

The true exercise of imagination, in my view, is (a) To help us to understand other people (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce art. But it has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions, et cetera which ought to be sought outside in the real world — e.g., picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving.
Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres.
After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison (CS Lewis, Yours, Jack, 292-293).

“Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it.”
C. S. Lewis

Jan 9, 2023: Aletia: Critically aclaimed C.S. Lewis biopic is streaming now on a PC near you
C.S. Lewis may be best known for his gripping fantasy adventure through Narnia, but the author’s life story makes for equally compelling viewing. In 2021, Lewis’ life and faith journey were put into focus in a hit film titled The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis, which achieved critical acclaim in just one day in the theaters. Now this personal look at one of the most influential Christian writers of the 20th century is available to stream on Pure Flix.

Why CS Lewis remains compelling
This week marks the anniversary of both the birth (Nov. 29) and the death (Nov. 22) of C.S. Lewis, one of the most remarkable Christians of the last century. Even today, nearly 60 years after his passing, Christians of all denominations, depth, and discernment continue to learn from Lewis about the nature and substance of faith. The value of the wit and wisdom of this unexpected champion of the faith only becomes more obvious as the central message of Christianity, that “Jesus is Lord!”, sounds more and more strange to late-modern ears. 11.23.22

Nov 22, 2022: The Imaginative Conservative: “C.S. Lewis”: A Sonnet
As well as being St. Cecilia’s day, 22nd November is also the day C.S. Lewis died in 1963. I remember the great celebration of his life, work and witness we had throughout 2013 and especially the honour and pleasure I had in lecturing on him at St. Margaret’s Westminster and attending the ceremony at which his memorial stone was installed in Poet’s corner, an event that would not have taken place without the hard work and foresight of Michael Ward amongst others. I wrote a sonnet for Lewis as part of that year of celebration, and so, on the anniversary of his death, I am posting it here. It was published in my volume of poems The Singing Bowl, with Canterbury Press.

"I don't pray to change God's mind, I pray to change my mind!" -CS Lewis

Sept 7, 2021: Publishers Weekly: Religion and Spirituality Bestsellers: August 2021
The Top 10 also includes: #3 Malka Adler’s The Brothers of Auschwitz (One More Chapter); #5 C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce (HarperOne); #6 William P. Young’s The Shack (Windblown Media).
Be Thinking: C.S. Lewis and the Language of Apologetics
My country, the Czech Republic, is among the most atheistic countries in the world. Most Czechs are not interested in any religion. Those that are prefer all possible alternatives to Christianity. Very few nonbelievers in my country read Christian literature. There is one exception. His name is C.S. Lewis.

Aug 28, 2021: Christian Post: An old city for a new generation: Why we need Israel more than ever
Something else happens to pilgrims in Israel. They are surprised, as C.S. Lewis would say, “by joy.” Few walk away without a powerful story of God drawing them to His altar. Few walk away without tears that tell the story of God’s healing work, both in history, and today. This is Alexander’s story. And it could be yours as well.
Aug 26, 2021: ABC Religion & Ethics: “Mere Christianity” at 80: Why does C.S. Lewis’s unlikely classic continue to hold such appeal?
It’s eighty years ago this month since C.S. Lewis, at the time an Oxford don almost unknown to the public, stepped up to the microphone at Broadcasting House, the London headquarters of the BBC, to give the first of the wartime broadcasts that would later become the much-loved Mere Christianity.

May 20, 2015: Moral Apologetics: Video: Peter Williams on C.S. Lewis and Friendship
Peter Williams, hosted by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, shares some thoughts on C.S. Lewis' view of friendship.

"But God who is the God of mercies, even now has not altogether cast off the human race. We must not despair. And among us are not an inconsiderable number now returning to the faith. For my part, I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also to a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God. For Christ promises forgiveness of sins, but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of a disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle atheism. I would almost dare to say, “First let us make the younger generation good pagans, and afterwards let us make them Christians."

—C. S. Lewis, Latin letters of CS Lewis

"The Supernaturalness of Christ: Can we still believe it?" byWilbur M Smith - W.A. Wilde Company [c]1941
This volume is an attempt to set forth the basic facts involved in the birth, the Transfiguration, the miraculous acts, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, that people may have an opportunity to individually come to definite conclusions as to whether Christ was or was not a truly supernatural person, the Son sent by the Father to be the Saviour of the world." --From the preface

CS Lewis on Pride:

“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Does this seem exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone became equally rich, or clever, or good looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that make you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest…

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God…

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, swarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: “The Great Sin.”

pain

In the introduction to A Grief Observed, CS Lewis is described as “a man emotionally naked in his own Gethsemane” while mourning the death of his beloved wife. Yet in all that grief, Lewis encountered God in the process—by keeping his heart open to the pain of it.
Lewis describes this openness to suffering in The Problem of Pain, saying that “pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Those like myself and Lewis who have survived personal trauma and experienced recovery have learned to embrace a measure of suffering that we could not endure in the past. In fact, that is precisely what recovery is: facing our painful past by looking it square in the face—and realizing that it is not too much for God, or our close friends and family, to bless and redeem.
Recovery and healing mean learning to suffer well by facing the problem of evil directly and honestly, so that we can be roused by the pain enough to hear the kindness of God in the midst. And in a world that is experiencing so much collective pain, the call to be Christian is to follow the trauma survivor and their therapists and stop avoiding our own suffering.
We are meant to neither explain it away nor draw a stick-figure God with easy answers but to follow the Great Survivor, Jesus Christ, into God’s renewed future. For the only path to resurrection joy is through death and sorrow. The way to the garden is through the grave. -Preston Hill

“I am coming quickly" (that is, when I come I will come ‘unexpectedly’ or ‘suddenly’). Revelation 22.20.

There is a difference between Jesus' command to "watch" (i.e., to keep at your assigned task) and how the word is read today. A sentry must 'watch' for enemies to protect his fellow soldiers. This watching does not mean that the sentry must keep watch for his superior performing an inspection of his post. That would be to look in the wrong direction. Christ, our superior, has told us he will come unexpectedly or suddenly ('quickly' in older English) so there is no way of seeing His approach. Keep at your work - caring for God's people - don't relax and fall asleep, get drunk or become occupied with looking for end time signs of our Officer's approach. Many souls are relying on your obedience.
Dec 10, 2015: Christianity Today: C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent
A recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford Don.

"Men are mirrors, or ‘carriers’ of Christ to other men. Sometimes unconscious carriers. This ‘good infection’ can be carried by those who have not got it themselves. People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity. But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important. You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.”
~ C.S. Lewis

CS Lewis on "omnipotent moral busybodies":

“It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”.--CS Lewis

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line”.--CS Lewis

Jan 30, 2022: Desiring God: In Love with the Life You Don’t Have
The secret to happiness, some have wisely said, is to want what you already have.
How many of us can truly say with C.S. Lewis’s character in Shadowlands, “You know, I don’t want to be somewhere else anymore. I’m not waiting for anything new to happen . . . not looking around the next corner and over the next hill. I’m here now. That’s enough.”

CS Lewis on God's omnipotence

The absolutely impossible may also be called the intrinsically impossible because it carries its impossibility within itself, instead of borrowing it from other impossibilities which in their turn depend upon others. It has no unless clause attached to it. It is impossible under all conditions and in all world and for all agents. ‘All agents’ here includes God Himself. His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it’, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Chapter 2: “Divine Omnipotence”

A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans."
(Excerpt from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity).

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
-CS Lewis