Maxioms by C.s. Lewis
Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main read more
Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome... But there is a saner sense in which the Bible -- since it is, after all, literature -- cannot properly be read except as literature, and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems -- as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry... Otherwise we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 It is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when read more
Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 It is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud, He would hardly have us on such terms.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own read more
I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. Just as the degree to which, in daily life, I feel the emotion of fear has very little to do with my rational judgment of the danger. I'd sooner have really nasty seas when I'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. Similarly, I have confessed ghastly uncharities with less reluctance than small unmentionables -- or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as unchristian. Our emotional reactions to our own behaviour are of limited ethical significance.
