Post: #1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

I began reading the works of C.S. Lewis about a year ago and wanted to create a thread to discuss who I consider to be one of the most profound writers of the past century, one largely overlooked in our corner of the web. From fiction/fantasy (Chronicles of Narnia series) to Christian apologetics, C.S. Lewis is mandatory reading for men seeking a greater sense of self, of spiritual maturity, and wisdom. While much of his writing is intended for a Christian audience, the lessons contained (morality, human nature, politics, general spirituality) can provide immense value to even the most secular among us.

I'd first like to share some of his most powerful quotes, covering a range of topics relevant to the readership of RVF and the manosphere. Please take your time to read through these quotes, as pretty much all of it could be in bold font:

Values
- "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
- "What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."
- "If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
- "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
- "You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."
- "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

Sexuality
- "If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,” they may mean “the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of.” If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips."
- "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
- "Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

Arts
- "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

Spirituality
- "The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so."
- "A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute."
- "You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred — like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens."
- "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell chose it."
- "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
- "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

Politics
- "No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority that the patient refuses to accept. And therefore resents."
- "You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father, who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third, ”Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century."
- "If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."
- "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

Recommended reading (descriptions taken from included link):




Mere Christianity
Mere Christianity brings together what Lewis saw as the fundamental truths of the religion. Rejecting the boundaries that divide Christianity's many denominations, C.S. Lewis finds a common ground on which all those who have Christian faith can stand together, proving that "at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks the same voice."

The Four Loves
The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love--affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Masterful without being magisterial, this book's wise, gentle, candid reflections on the virtues and dangers of love draw on sources from Jane Austen to St. Augustine.

Till We Have Faces
This tale of two princesses - one beautiful and one unattractive - and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is Lewis’s reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring works.

The Great Divorce
In "The Great Divorce, " C.S. Lewis's classic vision of the Afterworld, the narrator boards a bus on a drizzly English afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. He meets a host of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations, and comes to some significant realizations about the nature of good and evil.

Post: #2

Quote:"If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,” they may mean “the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of.” If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips."

That's exactly what I discovered in this thread here:

/thread-47972.html

Yet so many came to object to me. It's amazing at just how perverted Christian teachings on sex are. I'm 99% positive the Catholics fucked it up big time.

Quote: Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father, who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third, ”Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century."

If only Lewis could have seen how feminism turned out.

Post: #3

I wish I had found that quote earlier, it perfectly summarizes the point you were trying to make. It takes a certain level of spiritual maturity to understand the difference between enjoyment and overindulgence. Sex is the most obvious topic here, but it could easily apply to alcohol or other "bad" things (drinking a glass of wine at dinner vs. beerbonging every night)

It's a difficult distinction to make and not a concept the average Joe could firmly grasp without a solid foundation. The New Testament often compares it to eating soft food and solid food. Perhaps this is why Catholics insist on such a strict interpretation of moral law; it's safer to offer soft food to believers rather than risk damnation with solid food they may not be ready for.

C.S. Lewis is considered the grandfather of Christian apologetics, I'd highly recommend his theology books to you, Scorpion, Wastelander, and others here looking to sharpen up argumentation. I wasn't converted by road signs and street preachers, but by a rational, intelligent defense of the faith by C.S. Lewis and other prominent contemporary figures influenced by him.

Post: #4

(07-06-2015 05:01 PM)Samseau Wrote:  It's amazing at just how perverted Christian teachings on sex are. I'm 99% positive the Catholics fucked it up big time.

I can agree about that as well. I think a good illustration about this issue is views on Clerical celibacy which only Catholics follow. Serbian Orthodox priests are practically expected to be married and have children and people would look at them with distrust if it weren't so. If they want celibacy they go to become monks.

Post: #5

I wouldn't consider Lewis the grandfather of Christian apologetics.

Origen and Irenaeus, two early Church fathers, were writing apologetical works in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Post: #6

I was able to read screwtape letters. Very interesting perspective cs lewis takes on it. Definitely a good read.
short summary from google.
It's about a demon(screwtape) writing letters to his nephew (wormwood), who's in charge of guiding and leading a man(called "the patient") to "our father below"(the devil/satan) away from the "enemy"(god).