Monday, January 18, 2016

Christian Literature - C S Lewis - The Screwtape Letters

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 novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland.

He held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.



“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Suspicion often creates what it suspects.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters



“She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. ”
― C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

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