Some of you may remember a few months ago when I started a series that was affectionately known as Faith Features. There’s only one article in this series, in which I wrote about a pretty neat guy named Watchman Nee. Thanks to desperation for something to write and a reminder from my fellow Sightline writers, this series has been revived! Yippee!
This Faith Feature is about one of my favorite Christian authors, C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis is widely recognized for his book series The Chronicles of Narnia. He also wrote a lot of other fiction and non fiction works about his faith. My personal favorite is a book called the Screwtape Letters, which is an interesting novel that is composed of a series of fictional letters from a demon called Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood. The book deals with tackling questions about the existence of sin.
Unlike some of my faith heroes, C.S. Lewis has a prodigal son type of story. He grew up in the church, but decided at the age of 15 that he was atheist. He remained out of Christianity until he met J.R.R Tolkien (the man who wrote The Lord of the Rings, and who was Lewis’ best friend). Tolkien was a friend from Oxford, who often debated with Lewis about the existence of God. After having many arguments with Tolkien, Lewis finally decided on the existence of God and Jesus, and converted back into Christianity.
C.S. Lewis is so interesting because he was an intellectual man. He didn’t see God in some divine way that caused a conversion. Lewis was sound in his faith, and used his intellect to write award winning books about his faith and debate those who disagreed. I look up to him because as someone who is also pretty intellectual, his story is incredible.