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EPISODE 14: Discipleship with C. S. Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis Institute President, Joel Woodruff, tells about his new book “Discipleship with C. S. Lewis.” A guide for discipleship using Mere Christianity as the launching point for many great discussions that promote spiritual growth.

Show Notes:

Discipleship with C.S. Lewis: A Guide to Mere Christianity for Small Groups and Mentoring Relationships

Transcript


Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the CS. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and I am delighted to welcome as my conversation partner Joel Woodruff, the president of the C.S. Lewis Institute. Joel, welcome to Questions That Matter.

Thank you for having me, Randy.

Why This Book Was Written?

Well, it was a tough decision about whether we wanted to let the president of our institute on our podcast, but you won the vote, the straw poll. Let me tell our listeners a little bit more about you. I think a whole lot of our listeners do know about you, that you're the president of our institute. They may not know Joel has worked in higher education, in nonprofit administration, in pastoral ministries in a variety of locations, Alaska, Israel, Hungary, France, and here in the Washington, DC, area. He's a graduate of Wheaton College and then also has a seminary degree from Gordon-Conwell Seminary and then a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University.

So what I so appreciate, Joel, that you bring to our conversation and our work about discipleship a mind of education. How do people really grasp this? So certainly have a high value for theology. “Let's make sure that we're conveying truth.” But you're always pressing, and pressing me, I'm very grateful to say, in the direction of, “How do we help people really grasp this, not just intellectually understanding it, but really embrace it?” So you've written a recent guidebook for discipleship. It’s called Discipleship with C.S. Lewis. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote that book.

Well, Randy, as you know, C.S. Lewis has had such a huge impact on the world through his writing and in particular through the book Mere Christianity. And Mere Christianity, in fact, was named by Christianity Today to be the most influential Christian book of the 20th century. But what I found is that there are many people who had Mere Christianity on their shelves, and I'd ask them about it, say, “Have you read it?” And they'd say, “Well, I started it, but it was a little too philosophical and too difficult to get into.” And then I had others who would read it and say, “Well, it changed my life.” And so I began to wonder, “What’s going on here?”

And so, as I looked into it, I realized that C.S. Lewis, in writing this book, starts off very philosophically, and it is a little bit difficult to get into that first section of Mere Christianity, which actually it is divided into four parts. That first part is more philosophical in nature. So I thought, what if we were to start in book two or part two of Mere Christianity, which really jumps right into what Christians believe and is much more concrete and easy to follow, and create a study of Mere Christianity that would include biblical passages? One thing that I realized as well is that Lewis, of course, was speaking to the British during World War II, but he doesn't really quote scripture in Mere Christianity, even though he's expressing Christian truths. So I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to create a discipleship manual, really, which would look at the biblical passages that are behind Mere Christianity and also then leverage Lewis’s amazing writing for that, and then bring this book back into the lives of people here in the 21st century?” because I think it has a lot of value and would be very helpful to people.

I love it. I love it. I think it's something that has been needed for a very long time. You're exactly right. Lewis doesn't necessarily quote scripture because he was doing these as a series of radio broadcasts and was really hoping to capture a listening audience of people who were not Christians. And so that whole first book, or five or six radio broadcasts, he was just trying to grab people and say, “I hope you'll consider this. I hope you'll move from, ‘No, not at all,’ to, ‘Hm, maybe I need to think about this.’” So I like the structure of your book. You then do have kind of like an appendix about that very first book, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” So you do look at the whole book, but not necessarily in the order that people might just read it. What do you think it is about this book that lends itself for discipleship?

It's interesting, Randy. I think a lot of people for a long time thought Mere Christianity was more a book to give to non-Christian friends as an evangelistic tool or an apologetics book. But if you open it up and look at it, really the first two parts, they really are more evangelistic. You have “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe” an apologetic for even considering a belief in God. And then the second part is “What Christians Believe,” and people might be surprised, but C.S. Lewis really has an altar call, really right in the middle of that book, where he just says to people, “Look, today’s the day. You may not have the opportunity to choose Christ tomorrow, and so now’s the time to make the choice.”

So, those first two parts, he really does introduce people to Christianity, it’s more evangelistic. But books three and four in Mere Christianity really are a discipleship training manual. There, he gets into how to live as a Christian, what he calls Christian behavior, and he looks at things like the Golden Rule, the Great Commandment, the Seven Virtues, social morality, sexual morality, Christian marriage, and then, in the very last book, he gets into an introduction into basic theology, looks at the Trinity, and also really looks into what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And one good thing about C.S. Lewis is he understood Jesus’s call. When Jesus said, “If you want to be my disciple and follow me, you need to take up your cross daily, deny yourself, and follow me.” Lewis understood that. He didn't have an easy believism or a cheap grace mentality at all. He realized that, when Jesus calls us, He calls us to be all in. And he does a great job of, I think, really helping new believers, and as well, I think mature believers, get refocused and understand what discipleship is all about in the second half of the book.

That second book in Mere Christianity, “What Christians Believe,” has been published as its own separate little item. It's a really nice hardback edition, only, I don't know, 50 pages or so. And I've used that as something to give to nonbelievers, because it really doesn't scare them off, because it's so very small and manageable, but it really is the heart of what we would want a nonbeliever to understand. I do think the first book is really more where a lot of nonbelievers are and where they need to be connected. But you're right, it is a little on the academic or intellectual side, and it may scare off some people who would never get to part two. But, even so, I'm curious about your own walk with the Lord or your own discipleship as you worked on constructing this book and writing it. How did that affect you?

That’s a good question, Randy. For a number of years I was looking for really a tool to disciple others, disciple family members, people in your church, new believers, young believers, even older believers. And obviously, there's not always one size fits all. But as I began reflecting upon Lewis’s writing in Mere Christianity, I thought, “Wow, Mere Christianity actually could be an amazing discipleship training tool for even mature believers, people who have been in the faith a while,” because he really covers really a lot of the essentials of the Christian faith, but does so in a winsome way, in a way, I think, that is very relative to today's world.

And so as I began to study for this book and do the research, I began to realize that the world that C.S. Lewis lived in, while being 80 years ago when he first did the first broadcast talk, from this year, while being a different world, it had many of the same features of our 21st century world here today in post-Christian America. And so, for me, it helped me to realize, I think, first of all, getting better understanding for the world we currently live in, for myself as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I mean, we live in a world right now where we're dealing with division, the division everywhere. And in Lewis's world, World War II, there’s a lot of division in Great Britain at the time. We’ve seen, in our current 21st century recent years, I think we've gone from 9% of people who would call themselves atheist, agnostic, or nothing, to 26% of the population now.

But Lewis was living in post-World-War-I Britain, at which many people had abandoned the faith and either become agnostic, atheist, or just didn't attend church at all. Many people were disillusioned with Christianity, in some ways because the British government had kind of mixed nationalism and Christianity in such a way that it just became kind of hypocritical to some, and I think we've seen that as well sometimes in our world today, as sometimes mixing religion and politics creates a dissonance for some people. So I realized that Lewis was living in a world of many diverse world points, worldviews, and so it helped me, really, to analyze the world we live in and helped my own discipleship to realize Lewis actually has some wonderful things to say to our world today. He almost seems prophetic and insightful, as if he was writing it today.

In fact, I was doing this study with several twenty somethings recently, and they said, “Wow, it seems like he just wrote this book yesterday,” and yet it's still relevant today. So I think, for my own discipleship, it was just this sense that… It helped me really to look at my own world and culture and also realize the truths of the gospel are timeless. And I need to continue to reapply those truths in my own personal life. I mean, things like the Golden Rule or the Great Commandment are things I need to review myself daily and look at. And sometimes we forget how simple in some ways the Christian faith is, even though it can be complex to live out.

Discipleship

You know, I was looking over Mere Christianity again in prep for this time for our conversation. And there are always two things that strike me about Lewis’s approach in the series of radio broadcasts. The first is he used so many analogies. He wanted people to not just understand the gospel but to feel it, or to envision themselves in it. So he just has all of these analogies, illustrations. “Becoming a Christian is like waking up from a sleep and realizing that you're awake.” “Becoming a Christian is like stone statues coming to real life.” “It's like full speed astern.” There's just so many of those.

But the other thing that strikes me that I think is we need to have more of, both in our evangelism and our discipleship, is sharing our own experience, even in a self-effacing way. So let me illustrate it from one place: In his chapter on forgiveness, he writes, “I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate the bad man's actions but not hate the bad man. Or, as they would say it, ‘Hate the sin, but not the sinner.’ For a long time, I used to think this is a silly straw-splitting distinction. How could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life, namely myself!” I love that. And then, just to put the right exclamation point, he said, “In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.” So it has to work that way. But he unpacks it and admits his own, “Once, I didn't understand this,” or, “This didn't make sense to me.” And he said, years later, which I think just implies a humility that we need.

Anyway, I'm trying to sell C.S. Lewis’s book instead of your book. Your book on sale at all places where people can buy books. Check it out on Amazon. No, anyway. Let's kind of step back about this topic of discipleship. You have quite a vantage point as our president of our institute because you know of all sorts of things going on around our country with various different fellows programs, intense one-year discipleship programs, but not just in our country. We also have a work in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and now we're also seeing some things open up in other parts of the world. Give us sort of a report from the front line, so to speak. What are you seeing about discipleship in these other places?

No, it’s a good question. I'm really excited about what God is doing in the world today. We live in this kind of crazy, COVID world, and it's created, I think, of course, a lot of anxiety, tension. It's forced people to change their lifestyles and stop doing things they used to do. They've been locked down. But I think in the process God has been moving on people's hearts in new ways. And I'm hearing stories of people coming to faith because suddenly they're locked down and they're actually having conversations with their neighbors, and their Christian neighbors now have the opportunity to share the gospel with them, to develop relationships with them. So it’s been very encouraging to see that, in that sense. I mean, my own neighborhood, I know someone who has come to faith in Christ because things changed, and they began thinking about life and now are a believer. And actually we've been working together through this Discipleship with C.S. Lewis book now to get grounded in the core discipleship.

I know many of the people in our C.S. Lewis Fellows Program—we have about 500 people in 16 cities going through this year-long discipleship program. Many of them are finding that this COVID time has helped them to draw closer to Christ. But also I think it's given them courage to reach out to others in the name of Jesus and to share their stories. And I think one thing you mentioned here, Lewis did a great job of sharing analogies and stories from his life, which actually, when you read the Bible, that's the great thing about the Bible, is that it’s stories, so many stories, Jesus telling parables and stories that connect with people. And so I think we're finding that many of C.S. Lewis Fellows are now able to use their own story or their testimony, and they're able to share it with many people today who they might not have been able to in the past, because they have a captive audience sometimes, literally. But also I think there's a hunger for relationship, and some people are more willing to listen. So I think it's a wonderful time as believers to start paying attention to our neighbors, people you run into, whether it's even on a Zoom call. Just ask them some questions. You've been having a book, I think, about questions that’s not too bad, called Questioning Evangelism, and it's an important time to really ask about how people are doing, and I think you'll begin to find that the longings in their heart are beginning to rise up.

And of course, Lewis talks a lot about, in his own life, that longing for something more that rises up. You have a hunger, so you have food. A duck has webbed feet and can swim. But there's also longings that we have that aren't satisfied in this universe. So Lewis says we must be created for something more, and I think people are realizing that, that they're created for something more. The mortality of life has hit people with this COVID epidemic, pandemic, and I think it's forced people to think about the bigger things in life. So I think it's a wonderful time to be a believer, because we do have good news to share with others, and we have the opportunity to tell people, “You can actually have eternal life with Christ, but not even that. You can have a life full of joy and a way of living today that will give you hope for the future.” So it's a good time for believers, I think, even though it seems like a crazy world. It’s a great time to make new disciples for Jesus Christ and also to help others grow more deeply in their faith.

I'll return to my conversation on Questions That Matter in just a second. But I would like to invite each and every one of you to prayerfully consider becoming a ministry partner with the C.S. Lewis Institute. Our ministry is about discipleship, discipleship of the heart and mind, helping people love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. But as you might guess, a ministry of discipleship is not always the most exciting thing that people consider, but we believe that your tuning into this podcast probably indicates that you've had very positive experiences and have benefited from the institute over the years. So please click the button that says donate and become a ministry partner with us.

The Purpose for Mere Christianity

Your subtitle of your book says it's “A Guide to Mere Christianity for Small Groups and Mentoring Relationships.” So you have in mind both a small group setting and also a one on one setting. I won't ask you the question of which one is it better for, because you're the author and you think both are really good, but which one do you think it's better for? Go ahead. You're on the spot.

Yeah. I'll tell you one thing: I think one reason I wrote this book. I had this vision. What if everyone in a local church congregation read Mere Christianity along with Bible passages that gave the principles behind it? They understood the rationale for the Christian faith as presented in Mere Christianity and the Bible, and they were able to go share that with their neighbors and colleagues, because I think everyone really could share the gospel the way C.S. Lewis did in Mere Christianity and then also share the basic fundamentals of the faith, central to the faith. You'd have a well-equipped body or army of people, I think, who could then go into the world and share the gospel.

And so, for me, while I have found it certainly helpful, I think there’s something about groups of two or three or four people are a nice size because you can really zero in together. You can do a Zoom call these days with four people and have maximum engagement. Educational theory has shown that, for a Zoom call, more than four people, you lose engagement. But you could have a group of friends, non-Christian or Christian, go through Discipleship with C.S. Lewis and study Mere Christianity and the Bible passages, and they could really grow, I think, and be grounded in what it means to live for Jesus Christ in today's world. And the nice thing about it, you can do that with non-Christians, Christians, new believers, old believers, and I think there's still a lot of power there. So I'd say both are useful, but I think there is something very powerful about taking two or three people through this book and through the Bible.

Were there any topics that you felt like, “Okay, this is absolutely essential for early discipleship,” that Lewis didn't address, and you felt like you needed to inject that?

That's a good question. It's funny, he talks a little bit about the need to study the Bible and pray, but he doesn't spend as much time maybe on some of those spiritual disciplines. So that's why, built into the study, is regular Bible study, grounding one in the word of God. And I think part of that was intentional. Mere Christianity, of course, as we mentioned, were a series of radio broadcasts. So he didn't really have the time. He was given a very small amount of time, I think 15 minutes per broadcast, to cover a lot of ground. So I think, rather than quoting a lot of scripture, he was mainly dealing with the principles. But I think where Mere Christianity can be shored up is through these Bible passages. So that's why, in Discipleship with C.S. Lewis, I really tried to include a good key passage in Scripture that deals with the issues.

One surprise, too: And I don't think I’ve mentioned this, in “What Christians Believe,” where Lewis jumps right into… He talks about worldviews, and I think it's a good apologetics piece for helping people think about all the different worldviews out there. In today’s world, we have Muslims, New Age, Hindu, Buddhism. At my kids school, my daughter had a book club, and it was eight girls, and I think there were six different religions represented in that little book club. But what's interesting is he deals, in chapter two, with sin, Satan, and evil. He deals with the problem of evil immediately, the most challenging problem probably for any of us to deal with. But I think the reason he's able to deal with it, he goes with the biblical explanation, but this is where I think it can be shored up. We can go right into Genesis and look at the very beginning of the Bible, where God really gives us this picture of evil entering the world through Satan, through temptation, through sin, Adam and Eve, and that's the beginning of the Bible, is the problem of evil. But I think oftentimes in our modern day world, we want to avoid that topic because we know it's difficult, and so a lot of times in our evangelism, we don't even deal with that until later.

But it's interesting, Lewis just jumps right in. He says, “Look, let's deal with the problem of evil and suffering right up front,” and then that leads to then his explanation of the gospel. So I find that to be maybe counterintuitive in today's world, and I think it's very effective. But I think it can be shored up with… Lewis’s writing in Mere Christianity is shored up when you actually get into Genesis and look at the beginning of the Bible.

I really want to emphasize that point. It is interesting that we tend to shy away from that issue because it's just so disturbing and so big a problems. And I think, if we're honest, that even if we do the most brilliant job on that issue, there still is a frustration and an incompleteness that we have in this fallen world. But Lewis knew that, even though it's difficult, it is a very, very important starting point for a lot of people. And, you know, he wrote the book The Problem of Pain before these radio broadcasts. That's kind of how he got sort of famous. And that's why the BBC contacted him and said, “Hey, we think you'd be a good person to come on the air.” It's such a crucial part of Lewis's own story. I mean, he abandoned the faith of his childhood because his mother died when he was just ten years old and then fought in World War I and saw the evil during World War II and said, “I think I've got some answers,” now that he'd become a Christian, for people while bombs are dropping outside and while they're waking up in the morning and looking to find out whose house was still standing. So it was that whole climate of suffering into which he wanted to speak. And I think that's really tremendously valuable, that we shouldn't shrink away from it. I think we've got the best answer. I think our answer is still incomplete. It still leaves a whole lot of questions unresolved. But our incomplete answer is far better than the other ones. Lewis even says that atheism is too simple, and he had the right to be able to say that because he was an atheist for 30+ years.

Yes, that's right.

Well, I'm almost reluctant to bring this up, but I have to. So were there places where Lewis was wrong, and you felt like you needed to correct—you wanted to warn your readers that maybe this was a mistake? Were there any of those places for you?

Yeah, that's a good question, Randy. First of all, I want to say, I suppose in defense of C.S. Lewis, he himself would have acknowledged that he wasn't a theologian. He wasn't a trained pastor or clergyman. So on the one hand, I think that helped him, because he was able to express things in a way that maybe a pastor or a trained theologian wouldn't. So he's able to relate to everyday people. And he picked up that skill in part by, I think, part from growing up in Northern Ireland with a wide variety of people, but also by speaking to airmen in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He was able to bring his intellectual mind down in a down to earth way of communicating. So I think, on one hand, it was a good thing he wasn't trained in that sense, although he was very well read. He read Greek, so he’s trained probably better than a lot of pastors, as far as his knowledge of the New Testament language. He was able to study and knew a lot about what he's talking.

However, I think probably when it comes… The one area that I think a number of scholars and pastors have pointed out. When he talks about the atonement in “What Christians Believe,” the idea of Jesus dying for our sins, and then that creating atonement for sins. He basically says, “Look, I don't really understand it all that well. And here are a couple of ways of thinking about it, but if you don't understand it, don’t worry about it too much.” But I think it's probably something… The Bible does address it pretty clearly that there are several different ways we can look at it. There's, I think, a sense of a substitutionary atonement that Jesus actually is our substitute. You see the whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament leading up to that. It’s showing that Jesus shed His blood as the ultimate sacrifice for us. And I think that's something worth addressing a little more in depth than what Lewis did. And paying a ransom for us. There are many different expressions in scripture, and so I think, he, I think in trying to communicate to his audience the important thing is that you put your trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You don't need to worry as much about the theology. I do think it is important for us to reflect a little bit more on that as believers.

Another area that—he’s not totally wrong, but it's interesting. He has a chapter in book three on Christian marriage. And I think most people who would read that today would feel he's maybe a little chauvinistic. He's kind of writing from a 1930s, 1940s, 1950s British perspective of the roles of men and women, and so some people would read that and maybe think he was a little chauvinistic in what he wrote about marriage, although he covers the essentials in that. And of course, I think, in there, he would probably argue that we're being chronological snobs. He talks about chronological snobbery, which is basically taking our current worldview and judging someone in the past, his perspective, and not understanding the world they lived in. But I think that's one area. It also is interesting. He has one chapter on time, philosophy of time, and that one, he just says, “Hey, look, this is pure speculation. Nothing biblical about it, but maybe if it's helpful to you, so be it.” So I think, throughout the book, there are little things like that, but overall, I think he's fairly solid and is really trying his very best to give you a biblical view of Christianity.

I hope you're benefiting from listening to these podcasts, and I hope you're also availing yourself to the many resources we have at our website, cslewisinstitute.org. I do want to say the C.S. Lewis Institute ministry is, by definition, by design, not a terribly flashy ministry. We don't have spectacular results to report. If we're successful and fruitful, the results of our ministry are usually second and third hand. We disciple people, and then other people go do pretty flashy and amazing things. So I hope you'll keep that in mind as perhaps you pray and think about becoming a ministry partner with us. We're seeing God do some great things through the people who get discipled through our fellows programs and different resources. I hope you'll consider that and visit our website and click the appropriate buttons that say things like donate.

I think you and I have joked a couple of times that we're not really sure we'd be able to hire C.S. Lewis to come work for us at the C.S. Lewis Institute, because he may not hold to our view of scripture the way we would like, but fortunately we don't have to make that decision. So one of the things that strikes me, and again, I'm sorry, I'm always pushing it in the direction of evangelism. That's what you want me to do at the institute, and you're pushing in discipleship, so we need each other. But I really marvel with the way the Lord chose to bless those radio broadcasts and then, when they were put together as a book, how the Lord has blessed that book. So it's always this intersection of what people do and what God does. Lewis and the people of the BBC worked really, really carefully to craft the script. I mean, there were all sorts of time constraints. They were also—I read this in another book about the whole forming of those radio broadcasts. There were concerns about the Nazis being able to tap into the radio and do some spying or whatever. So he had to craft things perfectly, with no breaks. No pauses, the way I'm pausing right now. It's just amazing how carefully they thought through things.

On the other hand, there is a supernatural work of God that drew people to listen to these radio broadcasts. One of my favorite tidbits about this is, for the 15 minutes before the radio broadcasts when Lewis spoke, what the BBC was broadcasting was the news in Norwegian, 15 minutes of a foreign language being spoken. Was there a tremendous Norwegian population in London during that time? I don't know. It just seems bizarre. But if people are just kind of listening to their radio, when they hear Norwegian, and I apologize if this is offensive to people who are Norwegian, I don't mean it that way. I just think the typical English speaker would hear this foreign language, and they would turn the radio dial, but they didn't, and God kept them listening. And it's just astonishing, I think. And I think that's a great encouragement for us of that God can use whatever we bring to the conversation, and He can do miraculous things.

Yes. No, amen to that. I think, with C.S. Lewis, it is amazing, in that I think God used all of his life leading up to those broadcast talks. First of all, his wild journey, you might say, to the Christian faith, going from growing up in a Christian home, abandoning the faith, being an atheist, serving in World War I. He actually explored into the occult. He looked at pantheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism. He explored everything. And so, on the one hand, I think that helped prepare him. But then also the fact that he ended up speaking to airmen in the Royal Air Force for quite a while, and that helped him develop his style, his ability to communicate. But then also he had this gift for imagination and literature. So he’s just such an interesting character. He blended logic, imagination, and put it all together in a package that God really has used in phenomenal ways. And there are stories of Lewis giving his broadcast talks, and the bartender in a pub in Britain telling all the soldiers to be quiet because Lewis is on. And he says, “You got to listen to this bloke!” And they would! They would be quiet for 15 minutes, hanging onto every word of C.S. Lewis.

So God used those broadcasts when they were spoken, but then, as you mentioned, amazingly, took the words had been written down very carefully, and then he made a few edits, but for the most part, that was packaged and then sent out. And interesting enough, since the year 2000 till now, Mere Christianity has sold over 4 million copies in English, even more copies than it sold in the mid fifties of the 20th century. So his books are selling even more than ever. He sold more books in 2020 than he did in 2019. So for some reason, his voice, God is still using to this day. And that's why I really believe that Mere Christianity, coupled with scripture, is a powerful, powerful discipleship tool and why I wrote this book Discipleship with C.S. Lewis. I really think we could really mentor and grow and disciple the people in our churches with this amazing tool. And if we could use some of the same language and illustrations, analogies of Lewis, and then take scripture to deepen it, I think we could create a whole group of evangelists.

People in our churches could go out and share the gospel with their neighbors through a book club, through a Bible study, and I think it offers up some really neat ways to share your faith and maybe a very friendly way of doing it. A lot of people know C.S. Lewis is from his Chronicles of Narnia books or the movies. So, “Hey, why don’t we have a book club, and let’s study the guy who wrote Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis. He happened to write a book about Mere Christianity. Wouldn't it be fun to study and see how some of the different religions differ,” which he talks about. So I think it's a great tool, and it's amazing how God has used this.

So he's an amazing man. God really used him. He's a very unique person. He had a lot of flaws, like all of us. But God used him in powerful ways, and I think he can do that for each one of us if we allow Him to.

Oh, there's so much more we could say, but we're going to wrap it up. I'm struck with two things in our discussion: One is I'm reminded of Lewis’s humility. I mean, he was a brilliant, brilliant mind. And he could have run circles around people intellectually, so that after 30 seconds, very, very few people would even know what in the world he was talking about. And by the way, sometimes when I read his book Miracles, I feel like that's what he's doing with me. I understand very little of that book. But he chose to translate. He even called himself a translator. He chose to—I don't want to say dumb down, because that's not right, but he spoke in the vernacular, so that ordinary soldiers in the RAF, people hanging out in the pub, people without a college-level degree could understand him.

The other thing is he wasn't really primarily an evangelist. He was this Oxford scholar, don, literature professor. But he wanted to do the work of an evangelist, to use the phrase from Timothy, that Paul told Timothy. So even those of us who are the most introverted, who would like to stay at home just reading books and being just on our own, God can use us in absolutely supernatural ways.

Amen. I think maybe what it comes down to is C.S. Lewis took Jesus’s call seriously and then tried to live and to think and act like Jesus. Not perfectly, but one of the traits he picked up from Jesus was the ability to take the truths of God and communicate them through story, through analogy, through parable, and doing it in a way that people could understand. C.S. Lewis, as an Oxford professor, was communicating with working class soldiers. Well, Jesus was God Himself, and he took an uneducated bunch of fishermen and turned them into these disciples who turned the world upside down. In fact, people were so shocked by the eloquence and the education of the early apostles. “How did these fishermen from Galilee get to be such amazing communicators of truth?” And it was because Jesus had taught them.

And I think C.S. Lewis learned from Jesus, and he's just trying to mimic a little bit of what Jesus did. And I think we can do the same. And the Lord will give us as well the words to say to our neighbors, to our colleagues. And all we need to do, I think, is just pray. I think one prayer we can pray is, “Lord, just give me one person this week that I could tell about Jesus, and open up the door for me.” There's a movie, Hacksaw Ridge, some of you may have seen about a medic in World War II, and he saved 80 some Marines. But every time he dragged one back, he would say, “Lord, give me one more.” Now, you just think if we just pray, “Lord, help me reach one person for Christ even this year.

Amen. Boy, that is great! That is a great place for us to conclude. I want to recommend to our listeners, that you get a copy of Joel's book, Discipleship with C.S. Lewis. I want to encourage you to reread Mere Christianity with Joel's workbook right next to you, and especially dig into those scripture passages that show the depth behind these short chapters, and then use it in a small group or one-on-one mentoring relationship and ask God to use you in ways far beyond anything you could even imagine.

So we hope this podcast has been helpful for you. We hope all of our materials at the C.S. Lewis will help you. Please check out our website, cslewisinstitute.org. We have lots and lots of audio, visual, written articles and materials there to help you grow. And we hope and pray that all of our materials help you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Joel, thanks again for the time together today.

Thank you so much, Randy. It was a pleasure.

Brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute and the Questions That Matter Podcast with Randy Newman.

COPYRIGHT: This publication is published by C.S. Lewis Institute; 8001 Braddock Road, Suite 301; Springfield, VA 22151. Portions of the publication may be reproduced for noncommercial, local church or ministry use without prior permission. Electronic copies of the PDF files may be duplicated and transmitted via e-mail for personal and church use. Articles may not be modified without prior written permission of the Institute. For questions, contact the Institute: 703.914.5602 or email us.

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