Into the Wardrobe

"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."

~ C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis had a way with words.  He wrote about ideas so simply that he made difficult concepts easy to understand.  

"Atheism turns out to be too simple.  If the whole universe has no meaning, we should have never found out that it has no meaning..."

~ C. S. Lewis

Lewis challenges me to think critically about about my faith.  It's not enough for me to say I believe that God sent His Son into the world to save those who believe in Jesus Christ without reasoning why I find that to be true.  What evidence have I found in the Bible, in history, in nature and in my own experience to confirm my faith?  

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This wardrobe, owned by C. S. Lewis, inspired The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

I am an unabashed fan of C. S. Lewis.  From the time I first followed Lucy vicariously into the wardrobe of Lewis' Narnia series, I've been a devotee of his writings.  So imagine my delight when I discovered that Wheaton College has a collection of C.S. Lewis artifacts, manuscripts and letters housed in the Marion E. Wade building on campus.

Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

Dr. Clyde S. Kilby, an English professor at Wheaton College, began a correspondence with C. S. Lewis in the 1950s that continued until Lewis died in 1963.  Those letters were the start of this repository.

A bust of C. S. Lewis sits upon his desk.

Kilby also pursued the writings and artifacts of other authors who influenced Lewis' work, including George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, Owen Barfield, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams.  

I wish you could have followed me into this repository of Lewis' work.  However, if such a visit is impossible, I wish you would consider one last thought...

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance.  The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

~ C. S. Lewis