In C.S. Lewis’ essays Learning in War Time and On Living in an Atomic Age there is a reoccurring theme. The theme displayed in both essays was not to be distracted in times of crisis and continue living. Lewis believes one must work through the threats faced in this world. Working and living through these times consists of one acting to the fullest humanistic potential. The humanistic acts Lewis believes one should abide by are to enjoy life, to seek knowledge, to question everything, and discover the power of the “Creator,” God. Following the route mapped out by God will lead us to a fulfilling life ending when He is ready for us in His kingdom. God’s Divine Providence is what upholds our natural world. One must ignore the threats of life and focus on God’s Divine Providence.
According to Lewis it is important to seek knowledge even in times of struggle and crisis. This was an important point in the essay Learning in War Time. The mission to seek knowledge is one of our duties and as Lewis says, “every duty is a religious duty, and our obligation to perform every duty is therefore absolute.” (Lewis 9) By saying this enforces the idea that seeking knowledge is our duty and is necessary to live according to God’s Divine Providence. To achieve the fulfilling life God has planned for each of us, we must strive to succeed everything we are capable of. The culture one creates when seeking knowledge creates a greater duty than when one simply gives up. A less extreme form of this could be a college student. College students are put through a lot of self-inflicted stress and anxiety. The hard time one has with the work load might be their own crisis. Instead of the student feeling overworked causing them to skip class or give up. Some ...
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...God and our planned routes. It takes us the ability to ignore the threats tempting us to quit to live out a life devoted to God’s Divine Providence.
Both essays together give us a formula to achieve a life devoted to God and the plans He has for us. We need to enjoy life by seeking knowledge, questioning life, and discovering or God and the route He has planned. The threats we face in life should not hold us back we need to push on and uphold the life we are blessed to have. We need to focus on working through calamities and focusing on our true mission to God. There will never be a time in one’s life where there is no struggle or hardship. Dwelling over these constant hardships will never help us we must continue carrying out our duties. Lewis has a view on life that I agree with. I agree that all our duties are religions duties and help bring us closer to God.
"I know now that Uncle Otis saw something in me that I hadn't yet seen" (Lewis and Aydin 1: 37). All of us have a certain purpose in life, whether we have found out exactly what that is yet or not. Sometimes we won't even know ourselves that is until someone sees it spark within us first. In the book of March. John Lewis was a man that was a part of the Nashville student SNCC Organization, whose purpose was to help end segregation as much as possible during the Civil Rights era in the 1960's. Taking these first steps have become major turning points in his life that will forever stick with him. Steps like joining the First Baptist Church, getting arrested for the first time, joining the freedom riders, and taking action
Michael Wigglesworth was a puritan minister, who wrote the famous poem “A day of doom”. In “A day of doom”, Wigglesworth expressed his thoughts on society and their religious views and values. He saw differences in people such as morality and loyalty and tried to enlighten people about god and religion. In this poem Wigglesworth’s intentions are to change societies perceptive to help them understand the choices they make today can follow them to the after life.
C.S. Lewis begins his book, “Mere Christianity”, by introducing the Law of Right and Wrong or the Laws of Nature. This, however, arises a question. What is the Law of Nature? The Law of Nature is the known difference between right and wrong. That is, mans distinction between what is right and what is wrong. “This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that everyone knew it and did not need to be taught it”(18). Lewis relates the law to how we treat others. We treat others the way we want to be treated and if they treat us poorly in return we become agitated and annoyed with them. He states that we become a society of excuses when something goes wrong. He goes on to say that we want to behave in a certain way when in reality we do the opposite of what is right or what is wrong. We are humans and humans have primal instincts. We are all capable of using our instincts to do right or wrong. Lewis uses an example of a drowning man to prove this point. When one sees a man in trouble two desires or instincts kick into play, to save the man or ignore him because the situation at hand could endanger you. However, there in another impulse that says help the man. With this comes a conflict of instincts. Do you run and forget about it or do you jump in and help. Most people will help even if the situation is going to endanger their life. This is just one way of seeing moral law. The right in a situation will mostly always prevail over the wrong. “Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are selfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but they ought to be”(30). We are creatures of habit and logic. Lewis believes that the moral law is not taught to us rather known by us instinctively. He also believes that the law is real. The law is our behaviors in life via good or bad. Lewis states, “there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior”(30). This opens Lewis to believe that the natural law is both alive and active in mans life today. Lewis goes on to say that the law must be something above mans behavior. He begins to relate this to the creation of the world.
Both Lewis and Freud agreed that the question of god’s existence and our response must be asked. Though each man had drastically different worldviews and answers, they each sought to learn and understand the other’s worldview. Nicholi points out that Lewis may have had an advantage in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview due to the fact that until the age of 30, he claimed to be “even more certain of his atheism than was Freud” (2002, Pg. 81). In his adult life, Freud had no dramatic change of worldview from believer to unbeliever like Lewis had. This fact may give Lewis a slight upper hand in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview; however, Freud was still one of the greatest minds of his times and his work proves a strong (though negative) understanding of the believer’s worldview.
Today a leading cause of stress is change; a change in your job, lifestyle, or significant others can cause stress. Many Americans are living longer and discovering, as a result, that the learning process can never really be allowed to stop. To be successful or sometimes even just to maintain a comfortable existence, one must adapt to the rapidly changing order. Acknowledging that there is more that needs knowing and embarking on new educational journeys requires courage and fortitude, due to man’s inherent nature of fear. Persons of the best natures must be compelled to attain a more complete knowledge, and those of this more complete education must expose the others to the realities of “ the beautiful, the just, and the good” (752). Often the path of explanation and clarification is unsure, but confining thought to merely the realms of the known can only prove fatal.
Our knowledge is a key to our success and happiness in our life to give us personal satisfaction. Knowledge is power but not always. Sometimes our self-awareness and growth as an individual gives us negative thoughts that make us want to go back to undo it. Everyone wants to unlearn a part in our life that brought us pain and problems. Good or bad experiences brought by true wisdom can be used for our self-acceptance, self-fulfillment and these experiences would make us stronger as we walk to the road of our so called “life”, but Douglas’s and my experience about knowledge confirmed his belief that “Knowledge is a curse”. Both of us felt frustrated and sad from learning knowledge.
In this book we shall begin with the main points which the teacher of this book as addressed to its reader, these points are mysterious, injustice and the frustrations of life. And in all these circumstances of life we see that God is the ruler and the controller of our destine. The first thing which the book as addressed to its reader is how someone can enjoy life through the gift of working hard which God as given to the sons of men under the sun. in this book life is been understood as useless because of its complications were by, no matter how somebody may spend the all entire life working and laboring hard, the question is this what do they have to show for it? Life is like casing after the wind because generation comes and go, but life continues. Therefore, no satisfactions, not even the ears can hear enough. In addition to this under the sun there is nothing new and there is no difference between the wise and the foolish because both of them they have same destine (death). This book teaches that the wiser you are, the more worries; the more you gain understand the more it hu...
Taylor’s “From God’s Determinations” and Wheatley; s “Thoughts on the Work of Providence” project the feelings of love, faith, and dedication they have toward their religion. Both texts are fine examples of two men writing how they feel, giving accounts of what they believe, and explaining how God, a supernatural being, has played an important role in the shaping their lives through the many acts of miracle He has performed such as creating the Earth. To explain in further detail, both Taylor and Wheatley are constantly inserting examples of what their God has done throughout each text. It is made obvious to the reader that both men are very spiritual
...knowledge and courage to do what is right for others and for our own conscience. In the world today, there are so many instances where people have the opportunity to avoid responsibility for their actions, and it must be changed or as Fromm has predicted, our society will end by obedience to powers of which we are unsure and therefore “commit suicide”.
Lewis’ writings and their relationship to Christianity are perhaps better understood after a basic knowledge of Lewis’ journey to, away from, and then back to his faith. He became a Christian in his early youth but as an adolescent he rejected it. In his autobiography, “Surprised by Joy” Lewis wrote that the strongest argument in support of atheism was this quote from a poem written by Lucretius: “Had God designed the world, it would not be / A world so frail and faulty as we see” (65). As an atheist and a Christian, Lewis always had an analytical way of thinking that contrasted with his imaginative side so well-known for works like “The Chronicles of Narnia.” It might be surprising for fans of Lewis’ fantasy works to learn that Lewis had a great interest in the sciences. He never went too far into the sciences because, as he explained, in all sciences “the lion Mathematics lies in wait for you”...
1. Explain what Lewis means by the “Law of Nature” or the “Law of Human Nature.”
In England, during the year of 1942 when all hope was threatened by the inhumanity of war, a man by the name of C.S. Lewis addressed the central issues of Christianity through a series of radio lectures. After more than half a century later, his broadcasts still prevail and maintain their poignancy. Each of his original lectures, Broadcast Talks (1942), Christian Behaviour (1943), and Beyond Personality (1944) were compiled as one to make up the book currently known as Mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis proves that "at the center of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice," rejecting the boundaries that divide Christianity's many denominations. Mere Christianity is simply a twentieth-century masterpiece that provides an unequaled opportunity for believers and nonbelievers alike to hear a powerful, rational case for the Christian faith.
C.S. Lewis was a very joyful man, and his joyfulness shone through in all he did. He would assign nicknames to his family members and friends, like Robert E. Havard the useless Quack or as he called his walking companion A.C. Harwood, the Lord of the Walks. Another glimpse of his joyful spirit is when he finished his first day at Oxford and wrote to his dad, The place has surpassed my wildest dreams. I never saw anything so beautiful. Finally, we see his joy when he wrote to one of his friends right after his marriage, Its funny having at 59 the sort of happiness most men have at their twenties Thou hast kept the good wine till now. C.S. Lewis was a very joyful man from whom people could learn a lot.
When Lewis says that Christians are in for a rough time, he means it. Just because we are Christians and begin to see some transformation in our lives from the past, does not mean everything is going to be easy from there on out. God is always with us, but sometimes he does things that make us uncomfortable in the moment to make for a better tomorrow. When we are going through something of this sort, we do may think that it is unnecessary, but we cannot see down the road that God is taking us
This article outlines the life of C.S. Lewis and his writings on Christianity and Chronicles of Narnia. The piece describes the effect Lewis had on his religious readers and highlights his life story, including his inspiration for his novels. Jardin wanted to draw attention to the positive effect Lewis had on the world.