Illuminating

I’m having a peaceful afternoon before my busy evening of Chemistry and Mathematics teaching begins.

I bought C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity about a month ago and read a bit of the Preface and then sort of forgot about it for a while. Today I finished the preface and foreword (a lot of reading before you get to the nitty gritty!) and was surprised by the background to the book. C. S. Lewis fought in the First World War, in the trenches. Twenty-four years later when WWII began he was an air raid warden. He started to give talks to the young men from the Royal Air Force. “Their situation prompted Lewis to speak about the problems of suffering, pain and evil, work that resulted in his being invited by the BBC to give a series of wartime broadcasts on Christian faith”* The talks are what make up the chapters of Mere Christianity. The foreword of the book draws parallels between that time and our current experience. Of course, even with progress and the passage of time, human nature is exactly the same.

I’m really enjoying the book and it’s hopeful message. I’ve been trying to place myself in the context of the original wartime audience, but I end up being swept up in the writing and find a lot of relevance to the present; I’d recommend the book highly.


*quoted from the foreword of Mere Christianity by C S Lewis