C.S. Lewis Speaks Today: About War
We are at war—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, around the globe against terrorists of varying stripes. Can C.S Lewis speak pertinent words to us in the time of war? I think so.
C.S. Lewis fought (and amazingly, also wrote poetry) in one of the most uniquely horrific contexts in the history of warfare—the Trenches of World War I. Unlike so many fields of conflict where soldiers engage only to withdraw once the battle concludes, many battlefields of the Great War became living quarters to the combatants. Thousands of soldiers, including Lewis, lived in ditches dug out of French mud from which they emerged and returned like subterranean rodents between ghastly bloodspillings—a war spectacle unprecedented at the time and never repeated. At the tender age of 19, with five months of trench warfare under his belt, the then atheist future creator of Narnia took enough shrapnel at the famed Battle of Arras to land him safely in a hospital bed, the war now behind him for good.
Less than a quarter century later, Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe would attempt the reduction of London to rubble. On the backend of months of air raids over London, Britain would huddle together in shelters, ears cocked toward the Wireless for words of comfort and guidance from this same C.S. Lewis. And, as usual, Lewis’s thoughts were interesting. Following is a sample of Lewis musings not from the BBC Broadcasts but from a sermon, “Learning in Time of War,” delivered in October 1939:
“The war will fail to absorb our whole attention because it is a finite object and therefore, intrinsically unfitted to do so.”
“The rescue of drowning men is a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. . . .all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for [his] country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country.”
“War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality . . .in ordinary times only wise men realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows. . . .If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.”
C.S. Lewis fought (and amazingly, also wrote poetry) in one of the most uniquely horrific contexts in the history of warfare—the Trenches of World War I. Unlike so many fields of conflict where soldiers engage only to withdraw once the battle concludes, many battlefields of the Great War became living quarters to the combatants. Thousands of soldiers, including Lewis, lived in ditches dug out of French mud from which they emerged and returned like subterranean rodents between ghastly bloodspillings—a war spectacle unprecedented at the time and never repeated. At the tender age of 19, with five months of trench warfare under his belt, the then atheist future creator of Narnia took enough shrapnel at the famed Battle of Arras to land him safely in a hospital bed, the war now behind him for good.
Less than a quarter century later, Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe would attempt the reduction of London to rubble. On the backend of months of air raids over London, Britain would huddle together in shelters, ears cocked toward the Wireless for words of comfort and guidance from this same C.S. Lewis. And, as usual, Lewis’s thoughts were interesting. Following is a sample of Lewis musings not from the BBC Broadcasts but from a sermon, “Learning in Time of War,” delivered in October 1939:
“The war will fail to absorb our whole attention because it is a finite object and therefore, intrinsically unfitted to do so.”
“The rescue of drowning men is a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. . . .all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for [his] country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country.”
“War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality . . .in ordinary times only wise men realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows. . . .If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.”
posted by Mark DeVine at 10:44 AM
3 Comments:
I find it interesting that while WWI greatly crippled the Postmillinial optimism of the early 20th Century and WWII all but erased it, the current state of global unrest has not seemed to have the same impact. Indeed, there seems to be a resurgence of Dominion theology as heralded by Gary DeMar and others. Is this just a swing of the eschatological pendulum, or are there other theological/doctrinal wheels and cogs that are bringing about this movement?
"“The war will fail to absorb our whole attention because it is a finite object and therefore, intrinsically unfitted to do so.” "
A lot of Lewis's theology is encapsulated in that quote. Just take "war" and make it a [fill in the blank] and the Sehnsucht longing that led Lewis to Christ is just around the corner.
Lewis has just that remarkable and valuable ability to put things in perspective, offer helpful analogies, and move us to action and change, often with one perspicacious image or piece of finely crafted rhetoric. Thanks for reminding us of this thoughts on war.
~ Admonit
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