Sofa Spotlight - Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis

I took my time reading this. It’s worth taking it slow and letting the truths sink in. To give you some background, this book didn’t start out as a book. C. S. Lewis gave a series of talks on the BBC during the Second World War and after being turned into pamphlets or shorter books, the talks became this book in 1952.

It’s called Mere Christianity because Lewis was trying to give the basics, or common ground, of what Christianity is all about. It wasn’t his intention to describe the details of every aspect or what each denomination believes. He has an excellent way of describing it in the book, which reminds you that this is the man who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia.

Maybe it’s because I loved Narnia so much that I was curious to read some of Lewis’ non-fiction. All I can say is I wasn’t disappointed.

My recommendation is that you do what I did and read it with someone. What I found is that you find things of value that the other missed and so, in a sense, you get to enjoy this book twice.

For me it was towards the end of the book that I enjoyed the most. He talks about sin and why even when we ask God to help us not sin in a particular way He doesn’t seem to answer that prayer. The reason Lewis gives for this is that by not answering that prayer straight away God is teaching us to come back to Him and be dependent on Him rather than doing things in our own strength. Lewis writes it better than me but that’s roughly what he is saying. It was good for me to hear as I like to do things by myself and last year was a year of learning that I cannot be self-sufficient no matter how much I may want to be.

This is also the book of the famous mad, bad or God quote. Which I didn’t realise until I fell over it. But I was very excited to see it in its original context.

If you’ve never read C. S. Lewis I would say this is a good place to start to get to know his books. His tone is very similar to what I imagine a grandfather would sound like, I never knew either of my grandfathers so I am just guessing. But his style is engaging and gentle. One of those writers who cares for his readers and wants them to take to heart the message of Christianity.

For me I will be looking at reading more of his non-fiction, but I also want to attempt to read his sci-fi novels and maybe revisit The Chronicles of Narnia, not to mention The Screwtape Letters, which I heard he didn’t enjoy writing all that much. I love C. S. Lewis and I’m glad that I found this book, even though I did sort of need someone else to convince me to read it.