Hi, folks! Adam Andrews here.
Who’s your favorite author in the world?
If you had to be stuck on a desert island with the complete collected works of a single writer,
who would that writer be?
For me, it would be C.S. Lewis,
the 20th century philosopher and apologist and writer of fantasy and science fiction books.
I’ve loved C.S. Lewis ever since my mom got me and my brother together on the couch
and started reading The Chronicles of Narnia to us when I was just a child.
Ever since then, his ability to tell a great imaginative story,
his ability to weave philosophical truth and philosophical questions into the stories has captivated my imagination.
Lewis lived from 1899-1963, 
and he was an Irishman, an academic and literary scholar.
He taught medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge Universities 
over a long academic career.
And in that time he became, also, famous outside the academy 
for writing books of Christian apologetics and popular theology.
And, of course, also those famous books of fantasy for children
and also some science fiction titles for adults, in particular, his famous Space Trilogy.
I guess that’s one of the reasons why I would take the complete works of Lewis with me to a desert island--
there’s so many different kinds of writing I can partake in if I have all of his titles at my disposal.
Whether it’s philosophy and logic, theology and apologetics, 
fiction, poetry, literary criticism.
Lewis has a bit of everything for the discerning reader.
His glorious gift for analogy and example is a great compliment to his logical patterns of thought.
He can go on for pages and pages with this very technical explanation of this fine distinction
and then illustrate it with an example from everyday life 
that makes the whole thing colorful and alive and easy to assimilate.
Extremely persuasive--the way he combines those two facets of his own mind.
Logical precision, with a gift for analogy and metaphor and example.
If you go to read his 1947 book “Miracles,”
before chapter 5 is over, you will be firmly convinced of the existence of a supernatural world.
As a matter of fact, if you don’t want to belive in the existence of a supernatural world,
you’ll believe it anyway, against your will, because of the power and lucidity and clarity of Lewis’ explanations.
In the same way, if you go to read his 1947 book “The Abolition of Man,”
you will come away equally convinced of the existence of some
transcendent, objective standard of value
that all people subscribe to, whether they admit it or not.
However, the reason I like Lewis the most is beyond all of these things.
I like him most because of his transparency. 
Because of the way in his fiction, but also in his philosophical and theological writings, 
the way he injects himself in the story and lays his own foibles
and insecurities and sins, even, bare before the reader.
He writes and speaks from his own life and from his own experience
in such a humble way that you realize that this man, 
who has been given such a great gift of thinking and expressing himself
and boiling the truths of Christianity and philosophy down for an average reader, 
is an average reader himself, an average man, with feet of clay.
That transparent aspect gives me a connection with Lewis that I love going back to
over and over again.
A great example is in one of his works of fiction that’s in the Space Trilogy--“That Hideous Strength.”
And it’s about this college professor named Mark Studdock,
who has great ambition to be well known in the scholarly community,
among his fellow faculty members and his collegues.
and as he describes Studdock’s insecurity and the things that motivate him to do things he knows he probably shouldn’t do,
but for the sake of the good opinion of others he does them anyway,
two things happen when I read that story.
I can see Lewis struggling with those very things,
or looking back on his life as an academic or collegue
and remembering how weak he was in those areas.
And how he did things which he probably wished he hadn’t done in order to gain a reputation.
And I almost want to cover Lewis and say, “Good gracious, man! Don’t expose yourself quite so much.”
And at the same time, I can see my own insecurities, I can see my own tendencies in that direction.
Because the truth is, I’m just like Lewis.
And I’m just like Mark Studdock in the book as well. 
I am tempted on occasion, all the time maybe, to do things I know I shouldn’t be doing, 
in order to gain that reputation from my collegues.
It’s kind of a harrowing experience to read “That Hideous Strength” for me.
It’s an exposing experience, I feel a little bit naked as I read
because of Lewis’ ability, his willingness I think, to be transparent, to be naked as it were with his readers.
But at the same time it’s cathartic,
at the same time I realize, man, I’m not alone in that sin.
I am not alone in those weaknesses.
We all have it the same way, in one way or another.
And for that reason I go back to “That Hideous Strength” in particular over and over again.
Because by the end of the story, Lewis makes it clear that we are all men with feet of clay in that way.
And that we hope for our salvation, we hope for our good end, on some help from beyond the hills.
We don’t actually have to be perfect men and women in order to survive and thrive in this world.
And as a matter of fact, those feet of clay are the very things which qualify us for the grace of God.
And speaking of the grace of God, that is the other reason I love Lewis so much.
His understanding of the Gospel, his understanding of the imperfection of man 
and the perfect love of God on the other hand, is so uplifting.
It comes through everything he writes and everything I’ve read.
It’s a wonderful thing to remember, that my insufficiency and God’s sufficiency are a perfect match.
One of the best examples of this is another work of fiction of Lewis’ called “’Til We Have Faces,”
which is a retelling of old Cupid and Psyche myth from ancient world
recast in an imaginary land of Lewis’ own creation. 
He tells the story of the kidnapping and ravishing of the beautiful woman by the god of love.
And of the protective older sister, who struggles against this god and his will for the life of her family.
It’s a wonderful picture of our striving against god, 
of our keeping accounts, of our trying to create an identity for ourselves
by the things that we do and the right decisions that we make.
And how all of those things in the end come to nothing.
All that matters in the final analysis is the undeserved, ravishing love of God directed at us from heaven.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful depiction of God’s grace
and it comes through that great language, that clear lucid prose, 
that air-tight logic, that gift for example and analogy that define the works of C.S. Lewis.
If you got to go to a desert island, and you can only take the complete works of a single author with you,
my vote is C.S. Lewis every time.
I hope you come up with an author of your own.
I hope we don’t have to go to a desert island in the end, 
but just in case, it’s good to be prepared.
Until we meet again my friends, happy reading!
