BBC Lewis Life

Lewis is read in Philosophy class and church bible studies all the time, but we seem to almost deify him. This is a grave mistake. I was very grateful to Professor Ribeiro for showing us this segment on Lewis life with people who knew him's descriptions of his actions and attitudes. This helps us put Lewis in his proper place. That of a man, a great thinker no doubt, but just a man all the same. One thing that particularly struck me during the documentary is what Lewis did when his apartment caught on fire. Lewis calmly strode over to his friends apartment and in a cool and collected voice said "My room is on fire what should I do?". This to me speaks of the classic scientist and philosopher so preoccupied with his own work that he forgets the obvious common sense things in life. This also shows how much Lewis loves learning and his commitment to it that he would not have time to pick up on the common sense of real life because of spending to much time studying subjects that he really enjoys. It also speaks about his genius because almost all geniuses are at least as scatter

This is an important thing to remember in a class studying C.S. Lewis and his take on Christianity and life as a whole. I say this because we must remember that no matter how smart Lewis is, he is subject to errors in his logic and misinterpretations and understandings just like the rest of us. However, I must emphasize that this is not to discount Lewis in any way, but just to keep our perspectives in order. The church has a history of almost deifying ordinary human beings just because of their extraordinary gifts. This I feel is wrong. The works of a great human often are great, but when you start talking about their creator almost as if he can do no wrong then I think you lose a critical element in the work, that of its creator's personality. Without that personality, the work looses what makes it friendly and relate-able to the common man. If we do this to Lewis I think we will lose not only the truest sense of his work, but also a great role model from history for future generations.