– Sir Francis Bacon, Of Studies

henever I’m in a video store, I’m always struck by the number of good films that have been made over the years: For all the junk on the shelves, I know I’ll never run out of good movies if I care to watch them. I feel the same way about reading, but more so. I can read only a fraction of the good books out there, so I might as well spend my limited reading time with the quality stuff. Since summer vacation is under way, this is a good time to suggest you do the same – to use this chance to take in the sort of books you remember fondly long after all those celebrity biographies in Barnes and Noble have been relegated to the discount bins.

What to read? I could present a long list, and maybe I will in some future column. But this time around let me zero in on my personal favorite author, C.S. Lewis.

Many people consider Lewis the foremost Christian writer of this century, and I think he’s earned his rep. He hooked me the first time I read one of his books – The Screwtape Letters, a collection of lessons in temptation from an experienced devil (Screwtape) to his nephew (Wormwood). In fact, I was hooked in the first chapter, when Screwtape describes how he kept an atheist from starting down the road to Christian faith:

One day as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind starting to go the wrong way. The Enemy [God], of course, was at his elbow in a moment. . . . [so I] suggested that it was about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the countersuggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least, I think that must have been His line, for when I said "Quite. In fact, much too important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better to come back after lunch and go at it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting about the midday paper, and a no. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps, I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn’t be true.

I wasn’t a Christian when I read that, and I recognized that experience immediately. The same held true for the rest of the book, as Lewis detailed, one by one, the familiar rationalizations I used to avoid thinking about Christ, or about my own sins. By the time I finished, I’d learned a lot about identifying the voice of the devil, and concluded that he was far too persistent for me to handle solo.

That prepared me nicely for the next Lewis book I read, Mere Christianity. There, Lewis brilliantly explained how we can know that there is a God, that He is just and that man’s relationship with Him is broken. ("[Man] had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement; he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.") Then Lewis came to the crux of the matter: why we need a Savior, and why the job could only be done by someone who was both a man and God himself.

Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person – and he would not need to do it. . . . But supposing God became a man – suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person – then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God.

I can’t tell you I converted to Christianity on the spot upon reading that. But as with Screwtape, I found the words immensely convicting, possessing a force which began to work powerfully both on my mind and my heart. Christ’s death for mankind, which (to my lazy mind) had seemed abstract and fanciful, now seemed irresistibly real – and far too important to ignore.

Lewis is like that throughout his writing, from theological essays to fantasy and even children’s literature. He’s always bringing reality to life – always conveying truths in language so vivid that it leaves me thinking "Of course that’s how things are; it’s been right in front of me all along; why didn’t I think of it on my own?" Frequently he does this through memorable metaphors like this one from Mere Christianity:

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it just is no good to ask God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

You have to savor writing like that – not just its style, but its clarity of thought. And many people do. Lewis’s works have consistently sold very well for more than half a century. Numerous people cite him as instrumental in their conversion to Christianity. Many more praise him for deepening their understanding of the faith, and equipping them to discuss it with others.

Perhaps the most revealing tribute to Lewis is that a Christian group’s planned distribution of Mere Christianity through campus mail at Dartmouth was banned last year. The officially stated reason was the fear that some students might be offended. But I suspect the real reason was the fear that they might be won over. When you read Lewis, you find it hard not to be.