If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis Quotes

“Lewis began to realize that atheism did not—and could not—satisfy the deepest longings of his heart or his intuition that there was more to life than what was seen on the surface.”
― Alister McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Literature offers us a different way of seeing things. The reading of literature opens our eyes, offering us new perspectives on things that we can evaluate and adopt. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. . . . In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.[94]”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“New ideas can be supremely bad ideas, and by the time people realize how bad they are, it is sometimes difficult to get rid of them.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“True love involves a willingness to change, to become more like the ones we love. Love is dynamic, not static. God may accept us just as we are—but he isn’t going to leave us there. God wants to move us on, to help us become the people we are meant to be.”
― Alister McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis rightly points out that this desire to be part of the “Inner Ring” is not really about friendship at all. It is about our own insecurity and yearning to matter. It is about using “friends” as tools to gain what we want. We value someone, not because of who they are, but because of what they can do for us. We want them to boost our self-esteem and self-importance and get us privileged access to things we might otherwise not be able to get at all. In fact, our longing to be part of an “Inner Ring” debases friendship. Real friendship is about shared affection, respect, and interests. As Lewis concluded, there is “no ‘inside’ that is worth reaching.” What really matters is friendship, pure and simple.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Christianity tells a big story. It allows us to see our own story in a new way.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“A god that can be reduced to what reason can cope with is not a God that can be worshiped.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“It’s the difference between utility and virtue. Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It’s about learning skills that will help students find employment—such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit?”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis helps us to appreciate that apologetics need not take the form of deductive argument. Instead, apologetics can be an invitation to step into the Christian way of seeing things, and explore how things look when seen from its standpoint. Lewis’s approach says, “Try seeing things this way!” If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into sharpest focus?”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“For Lewis, people are too easily taken in by the latest cultural and intellectual fashions. Wanting to be “up to date” in their thinking, they uncritically accept the latest ideas they read about in the media. Reading older books, Lewis argues, helps us to realise that “basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods.” We need to remember that the ideas we tend to regard as hopelessly old fashioned and out of date were once seen as cutting edge. What was once new and brilliant becomes old and stale. Perhaps Lewis seems a little too scathing when he declares that “much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.”[90] Yet his point is fair: much recent thought is fleeting, lacking the staying power to excite and inform later generations. So is Lewis saying that only old ideas are any good, and that new ideas are invariably wrong? No.[91] He is asking us to be critical. New ideas need to be looked at carefully. They may be good; they may be bad. But ideas are not automatically good because they are new. Similarly, many—but not all—old ideas have permanent value. They have proved themselves through the centuries, and will continue to be important in the future. We need to figure out which ideas and values are of lasting importance, and hold fast to them.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“In one sense, faith is about embracing this bigger story and allowing our own story to become part of it.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Friends care for each other. Aristotle suggested that someone would wish the best for his or her friend, not because it might be of personal benefit, but because it enriched the friend. For Aristotle, friendship is about bringing out what is best in people. The best friends share a common vision of what is good and important, and help each other achieve goodness. Friends “enlarge and extend each other’s moral experience” by providing “a mirror in which the other may see himself.”[27] This kind of friendship rests on shared assumptions about the nature of goodness, and what might be involved in living the good life. It is not a casual matter, but something deep, enabling each other to become—and remain—good people.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis had experienced more trauma than most of his modern readers ever will.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis created a new kind of marriage between theological reflection and poetic imagination.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Take Lewis’s “argument from desire.” He basically argues that we experience desires that no experience in this world seems able to satisfy. And when we see these experiences through the lens of the Christian faith, we realise that this sort of experience is exactly what we would expect if Christianity is true.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Reading works of literature is about “entering fully into the opinions, and therefore also the attitudes, feelings, and total experience” of other people.[96] To read literature is thus to open us up to new ideas, or to force us to revisit those we once believed we were right to reject.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“God may accept us just as we are--but he isn't going to leave us there. God wants to move us on, to help us become the people we are meant to be.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“We are, Lewis suggested, like a seed waiting in the good earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming.[131]”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . . Our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Mere Christianity allows us to understand Christian ideas; the Narnia stories allow us to step inside and experience the Christian story and judge it by its ability to make sense of things and “chime in” with our deepest intuitions about truth, beauty, and goodness. If”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“The stories of Narnia seem childish nonsense to some. But to others, they are utterly transformative. For the latter group, these evocative stories affirm that it is possible for the weak and foolish to have a noble calling in a dark world; that our deepest intuitions point us to the true meaning of things; that there is indeed something beautiful and wonderful at the heart of the universe; and that this may be found, embraced, and adored.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis at his best is about trying on ways of looking at the world.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis wanted us to understand that the inner world is shaped by stories.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“Lewis is a rare example of someone who liked to think about life's great questions because they were forced on him by his own experience.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“A failure to understand something does not mean it is irrational. It may simply mean that it lies on the far side of our limited abilities to take things in and make complete sense of them.”
― Alister McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life

“To demonstrate the reasonableness of faith does not mean proving every article of Christian belief. Rather, it means showing that there are good grounds that these beliefs are trustworthy and reliable.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life