Gospel Prism

What if you were brilliant and kind-hearted and loved the Lord and was passed over for tenure as a professor because you loved the Lord? And what if your colleagues thought you were a nincompoop because you loved the Lord but prior to your trust in Him, you were well-liked and well-respected? Would you turn from him to get the promotion? Would you curse Him because people are reviling you for His sake? Well, this is the true life story of none other than Clive Staples Lewis. Michael Haykin writes:

Most of Lewis’ colleagues at Oxford University found his zealous defence of the Christian faith irritating, if not embarrassing [Lyle W. Dorsett, “C.S. Lewis: An Introduction� in his ed., The Essential C.S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan Publ. Co., 1988), 3]. Magdalen College, where Lewis taught, was during the 1930s-1950s “leftish, atheist, cynical.� According to Clyde Kilby, “One report went out that no one at Magdalen wanted to sit next to Lewis at the table because he would immediately turn and ask, “are you a Christian?� Both by nature and dictates of good taste, Lewis was utterly opposed to putting anyone in a corner. Yet this was the sort of gossip that, along with his output of books on Christianity, finally prevented Lewis’s being awarded a professorship…�

“For some twenty-five years Lewis knew what it was to be sneered at, to be called “saint� cynically, but still he was friendly with all his colleagues.� [Clyde S. Kilby, “Holiness in the Life of C.S. Lewis�, Discipleship Journal, 22 (July 1, 1984), 15]. Especially after the publication of his Narnia books in the 1950s, a sizeable body of the Oxford faculty shunned him. Some criticized him to his face, while others did it behind his back.

And I am cure to C. S. Lewis, Jesus’ words really hit home:

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)