Book Review: How to be a Christian: Reflections and Essays

How to Be a Christian: Reflections and Essays by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a collection of Lewis’ essays from various works. The publisher has selected essays around the general theme of practical Christianity. So, this book is not what Lewis would have produced if he had set about the task of writing a book on the practical Christian life. Setting that disappointment aside, we find here a great collection of essays Lewis did write and a transcribed interview of what Lewis did say. So, maybe the next best thing.

Lewis was a great thinker and writer. He had a knack for putting things well. He had a way of taking something very familiar, changing the familiar perspective, and putting it across improvingly. Any mention of Lewis sends certain ones of the population running to fetch their aluminum foil caps to prevent any of Lewis’ alien waves from entering their brains. Lewis had his theological problems. He could write a brilliant and beautiful passage and sometimes follow it with a brilliantly ugly passage. Only advertising his shortcomings is to whip a straw horse.

Spurgeon had many critics in his day. They often complained about his girth, the hair on his face, and at least one old lady nearly fainted when she heard something akin to humor in one of his sermons. Those journalists and church marms could always have exercised their personal rights of locomotion and declined to attend Spurgeon’s preaching.

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