by Chuck Colson

The Wilberforce Forum

Paying Tribute to the Insight and Vision of the Great Christian Apologist

My task today is to talk about C. S. Lewis as the great prophet of this century that I believe he, along with Francis Schaeffer, indeed was. But before I do, I hope you will indulge me a bit of personal reflection.

Lewis's personal influence is something of a convergence of history this particular week because twenty-five years ago this very day-in a flood of tears in a friend's driveway in the toughest days of my life in the midst of the darkest days of Watergate-I surrendered my life to Christ. It is no accident that I am here today on the 100th anniversary of the birth of C. S. Lewis, for it was his writing that convicted me. Would I have been converted without Lewis? Yes. I am enough of a five-point Calvinist of reformed theology to believe that God had His hooks in me and would have gotten me. The Hound of Heaven , as Lewis wrote, would have pursued me, but it was Lewis whom He used to convict me.

I had succeeded in everything that I had done in my life. I was the youngest company commander in the U.S. Marine Corps, the youngest administrative assistant in the U.S. Senate, the youngest this and that, and I had started a big successful law firm. I was the youngest senior aide to the president of the United States. I thought I was so good. I never thought about being a sinner. I always thought I wasn't any worse than anyone else; I hadn't done anything the Democrats hadn't done before me; and God, like any good college professor, would grade on a curve, and I would be fine. Lewis convicted me so deeply with words that I am sure you are so familiar with-words from Mere Christianity: "There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking of is Pride. . ."

Lewis also wrote that when you walk through life looking up toward God, you come up against something immeasurably greater than yourself. But a proud man who is always walking through life looking down on other people cannot see something, something immeasurably superior, above himself. Lewis, I am sure, did not realize that he was writing for Chuck Colson in the darkest days of Watergate. His words were like a torpedo that hit a ship. Confronted with his words, I could not even get the keys into the ignition of the automobile -- I was crying too hard. There I was, a proud, ex-marine captain, White House hatchet man, calling out to God! I wanted to know Him. I didn't know the words. I had never known anything about evangelicalism. All I knew was that that night I desperately wanted to know the living God. I desperately wanted my sins lifted from me. I desperately wanted to know what this man was writing about.

More:

http://www.breakpoint.org/Breakpoint/ChannelRoot/FeaturesGroup/ColsonsPage/S peeches/C.S.+Lewis+Prophet+of+the+Twentieth+Century.htm