Course On Lewis

I have borrowed one of those college courses on CD about CS Lewis. I did not like the first lecture at all, nor the second one all that much. The professor is entirely too breathless, as if every sentence has an exclamation point after it. I find his praise of Lewis over-the-top. And if I, whose thought is formed by Lewis and am one of his great admirers, find you over the top, then the matter is quite settled.

I am liking the third lecture better, and will continue, hoping to pick up a few things here or there that I did not know, or a new angle I had not considered. It is an introduction to Lewis, so perhaps I should not have expected to learn a great deal. Additionally, there are few points where he gets minor facts wrong. Not a big deal, but a bit irritating.

I found myself thinking, quite early on "I could do better than this. Actually, I have done better than this, teaching Sunday School." Then "I could do much better than this." And soon "A lot of people could do better than this." Which led, of course to my thinking exactly how I would do this if I have another chance at it.

Here's the odd thing. I found that the overall organization that this professor works from, and the examples he chooses, are better than what I did, and better than any of the ideas I was coming up with. To oversimplify, his presentation is irritating, both his intonation and his phrasing, but his content is excellent. One can tell he is used to addressing evangelical audiences, and includes some assumptions not shared universally among Christians. He falls back on some cliches in criticising modern thinkers. But basically, he gets it right, and he gets the important parts up front and in a good order.

I might not have noticed his strengths had I not pursued exactly what I thought his weaknesses were. Which is a very Lewisian conclusion to draw.