Joyful Christian [Paperback]

C.S. Lewis, himself a convert, wrote of being surprised by joy when he discovered his belief in Jesus Christ. In these 127 devotional readings, selected from Lewis's many works on faith and spirituality, Christians everywhere can share in the joy of this master theologian as he discusses topics ranging from the nature of prayer and good works to psychoanalysis and fascism. InThe Joyful Christian,Lewis offers inspiration for all those who hunger and thirst after joy.C.S. Lewiswas a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge universities who wrote more than thirty books in his lifetime, includingThe Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia,andMere Christianity.He died in 1963.Chapter 1

Right and Wrong

Everyone has heard people quarreling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this: How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you? -- That's my seat, I was there first -- Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm -- Why should you shove in first? -- Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine -- Come on, you promised. People say things like this every day, educated as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: To hell with your standard. Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the lÓ(