Learning in War Time

I thought that C.S. Lewis' piece "Learning in War Time" was excellent. He bought up several differnt points which I thought were very worth taking note of. Lewis states, "War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply agrivates the peranent human situation so thatwe can no longer ignore it." He is saying that there is always some reason to put off learning. There is always something that needs to be set right in the world, some injustice that needs to be dealt with. If we waited for favorable conditions, we would never learn, because the conditions will never be favorable.

He also points out that it is impossible to just give up daily life in order to be involved in a war. Even in times of war, you will find yourself doing perfectly ordinary things like reading a book or playing an instrument. There is no way to isolate every activity in your life and dedicate it to the war alone. Lewis draws a parallel here to participating in a war and being a Christian. He points out that there is no way for a Christian to limit his activities to those things which can be labled as sacred. He needs to brush his teeth, pay his bills, and have a job, just like anyone else. The difference is that the motivation of every one of those things is or should be to the glory of God.

Lewis uses a couple of examples to make his meaning clearer. First, he talks about someone who lives by a dangerous coast and prepares himself to rescue swimmers who are in trouble. He has dedicated himself to this cause and may one day give up his life for it, however, it would be absurd for him to make that the center of his attention at every moment of every day. Secondly, he talks about the omnipresence of God. God is everywhere. But the fact that God is everywhere does not necessarily exclude something else from being there as well. When you look at a forest, you cannot say that God is everywhere except for where the trees stand. This is what the Christian life is like. God must be a part of everything, but that does not mean that we must avoid everything that is not specifically religious. Instead, we must seek to glorify Him through even the mundane things. Lewis even expressed how surprised he was that there was no drastic change in the routine of his life after he came to Christ. He could continue to be a scholar and to go about his daily activities. The changes were inward ones.