A recreation of the original broadcast talk made by C.S. Lewis during World War II. This broadcast formed the basis of Chapter One of the book "Mere Christianity". You can read excerpts from the book here: www.amazon.com/Mere-Christiani... .This short broadcast ended up being the most read radio series' in British broadcasting history, but at the time of the live show, C.S. Lewis certainly had competition for listeners. Britain had only two radio stations at the time. At 7.45pm, the 'For the [Armed] Forces' frequency was broadcasting a live show by Gracie Fields, the most popular singer of the day (famous for 'Wish me luck as you wave me Goodbye'). 'The Home Service' frequency, on which Lewis was speaking, had just finished its news broadcast in Norwegian, and was about to switch into Welsh so had lost most of it English listeners. Yet by the end of the series, Lewis was so incredibly popular, the BBC immediately requested a new series and was employed by the BBC until mid 1944 - guiding Britain through some of the hardest parts of the war. For one stretch during WW2, C.S. Lewis voice was the second most recognised voice on the BBC (after Churchill).
You can find my doodle of the Lewis' second talk here, called 'The Reality of the Moral law":
• The Reality of the Mor...
Some helps:
These doodles are really teachers' tools, and require someone to breakdown to students some of the ideas touched on very briefly in the doodle.
You can find the quotes (Cicero, Plato, and Moses) in full, with references, in the appendix of Lewis' book "The Abolition of Man", with the other quote (Aristotle) taken from "The Problem of Pain".
Various societies throughout history have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or only your own fellow countrymen, or everyone. God says to Moses that everyone must be treated without partiality - love the person next to you AS you love yourself. Every act of cheating or stealing or taking advantage of another is loving yourself in excess of your neighbour (simply the person 'next' to you). Your duty of care to family and country take priority over that of strangers but not to the extent of doing evil.
"knew it by nature and didn’t need to be taught it" (4:18). "As Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed" (Lewis, Mere Christianity).
“A nation may say that treaties don’t matter” (6:41).
Britain in 1914 sent an ultimatum to Germany demanding that Belgium's neutrality must not be violated as per Germany's promise, contained in its treaty with Belgium and Britain. There was no response. At 11.00 pm on 4th August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. The German Chancellor replied in shock that: "Just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation, who desired nothing better than to be friends with her.” Hitler repeated exactly the same sentiment expressed by the German High Command in WWI concerning his duty to respect their previous border treaty and subsequent promises with Neutral Belgium; that the treaty was “ein fetzen papier” (just a piece of paper).
“I'm going to attack France and England at the best and fastest time. Violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is meaningless. No one will question that, when we have won. We will justify the infringement of neutrality as idiotically as 1914 (ein fetzen papier)..." Hitler, November 23, 1939.
At the same time as saying "Border treaties do not matter", Hitler also justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland on the basis of Moral Law, saying the treaty of Versailles (in which Germany promised to respect certain borders) was unfair to the German nation's right of expansion.
You can find the audio track here:www.amazon.com/C-S-Lewis-War-....
28 авг 2014
