C.S. Lewis Essays YouTube-style

What if you had a passion for reading C.S. Lewis and you also were gifted at drawing? Why not try to make Lewis more accessible to a new generation?! That’s exactly what someone named Kalman from New Zealand has done. With the creation of “C.S. Lewis Doodle” on YouTube this person has begun to present some very compelling visuals to accompany audio versions of essays by C.S. Lewis. As noted by the author, the work is “a live animation of a C.S. Lewis essay in the 1920-1940’s ‘Art Deco’ style.”

The first effort came late last year (2012) and so far this year there has been two more video. The debut essay was “The Grand Miracle” from the God in the Dock book collection of shorter works. On the April 15, 1945 Lewis preached this short sermon at St. Jude on the Hill Church in London. By the end of the month it was found in the April 27th issue of The Guardian. In this message, Lewis notes that Christianity is likely the only religion that cannot be stripped of its miraculous elements. He believed that the greatest miracle was Christ’s birth.

The follow-up release was “The Laws of Nature” in mid-March. It was first published April 4, 1945 in The Coventry Evening Telegraph. It dealt with the topic of prayer in relation to, or how some people view it, as opposed to the laws of nature. The article opens with a comment made by a friend at the start of a day before Lewis’s first student arrived. The friend expressed disagreement with something another said about her prayers being the reason her son was not killed by a bullet that nearly missed him. Before being interrupted the person concluded it “was simply due to the laws of Nature” and not prayer that it happen that way. Later when Lewis reflected on the matter he developed his argument for why upon careful analysis it isn’t just that simple. You have to consider the source behind these laws, something science is not able to explain. The essay is also available in God in the Dock.

Just recently released (at the end of April) was another video. The essay present was the last one he wrote and is known as “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness'” in God in the Dock. The YouTube presentation is given the title of “On ‘Sexual’ Morality” by the artist. It was published in the December 21, 1963 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. As you might guess from the titles, Lewis tackles the question of having a right to happiness from the specific angle of sexual expression.