John Piper on C.S. Lewis

For the past 22 years, Pastor John Piper has held a conference for pastors at his church in Minnesota. Whatever you think about Dr. Piper's philosophy, theology, or preaching, he is a great help to a lot of pastors. He is probably the only old preacher I am aware of who stresses and encourages passion amongst the younger generations. He is incredibly well read and lives a simpler life than many, many people.

Each year at his conference for pastors, he holds the tradition of presenting a biography of a great Christian man during one of the speaking slots. This year, he presented the life of my greatest intellectual influence: C.S. Lewis. The link will take you to the manuscript (which has an impressive amount of footnotes), but you can also watch it or listen to it. Lewis lived such an interesting life and I just thought I could use this platform to point you in that direction.

I greatly benefited from it, and it was awesome to hear such an intense Bible scholar like Piper praise and thank God for such a guy like Lewis who was in no way a Biblical scholar, and who was never once in pastoral ministry.

"The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.”

-C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms