Most people have heard of C.S. Lewis if only because of The Chronicles of Narnia. I think, over the years, I’ve probably read all his published material.  His writing is just so finely crafted, I even liked to read what he had to say when I didn’t share his point of view.  I loved teaching The Screwtape Letters to eighth graders at an Episcopal school around Halloween time.  Fun to examine devils and demons in that context.  (Personally, I think the most despicable demon in there is the mother who keeps insisting to her son that she doesn’t want to be any trouble at all and all she wants is a half piece of toast with only a tiny bit of butter and only a half cup of tea with half a sugar.  Impossible to get that right.)

Lewis also wrote a good number of essays.  One group was published as God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics.  I know it is wrong to quote a single line of scripture or of Shakespeare or of Lewis out of context.  When you do that, you can pretty much apply it to mean anything you want to.  Nevertheless, this week, I had reason to recall this: “It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies who torment us without end for our own good.”  Lewis says pretty much everything better than I do.  I would have just said that listening to bossy, negative, pessimistic complainers is just exhausting.  So I don’t.