Ways of Avoiding God Today

A passage in a little-known essay of C. S. Lewis on ways we avoid God.  Prof. John Stackhouse has reset it to heighten its impact.
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The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy.

Avoid silence,

avoid solitude,

avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track.

Concentrate on money,

sex,

status,

health

and (above all)

on your own grievances.

Keep the radio on.

Live in a crowd.

Use plenty of sedation.

If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

The passage is in “The Seeing Eye,” a paper collected in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1976).