Last November, a quiet little Christian movie rolled into a handful of theaters nationwide. Based on a stage play written and starring Max McLean, The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis came and went before most people even knew it was there.
But now the film is available on streaming platforms (Apple TV and Google Play) and on Blu-ray and DVD. And it’s well worth a look.
The Most Reluctant Convert focuses on noted scholar, author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, delving into his journey from atheism to faith. It’s a thoughtful, resonant look at one of the 20th Century’s most influential Christian thinkers. And it’s one of those rare Christian movies that might even give some non-Christians who watch it a bit of pause. In some respects, it seems like Lewis was made to talk with people teetering at the edge of faith–people who need their beliefs seasoned with reason, who want to feel and think in equal measure.
I’ve been reading Lewis ever since I was 10 (thanks, of course, to The Chronicles of Narnia series). The author has been an instrumental guide in my own halting spiritual trek. Honestly, I still might quote from The Silver Chair–the fifth or sixth installment (depending on who you ask) in Lewis’ Narnia series–more than any other book.
Lewis is at his best when read as a whole: His books are like houses, with each row of bricks forming the foundation for the next row. But he’s wildly quotable, too. So in honor of The Most Reluctant Convert now available on the small screen, here are 20 of my favorites.
“All get what they want; they do not always like it.” — The Magician’s Nephew
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” — The Problem of Pain
“We May ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito.” — Letters to Malcolm
“I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” — Mere Christianity
“We are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.” — The Four Loves
“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again” — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” — God in the Dock
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen–not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” — Is Theology Poetry
“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life–the life God is sending one day by day.” — The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” — Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
“Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” — Mere Christianity
“It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.” — Letters to Malcom
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” — The Four Loves
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” — God in the Dock
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” — Mere Christianity
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” — Essays on Forgiveness
“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.” — The Silver Chair
“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.” — The Weight of Glory
“A Man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” — The Problem of Pain
“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” — The Last Battle
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