quote:Even his longtime liaison with a woman literally old enough to be his mother, Mrs. Moore, became an exercise in unbreakable friendship long after the heat of passion faded. Unlike his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis did not create a family; rather he attached himself to two women who were already mothers, and tried to be a decent father to their children.
It makes it sound like you can commit adultery and satisfy wanton needs if you decide to defend Christianity after you fulfilled your earthly desires (unless you die before you decide you've had enough).
I have to imagine that he knew of Christianity even before he rejected it. --A friend once told me his (not CS Lewis) view that those who reject God are adulterers. I can't confirm that and take that as an opinion.
But in the long view, doesn't it seem sort of convenient? Have fun young and then spend the last years when your hormones are calm, apologetically defending Christianity.
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But, it sounded convenient for him to have sex outside of marriage with two women, and then tell others to follow rules he didn't follow.
Or maybe, I just misunderstood the word liaison. Maybe acting as a father to the children makes it okay.
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posted
Christians do believe that repentance can cleanse almost any sin. That's what that whole "Savior" thing is about. they also believe it is better never to have committed a sin than to have to go through repentance.
Can Lewis still be admired, even though he did not live the laws of christianity until AFTER he began believing in the tenets of that religion? Yes. It would just be stupid to say that anyone who hasn't always obeyed the rules doesn't get any credit for changing their minds later. But the behaviour for which we admire Lewis is not that which occured before his conversion.
Saying that Lewis has no right to "tell others to follow rules he didn't follow" is the equivalent of telling parents, "If you've ever smoked, used drugs or had sex outside of marriage, then you have no right to tell your children not to." Lewis made mistakes. Then he realized that they WERE mistakes, and he stopped. Then he told other people what he had realized, and encouraged them to stop too.
The only real problem would be to reject Lewis's later choices because he had made some bad ones earlier on, or to pretend that his early choices never happened. Card isn't doing either of those.
posted
Mrs. Moore wasn't Lewis's lover. As far as I can tell, she was a mother surrogate, although not a pleasant one.
Lewis does hint that when he was an atheist he did some things he disliked later, and I think he was talking about sex; but at that point, he was a passionate atheist, with no intention of having anything to do with Christianity. The idea that he was calmly planning a deathbed (or, rather, 30-odd-years-before-the-deathbed) conversion isn't supported.
I can't find this quote using Google. Link?
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posted
The "second woman" referred to is Joy Gresham, to whom he was married. She had two sons from a previous marriage.
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and take that as an opinion. 
