Will Vaus

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:43-48 "We must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves--to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not." C. S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"

In 1962 C. S. Lewis was asked by The Christian Century , “What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?” In response, Lewis listed ten books. #3 on that list was The Aeneid by Virgil ( The Christian Century , 6 June 1962). Lewis first encountered the great Roman poet of the first century BC while he was a student at Cherbourg Preparatory School in Great Malvern, England, from 1911 to 1913. Lewis was then in his early teens. His first reading of Virgil contributed, indirectly, to his temporary turn to atheism. He described it this way in chapter IV of Surprised by Joy : This ludicrous burden of false duties in prayer provided, of course, an unconscious motive for wishing to shuffle off the Christian faith; but about the same time, or a little later, conscious causes of doubt arose. One came from reading the classics. Here, especially in Virgil, one was presented with a mass of religious ideas; and all teachers and editors took it for gr...