I've been silent in my blog for a couple of months. I break out again today with thoughts on writing a memoir. Yes, I've begun that task. Why would I do that? What do I have to offer to the world? Well, you can follow my tentative thoughts here. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/08/08/w...

I set out to write a book about spiritual advisors to presidents. Instead, I wrote a book about C.S. Lewis. How did that happen? Here's how the Lord set me on a new path. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/06/11/t...

Ah, the disappointments we writers must face.

This must be why I haven't yet written that great American novel I've been contemplating.

Being a historian can be hazardous to one's health.

How I'm feeling today. It's hard being a historian sometimes.

A rare attitude for a politician. We need more politicians who are concerned about becoming arrogant. Character matters.

I concluded my course on Dorothy Sayers with Lewis’s panegyric for her that was read at her funeral. The final words of his panegyric say it perfectly. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/05/09/h...

Sayers's essay, “The Lost Tools of Learning,” has become nearly required reading for the burgeoning home schooling movement in America. In it, she challenges educators to return to the significance of stages of learning: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/05/09/h...

Most people know nothing about Dorothy Sayers except for her Peter Wimsey novels. Yet she left those behind to expound on her Christian faith through plays, essays, & a seminal book focused on the God-given ability for mankind to be a sub-creator. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/05/09/h...

“She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan-letter,” C.S. Lewis noted about Dorothy Sayers. “I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind.” ponderingprinciples.com/2026/05/09/h...

Lewis: An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. We don't enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop & laid asleep, are we at leisure to savor the real beauties. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/04/28/s...

If that photo makes it seem as though I was having a good time speaking at the C.S. Lewis conference, it’s because I was having a good time speaking. My topic was Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/04/28/s...

The theme for the C.S. Lewis "Mere Christians" conference was “On Stories,” highlighting Lewis’s penchant for telling tales that capture the imaginations of his readers while teaching valuable truths. Here are some highlights from the conference. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/04/28/s...

Lewis delineates exactly how we “human machines” go wrong in our actions toward others. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/04/13/t...

I don’t like all the sin in the world; neither does God. But I also know that righteousness is not possible without this divine gift of free will. Only in that way am I able to freely respond to His love and mercy. Only via free will can life have any meaning. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/02/09/a...

C.S. Lewis: “[God] Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.” ponderingprinciples.com/2026/02/09/a...

When the Lord brought this earth into existence & peopled it, His goal was to create the kind of beings who could truly love Him & one another. If they were merely puppets and/or marionettes on strings, there would be nothing valuable in that at all. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/02/09/a...

C.S. Lewis: "There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source." ponderingprinciples.com/2026/02/09/a...

C.S. Lewis: "I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning." ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/27/l...

One of the reasons I enjoy teaching about C.S. Lewis and sharing his thoughts is that he is so good at putting deep thoughts into words that should communicate well with almost any audience. One doesn’t have to be an academic to figure out what he is saying. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/27/l...

The Rev. James Welch, head of religious broadcasting for the BBC during WWII, sought just the perfect “voice” and “message” that Britain needed to hear during this stressful time. In C.S. Lewis's he found that voice. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/12/m...

Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/12/m...

As a historian, I want to place "Mere Christianity" into its historical context. This book by Paul McCusker, "C.S. Lewis & Mere Christianity: The Crisis That Created a Classic," helps me do so. In my class, I use it as background for the creation of the book. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/12/m...

C.S. Lewis’s "Mere Christianity" has become a classic in the history of books explaining the Christian faith. The title didn’t mean “dumbing down” the faith; it meant the essence of the faith as believed by most Christians. ponderingprinciples.com/2026/01/12/m...

In "Mere Christianity," C.S. Lewis asks if evil is God's will. “If it is,” he begins, “He is a strange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?” I wrote about this here. ponderingprinciples.com/2025/02/05/t...

Christians' message is of infinite importance. We need to engage the culture with that message in a way that speaks to the culture. Lewis’s approach—our faith present in everything we say & do, spoken in the vocabulary of our audience, is the best approach. ponderingprinciples.com/2025/10/15/t...

I’m teaching a class at my church in which I attempt to help those who attend to see how the Lord wants us to respond to our culture. I find myself going back to what C.S. Lewis wrote. I call it “The Lewis Model.” What he said in his day still applies today. ponderingprinciples.com/2025/10/15/t...

God seeks to use the academically inclined to help all Christians in their relationship to the culture & non-Christian views. "Good philosophy must exist," C.S. Lewis argues, "if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." ponderingprinciples.com/2025/09/19/b...

I’m teaching a course at church: Being Christian in a Non-Christian Culture. What is the Church & its mission? How are Christians to interact with the culture? What is the proper relationship between Church & State? What has happened to the Christian witness? ponderingprinciples.com/2025/09/19/b...