On Living in The Atomic Age!
Plagues, Vikings, Accidents, and Microbes
It’s now clear that COVID-19 is a deadly serious global pandemic and all necessary precautions should be taken. Still, C. S. Lewis’s words, written 72 years ago, ring with relevance for us. Just replace “atomic bomb” with “coronavirus” in his essay below.
This post speaks for itself and comes from a friend-of-a-good-friend (Maury Jones and Bill Smith) with their permission. Both live in the scenic splendor and relative tranquility of Jackson Hole, WY.
“On Living in the Atomic Age” was borrowed from C.S. Lewis’s 1948 publication of essays entitled, Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays.[i] But don’t miss the fact that Lewis was writing his piece just a few short years after atomic bombs annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and forced Japan’s surrender in WWII.
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors; anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things; praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts, not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."
Thanks to Maury, Bill, and C.S. Lewis for helping us to keep a healthy perspective. And to remember to take one day at a time in God’s grace . . . for “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139: 16).
Tom
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7, emphasis added)
[i] For the curious . . . Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays is a repackaged edition of the revered author’s essays in which he deliberates on contemporary issues, from the moral to the spiritual to the practical. C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—was one of the foremost religious philosophers of the twentieth century; a thinker whose far-reaching influence on Christianity continues to be felt today.
Everyday family fun!! Daughter-in-law aunt Sharon with nieces (and our grandchildren) Cara and Bethany..