Thread by @KrisAtLarge

there's a *lie* that #CSLewis told about himself in public, frequently. there were a lot of lies that he told about himself in public—not _malicious_ lies, but still lies.

this is something that Western society has trouble with: grasping that lies need not be malicious.

(1/x)

if you say something factually incorrect, you're a *liar*, even if you believe the lies to be truths. @MattWalshBlog or @realchrisrufo BELIEVE their propaganda lies about trans people, and they double and treble and quadruple down on believing them, when challenged, but...

(2/x)

...that's exactly why they're fanatics, and why their lies ought not to be taken at face value: @MattWalshBlog &c. aren't able to withstand criticism of their propaganda. if they're called out for telling lies, they tell more of them, and more loudly. this is *fanaticism*.

(3/x)

but back to #CSLewis and that awkward lie he told about himself: he pretended, since it made for a *better story*, a more enticing and persuasive personal narrative, that he was a "converted pagan". it's not true—he was raised as a Christian and was never seriously pagan.

(4/x)

yes, Jack Lewis had pagan *sympathies*, but so did I when I was getting my Classics degree at SDSU (partly because of #CSLewis's influence on me—I used to believe Lewis and place implicit trust in him, which was a mistake.) simply having _sympathies_ isn't really enough.

(5/x)

#CSLewis's *religious frame of reference* was Christian and only Christian. that's what he'd learned in childhood and that's what he went back to, after a period of skepticism and dabbling with rebellion from it. he wasn't at any time a "converted pagan", not really.

(6/x)

however, right-wing Christians like @LarryTaunton and @DouthatNYT—especially the *evangelical* community, which Jack Lewis's apologetics helped build, in those early days of the racist Christian reaction to the Black civil rights movement—have spread a *myth* about Lewis.

(7/x)

it's the false belief of people like Taunton and Douthat that a non-believer is simply one good logical argument away from conversion to Christianity—just as they imagine #CSLewis to have been converted by Tolkien, with that specious argument we've critiqued in the past.

(8/x)

they want to gloss over the fact that Lewis was already inclined towards Christianity from the start, because *that's how he'd been acculturated*.

take *me* as a counterexample: I was NOT raised Christian, hence it's been easier for me to reject Christian assumptions.

(9/x)

I'm polytheistic and pagan, though I went through a period of greater belief in Christianity and even Catholic conversion. it didn't *last*, however. I went the opposite direction as #CSLewis, you could say: I rejected Christianity for paganism and feel better off for it.

(10/x)