We just ran a family 5K together, the little ones did their one mile fun run, and Esther sang the national anthem in front of nearly a thousand people.
Mornings like this one are the reason we write what we write. Our kids are not learning what a Christian life looks like from our teaching.
They are learning it from what we celebrate, what we make ordinary, and what we are willing to put down.
That is what makes this week’s comment section so hard to ignore.
Warning: if you look up to C.S. Lewis and think he is the perfect example of what it is to be a Christian, you’re not going to want to read this post because we’re going to challenge the way some Christians have turned his habits into a defense.
We call it the “C.S. Lewis loophole” because Christians are using the famous apologist as an excuse to drink and smoke and go to the pubs, like it is their holy duty to evangelize to the drunkards.
So let’s begin here…
Looks like we touched another nerve on Instagram and Facebook.
Evidently people are pretty passionate about their pints and pipes...
Our original post was about Christian influencers and leaders, and we bemoaned the fact that we keep seeing professing Christians live like the world (drinking, smoking, vaping, gambling, going to bars, etc.), yet claim that Christ has changed their lives because they include a Bible verse in their bio.
The comments we received threw us for a loop.
Now, don’t get us wrong. We’ve been doing this since 2014, and we were expecting some pushback, but the reasoning behind their arguments was a new one for us…
People are quoting C.S. Lewis and using his lifestyle as a defense for why they could enjoy their so-called “freedom in Christ” to go out to bars to drink and socialize as if it were a good thing.
“Lewis drank beer.”
“Lewis smoked a pipe.”
“Lewis and Tolkien talked about Christianity in a pub.”
The implication is obvious: If one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the twentieth century did it, how could it be spiritually dangerous?
But C.S. Lewis is not Jesus.
He was a brilliant apologist, a gifted storyteller and a man God used to help millions of people think more seriously about Christianity. He was also fallible.
He had appetites, weaknesses and blind spots like the rest of us.
Honoring the work God did through Lewis does not require us to sanctify every habit he carried.
In fact, the Christians using Lewis to defend their drinking and smoking are not following his theology. They are contradicting it.
Here’s our argument: Lewis’s own theology gives us no basis for using his personal habits to justify ours.
Why?
Because he very well knew of Paul’s example:
“Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.” — 1 Corinthians 8:13
Lewis’s own writings make the case…
Why This Even Matters
We recently saw a minister do something, and we can’t shake the thoughts that:
If you are a Christian leader, you need to think twice about how you live in public.
If you have a Bible verse in your bio, you need to think twice before you post about your life.
Why?
Because Christian leaders & influencers are held to a higher standard.
You don’t realize the power you have to truly “influence” people… and boldly displaying your “freedom” in Christ can lead others astray.
“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” — 1 Timothy 4:12
And…
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” — James 3:1
The higher the platform, the greater the responsibility.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about integrity.
And this applies to everyone who is a professing Christian, because:
Your life is teaching even when your mouth is closed.
Your marriage teaches.
Your habits teach.
What you post teaches.
What you excuse teaches.
What you do publicly teaches.
And what you hide eventually has a way of teaching too.
Because representing Jesus is a privilege.
And Scripture makes it clear: Teachers and influencers will answer for how they carried it.
The Pub Story Has Become a Christian Legend
The popular picture goes something like this: Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien spent their days sitting in a smoky pub, drinking pints and casually producing some of the greatest Christian literature of the modern age.
The truth is less romanticized.
The Inklings held their principal literary gatherings on Thursday evenings in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College, where members read manuscripts aloud and criticized one another’s work. A separate, overlapping group met on Tuesday mornings (later Mondays) in Oxford pubs, usually the Eagle and Child.
The Mythopoeic Society describes those pub gatherings as the less formal meetings and notes that, contrary to popular legend, the Inklings did not read their manuscripts in the pub. A published chronology in the Journal of Inklings Studies documents their gatherings from 1933 through 1954.
Yes, they drank and smoked. Those facts should not be hidden.
But neither should they be transformed into a Christian sacrament.
The beer did not write Mere Christianity.
The pipe did not create Narnia.
Alcohol and tobacco did not make Lewis wise.
God gave him a remarkable mind, and Lewis disciplined that mind through reading, writing, debate and friendship.
Why, then, are some Christians more eager to imitate the pint and pipe than the prayer, scholarship and discipline?
That’s the deeper question we should be asking…
Lewis Was Not Defending Indulgence
Lewis addressed alcohol directly in Mere Christianity, and we should let him speak for himself.
He was not a teetotaler, and he did not believe every Christian had to be one. He even warned that “one of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up.”
We agree with him.
We are not arguing for teetotalism.
A glass of wine with dinner is one thing. Parading through bars and pubs with a drink in one hand and a cigarette or vape in the other, and calling it Christian fellowship, is something else entirely.
And here is the part of the passage people skip. In the very same paragraph, Lewis wrote:
“Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Read that last clause again.
“Or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself.”
Paul said it this way:
“Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.” — 1 Corinthians 8:13
Lewis himself taught that so-called “Christian liberties” must sometimes be surrendered for the spiritual protection of another person.
He did not say, “I am free, so your weakness is your problem.”
He did not say, “Jesus made wine, so no one can question my drinking.”
He acknowledged that love may require abstinence even when the thing itself is not universally forbidden.
That is precisely the issue today.
When Christians parade Lewis’s drinking as permission to indulge, they are using his behavior against his teaching. They take the habit, discard the qualification and call the result Christian liberty.
That is not liberty. It is selective reading.
“I’m grateful to be here, receiving encouragement, recipes, and whole-body transformation. Even after trying times, I trust you and Mama Z. The spiritual aspect completes the system: body, soul, and spirit.”
— Ellen D.
Lewis’ Smoking Tells a Harder Story
Is smoking & vaping a sin?
Well, we’ll leave that between you and the Holy Spirit to debate, but we will confidently state this: both smoking and vaping are absolutely harmful to you.
Don’t believe the propaganda: the potential “health benefits” reported by the junk science and misguided influencers do not outweigh the proven, known risks.
Yet, the scale of smoking’s health risks was not understood or communicated publicly in Lewis’s era the way it is today.
We have knowledge about tobacco today that Lewis did not have when he began smoking, and Christians today have to make our decisions in light of what we now know.
We’re convinced that if C.S. Lewis truly understood how dangerous smoking was, he never would have picked up the pipe.
Because, how can a Christian knowingly do something harmful to their body, when they are doing their best to honor God and live their life for Jesus?
When nicotine becomes something a person cannot surrender, the issue goes deeper than physical health and into the question of what has mastered us. Some may claim it’s an idol.
Here’s the truth: Lewis’s smoking cannot honestly be presented as a harmless pleasure under perfect control.
Lewis’s smoking also cannot be separated entirely from the story of his declining health.
By his early sixties, he was suffering from serious kidney disease, and in 1963 he suffered a heart attack before dying later that year at just 64.
We cannot prove that alcohol and tobacco caused his particular illnesses or death, but it is equally difficult to portray decades of use as a harmless habit without potential consequences.
Interestingly, in one of his letters, later published in Letters of C.S. Lewis (1966), he admitted he found smoking hard to justify, but said that for him “not smoking is a whole time job.” That line is painfully recognizable to anyone who understands nicotine dependence.
And it appears that Lewis was addicted to nicotine. Later biographical accounts report that his doctor advised him to stop smoking, but Lewis did not follow that recommendation.
That is not a picture of freedom.
It is a picture of an appetite demanding his attention.
Lewis gave us language for this very condition in The Screwtape Letters. Describing the demonic corruption of pleasure, he wrote of “an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure.”
It is a remarkably vivid description of how an appetite can become bondage.
The appetite grows.
The pleasure shrinks.
The bondage remains.
Lewis also argued in Mere Christianity that our repeated choices gradually shape the central part of who we are. Choices are not isolated events.
They form us.
Put those ideas together:
A pleasure can become increasingly difficult to surrender.
Our repeated choices shape our character.
Love may require abstinence for another person’s sake.
A Christian should not encourage someone vulnerable to excess.
Lewis’s theology does not excuse bondage. It exposes it.
Because Lewis’s theology about self-control and sacrificial love was often right. His personal application was not always consistent with it.
That does not destroy his testimony. It reminds us that no Christian teacher should be treated as Christ.
And that’s why Bible-believing Christians celebrate his work so much — even though his personal life did not always align with his writings.
“But Jesus Drank Wine” Is Not a Blank Check
The other defense from the social media pundits arrives just as quickly:
“Jesus drank wine.”
Jesus turned water into wine at Cana (John 2). His critics called Him “a glutton and a drunkard” because He came “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34).
At the Last Supper, He took the cup and gave it to His disciples. He ate and drank in social settings where wine was part of the culture.
We do not need to rewrite the Bible by pretending all Biblical wine was unfermented grape juice. Wine in the ancient Mediterranean world was indeed fermented, although it was commonly mixed with water in many settings.
We cannot establish the exact alcohol concentration in every cup Jesus drank, we should not build doctrine on invented percentages, and we’re not here to argue over the alcohol content of “new wine” versus “old wine.”
But here is what Scripture establishes beyond question: Jesus was never drunk, never mastered by an appetite and never used His freedom to draw another person into sin.
The sinless Son of God drinking in perfect self-control at a wedding or covenant meal is not permission for a twenty-first-century Christian to party at the pubs or clubs, celebrate drunkenness, depend on alcohol to relax and fall asleep every night, or ignore what his example is doing to someone fighting addiction.
Jesus also fasted for forty days. He walked into hostile crowds.
He attended dinners with notorious sinners. We do not turn every historical detail of His earthly ministry into an indiscriminate lifestyle license.
No one is claiming that every sip of wine at dinner is automatically sinful. Scripture condemns drunkenness clearly, but it does not establish universal prohibition as the law for every believer.
The question is not merely, “Am I technically allowed to do this?”
The mature Christian asks:
“Is this wise?”
“Is this mastering me?”
“Does this glorify God?”
“What is my example teaching my children?”
“Could my freedom help pull another believer back toward bondage?”
Those are harder questions than quoting Cana. They are also more Biblical.
The question shouldn’t be about how close we can get to the line without crossing it, but why we are trying to do so in the first place.
Paul Chose Love Over His Rights
Paul confronted this exact spirit in Corinth.
Some believers knew that meat offered to idols was still meat. They possessed correct knowledge.
But Paul warned that exercising a legitimate freedom in front of a vulnerable believer could embolden that person to violate his conscience and fall into sin.
His conclusion was radical:
“Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.” — 1 Corinthians 8:13
Paul did not ask only whether the meat was lawful. He asked what his eating could do to his brother.
Romans makes the application to alcohol explicit:
“It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.” — Romans 14:21
Notice the standard: not “How close can I get to sin without crossing the line?” But, “How can I help my brother remain standing?”
Paul repeats the principle in 1 Corinthians 10.
Not everything lawful is helpful.
Not everything lawful builds up. Christians are to seek another person’s good, do everything to God’s glory and avoid becoming a cause of stumbling.
This does not mean the most restrictive person in the church gets to control everyone else’s conscience.
Biblical stumbling is more serious than another Christian merely disapproving of you.
In 1 Corinthians 8, the weaker believer is being emboldened to participate in what he believes is sin.
That is exactly why alcohol deserves sober consideration.
We are not discussing an imaginary danger. We are talking about men and women recovering from alcohol dependence, children learning what adulthood looks like, families already wounded by addiction and believers who may interpret our public celebration as spiritual permission.
You may be able to drink one glass and stop.
The person following your example may not.
Love cares about that difference, which is why…
You need to think twice about how you live in public, and what you post online.
“Thank you so much for everything you all do, and especially today for the Scriptures. I really needed those today.”
— Mary G.
We Are Living Letters
Here’s one more thought that convicts us to the core…
Paul told the Corinthians that they were “a letter from Christ,” “known and read by all,” written “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Corinthians 3:2–3).
People read our lives long before they study our theology.
They watch what we celebrate.
They notice what we excuse.
They remember what we normalize.
This becomes even more serious when a Christian has influence.
Lewis could not have imagined social media circulating photographs of him with a pipe or turning his habits into memes and arguments generations after his death.
But we can see the influence our choices carry today.
We know a photograph can reach millions.
We know a casual recommendation can become someone else’s permission.
We know alcohol and nicotine are not neutral issues for millions of families.
That knowledge gives us greater responsibility, not less.
The Bible calls us to sobriety, self-control, wisdom and love. None of those virtues asks only what we can get away with.
Stop Using Lewis to Silence Conviction
C.S. Lewis gave the church extraordinary gifts.
Read Mere Christianity.
Read The Screwtape Letters.
Read The Weight of Glory.
Read Narnia to your children.
Learn from his imagination, courage and defense of objective truth.
But stop treating his pipe like a theological argument.
Stop treating the Eagle and Child like a model for Christian discipleship.
Stop using a dead man’s ignorance and weakness to silence the Holy Spirit’s conviction in a living believer.
C.S. Lewis never claimed to be our standard. Jesus is.
And according to Lewis’s own writing, a mature Christian may need to surrender a permissible pleasure when it controls him, endangers him or encourages another person toward sin.
We cannot know what Lewis would do if he were alive today. But we do know what he wrote: Christian freedom is not an excuse to be mastered by an appetite or to encourage another person toward sin.
Not because every glass of wine is automatically sinful.
Not because salvation is earned through perfect health habits.
Not because Christians struggling with addiction should be shamed.
He would do it because love willingly surrenders a right when exercising it may help destroy someone for whom Christ died.
That is not legalism.
That is discipleship.
And it is time we stopped quoting C.S. Lewis to escape the very standard his own theology upheld.
A Note to Those Struggling
If alcohol or nicotine has gained control over you, condemnation will not set you free.
Bring it into the light. Tell a trusted friend or a trusted minister.
Seek qualified help. Remove easy access, identify the situations that trigger you and refuse the lie that asking for support means your faith is weak.
There is no shame in needing help. The danger is defending the chain because someone you admire once wore one too.
A Prayer for You. 🙏
Almighty God, thank You for the freedom I have in Christ, and for the wisdom You give to anyone who asks.
Help me hear Your voice clearly, and give me a soft heart and the courage to follow wherever You lead.
Give me a love that looks around the room before lifting a glass, and a willingness to lay down a right for the sake of a brother or sister.
Make me a living letter that points people to Jesus, not to my liberties.
Amen.
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Follow Jesus, not trends, in every area.
As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.
~ Dr. Z & Mama Z
References
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 2, “The Cardinal Virtues.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 4, “Morality and Psychoanalysis.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter IX.
Lewis's March 13, 1956 letter in Yours, Jack
W.H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C.S. Lewis (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966). As reviewed in J.D. Douglas, “Letters from C.S. Lewis,” Christianity Today, September 16, 1966.
The Mythopoeic Society, “About the Inklings.”
Don W. King, “When Did the Inklings Meet? A Chronological Survey of Their Gatherings: 1933–1954,” Journal of Inklings Studies 10, no. 2 (2020).
Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill, “Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung: Preliminary Report,” British Medical Journal 2 (1950): 739–748.
Virginia Berridge, “Medicine and the Public: The 1962 Report of the Royal College of Physicians and the New Public Health,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 81, no. 1 (2007): 286–311.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Cigarette Smoking.”
National Cancer Institute, “Alcohol and Cancer Risk.”
I really appreciate this message and the biblical wisdom shared in it. The Holy Spirit convicted me to evaluate my relationship with alcohol a few years ago and I don’t miss it. I also quit smoking 10 years ago but a couple years back I picked up a nicotine pouch habit because I read some “studies” about nicotine having some health benefits and I enjoy the minty flavor. Come to find out it’s been having a negative effect on my blood pressure, not to mention the cost. I’m grateful for the suggestion you made to bring the dependency into the light and seek accountability from a trusted friend or minister. I don’t want to be a slave to anything but God. Thank you for your leadership, insightful and inspiring posts and excellent service in the name of Jesus Christ. God bless you and your family!
Thank you for this important message.