This is the only surviving audio of C.S. Lewis’s broadcast talks. The New Men is the last episode in Beyond Personality, the third series. It was broadcast on BBC radio on March 21, 1944.
“The point I want to drive home is that God has infinite attention, infinite leisure to spare for each one of us. He doesn’t have to take us in a lump. You’re as much alone with Him as if you were the only thing he ever created. When Christ died He died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.
I was pointing out last time that the Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self and that this process goes on very far inside, one’s most private wishes, ones point of view, are the things that have to change. That’s why unbelievers complain that Christianity is a very selfish religion. Isn’t it very selfish, even morbid, they say, to always be bothering about the inside of your own soul, instead of thinking of Humanity.
Now what would an NCO say to a soldier who had a dirty rifle and when told to clean it replied, but sergeant isn’t it very selfish even morbid to be always bothering about the inside of your own rifle instead of thinking about the United Nations. Well, we didn’t bother about what the NCO would actually say, you see the point. The man is not going to be much use to the United Nations if his rifle isn’t fit to shoot with. In the same way people who are just acting from their old natural selves won’t do much real permanent good to other people.”
