# “The union of great ferocity with extreme tenderness” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2025/11/14/the-union-of-great-ferocity-with-extreme-tenderness-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2025-11-14T05:00:00-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“**The Kilns,**
 **Headington Quarry,** **Oxford** **Jan. 16, 1959**

Dear Mr. Lofstrom

1. I am afraid I don’t know the answer to your question about books of Christian
instruction for children. Most of those I have seen—but I haven’t seen many—seem
to me namby-pamby and ‘sissie’ and calculated to nauseate any child worth his salt.
Of course I have tried to do what I can for children—in a mythical and fantastic
form—by my seven ‘Narnian’ fairy tales. They work well with some children but not
with others. Sorry this looks like salesmanship: but honestly if I knew anything
else I’d mention it.

2. Of course. ‘Gentle Jesus’, my elbow! The most striking thing about Our Lord is
the union of great ferocity with extreme tenderness. (Remember Pascal? ‘I do not
admire the extreme of one virtue unless you show me at the same time the extreme
of the opposite virtue. One shows one’s greatness not by being at an extremity but
by being simultaneously at two extremities and filling all the space between’).

Add to this that He is also a supreme ironist, dialectician, and (occasionally) 
humourist. So go on! You are on the right track now: getting to the real Man behind
all the plaster dolls that have been substituted for Him. This is the appearance
in Human form of the God who made the Tiger and the Lamb, the avalanche and the 
rose. He’ll frighten and puzzle you: but the real Christ can be loved and admired
as the doll can’t.

3. ‘For him who is haunted by the smell of invisible roses the cure is work’ (MacDonald).
If we feel we have talents that don’t find expression in our ordinary duties and
recreations, I think we must just go on doing the ordinary things as well as we 
can. If God wants to use these suspected talents, He will: in His own time and way.
At all costs one must keep clear of all the witch-doctors and their patent cures—
as you say yourself.

Yours sincerely

C.S. Lewis”

–C.S. Lewis, [_The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950-1963_](https://amzn.to/48cpbZu),,
ed. Walter Hooper, vol. 3 (New York: HarperCollins, 2004–2007), 3: 1010–1011.

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