Observe and Rapport

Realized I never posted my 2025 favorites!

What C.S. Lewis does (and what fifteen years of Catholic education never managed) is explain the why. Not the rituals. Not the doctrine. The underlying logic of it all: why Christianity offers such a precise and surprisingly coherent map for navigating morality, love, and the aching complexity of being human. He uses plain language, concrete metaphors, and a refreshing intellectual honesty. He admits what he hasn’t figured out. He doesn’t try to convert you. He simply lays out why so many people don’t just choose faith, but find they need it.

For years, I’d written off the whole enterprise as theater for the credulous. Lewis dismantles that caricature. He shows that Christianity isn’t intellectual surrender, it’s intellectual humility. It’s the recognition that our moral instincts, our longing for meaning, and our ache for transcendence point somewhere beyond us. He translates what felt like suffocating Catholic jargon into something breathable.

There were moments I had to put the book down and just smile. Not because I was overwhelmed, but because, for the first time, someone had articulated what the priests and nuns of my childhood never could. The clichés I used to cringe at (“surrender,” “grace,” “letting Christ work through you”) started to actually make sense.

If you went to Catholic school and left feeling hollow, this book is what you were owed and never given. I feel like it’s a massive missed opportunity that Mere Christianity is not THE starting point for all young Christians — not the sacraments, not the Latin, not the guilt. THIS.

You may not finish Mere Christianity as a full-fledged believer. But if you grew up religious and walked away, I suspect you’ll at least understand what you walked away from.

That’s what happened to me. I went from not getting it… to getting it.

Rating: 5 / 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️