Being college students, how should we interpret (and possibly apply) this passage from The Great Divorce? This selection comes from a conversation between a spirit named Dick and an intellectual (perhaps a theologian) in chapter 5. Dicks says:

"Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it beacause it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all tuned: whether after all the Supernatural might in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith...(skip a ways)...We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes" (36-37).

I feel Lewis' views have a tendency to be "current," "modern," and "successful" at times, let us not be sponges, and wrestle with his ideas before we absorb them. I say this mostly as a reminder to myself, because I have a tendency to do so. This passage surprised me because I often get the impression that he (Lewis) is afraid of crude salvationism...but aren't we all? In our college years and beyond, I hope we are more like prophets (which often got stoned in the OT for saying the truth) than popular authors. For some odd reason, I often wonder if truth is truth if someone isn't getting pissed off. I am being rediculous, I know, but still I feel this is something to consider.