“Lessons from an Inconsolable soul”
He wasn’t reformed. He wasn’t really evangelical either. He couldn’t decide whether penal substitution was the reason Christ hung on a cross, preferring simply to accept the benefits without understanding the method. He believed that reason and logic were the greatest tools in mankind’s collective toolbox, perhaps leading to the neglecting of scripture. He didn’t think it beyond reason that non-Christians, sincere in their beliefs, might end up in Heaven. He has even been accused of universalism (everyone will be in Heaven). One blogger has compared him with Rob Bell- who’s teaching is regarded by many as heretical.
When I tell people that I am reading C.S. Lewis the normal response is one of surprise: “You are reading children’s books about magical worlds?!” And to be totally transparent, when I re-read The Chronicles of Narnia a few years ago, I knew little else about Clive Stapleton Lewis (known to his friends as Jack) other than his renown as a children's’ author and his use of novels to illustrate biblical themes. However, when one starts to read deeper into the Lewis collection, one can quickly understand why people like John Piper describe him thus:
“[The reason I like Lewis is] in the way that the experience of Joy and the defense of Truth come together in Lewis’s life and writings. The way Lewis deals with these two things—Joy and Truth—is so radically different from Liberal theology and emergent postmodern slipperiness that he is simply in another world—a world where I am totally at home, and where I find both my heart and my mind awakened and made more alive and perceptive and responsive and earnest and hopeful and amazed and passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to C. S. Lewis.”
Tim Keller also has high praise for the 20th Century professor and author:
“When I first became a Christian believer, his writings spoke to my questions and concerns more than any other. So I have continually, repeatedly, read his writings until I can recite dozens of passages by heart.”
My own journey through C.S. Lewis’s writings began with Narnia and moved onto his Space Trilogy. It is a well hidden secret that Lewis wrote a science-fiction trilogy! In the first two of the three books (Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra), Lewis tries to show how the gospel may have panned out on a different planet. Ransom, a human man from earth, travels to Mars and Venus. There, with his own personal knowledge of sin, he discovers races that never fell to sin or Satan, and learns a great deal about God’s rescue plan for mankind. The final book (That Hideous Strength) takes place on a post-WWII earth. It contains a number of principles which Lewis deals with in other books and, I must confess, I cannot understand everything he tries to symbolise through the novel.
By reading his trilogy, I discovered that Lewis was a much deeper and more perceptive man than I had originally given him credit for. He was much much more than a simple fairy tale novelist (difficult though that may be) and I endeavoured to find more of his books and essays.
Mere Christianity, famous amongst Christian circles, was next read. I followed the first 2/3s of the book with wrapt attention- his reason and logic seemed to beat the normal scientific arguments against God. His “Bad, Mad or Son of God” theory regarding the Lord Jesus is regularly quoted by many of my friends and I was interested to see its context in Mere Christianity. The last 1/3 of the book dealt with organised religion, and it was here that I thought Lewis failed to properly apply the scriptures. When his search for reason and logic finally ran its course- ending with the existence of a personal and almighty God, and our need to do something about it- rather than turning to the scriptures, he appeared to simply jump on board the Church of England’s teachings. This was a major oversight, and, arguably, his worst.
With mixed feelings about Mere Christianity, I read The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divide. The Screwtape Letters were superb, and I shall be blogging about them in the near future. The Great Divide was also a fascinating book, but one to be read with great caution. C.S. Lewis himself put large WARNING signs over this book:
“I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course- or I have intended it to have- a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.”
“Ye are only dreaming. And if ye come to tell of what ye have seen, make it plain that it was but a dream. Se ye make it very plain. Give no poor fool the pretext to think ye are claiming knowledge of what no mortal knows.”
Lewis’s books all bear the mark of a 20th Century author, scarred by the events of 2 world wars, and by his defense of reason and logic against the rise of modernism thinking. These ideas and also everyday events form the backdrop to his works. It came as a shock to me to read about a bus in the afterlife!
A lecture given by Lewis, who was a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge, to a number of students, called ‘The Inner Ring’ has given me great pause for thought over the years. To read more about the subject you can visit my earlier blog An Outsiders Obituary- alternatively (and perhaps preferably) find his original lecture and have a look for yourself.
It was with a good understanding- or so I thought- of Lewis that I eventually read Surprised by Joy and A Pilgrims Regress. These two books open up an entirely new side to Lewis, and one that influenced him greater than anything else for his whole life.
In Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s autobiography, he explains how he experienced throughout his life something which he describes as ‘Joy’:
“Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.”
“All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”
I, and others I have talked to, can sympathise with Lewis. Who hasn’t felt that pang of longing? The intense feeling of homesickness, even when seated in one’s own house? That feeling of eternality and majesty when standing in the midst of a storm, or on a mountain edge? Even the nostalgic joy when you remember a far distant day or experience from your childhood?
Lewis said that the pang itself was part of the Joy. Understandably these feelings are hard to describe, however Lewis did a good job of trying:
“…the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There [in Heaven], to have is to want and to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing.”
The purpose of this longing, or joy, is to draw us to the greatest Joy and Joy-giver, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lewis uses a humorous quote to make this point:
“There are traps everywhere-‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”
The Lord uses stabs of longing, an inconsolable joy to show us a small picture of how wonderful Jesus is. Lewis’s autobiography ends rather suddenly with Lewis’s conversion:
“But what, in conclusion, of joy? for that, after all, is what the story has been mainly about. To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest to me since I became a Christian. I cannot, indeed, complain…that the visionary gleam has passed away. I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the old stab, the old bitter-sweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience…had never the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer….When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries “Look!” The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare….Not of course, that I don’t often catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of less importance.”
In conclusion for myself then, C.S. Lewis has a manner which brings the reality of life and death and eternity to the forefront of a situation. His vivid illustrations and pictures can be a great aid in better understanding and knowing the Lord. His journey with ‘Joy’ helps me to better appreciate similar stabs of longing I feel and have felt. His reason and logic help me to defend the gospel and its claims. His understanding of myths and fairy tales as shadows of the real thing (a matter I have totally skipped over in my brief review of Lewis) encourage believers to appreciate literature and culture, and to use them as springboards to Christ. His insights into friendship (another issue which I have failed to write about) help us to live with love towards our fellow Christians.
C.S. Lewis is one of the most influential writers of the past 100 years. His books continue to encourage and exhort. His doctrinal failings, although seemingly very substantial and dangerous, should not stop a Christian from reading and discussing his books.
A few of C.S. Lewis’s quotes and sayings:
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it
