Posted on 11/22/2003 2:56:08 PM PST by Valin
WASHINGTON Forty years ago today, as the world mourned the assassination of an American president, the passing of the 20th century's most influential Christian writer was hardly noticed: Clive Staples Lewis, professor of English literature at Oxford and Cambridge, died on Nov. 22, 1963. In his ability to nurture the faithful, as well as seduce the skeptic, C. S. Lewis had no peer.
Lewis was an atheist for much of his adult life, an experience that may have helped immunize him from the religious cliché, the reluctance to ask hard questions, the self-righteousness of the zealot. "Mr. Lewis possesses the rare gift," according to an early reviewer, "of being able to make righteousness readable." Lewis was not a theologian, but he expressed even the most difficult religious concepts with bracing clarity. He was not a preacher, yet his essays and novels pierce the heart with their nobility and tenderness.
The lessons found within his writings continue to resonate today. In fact, it's hard to imagine a time when the need for sane thinking about religion was more momentous. Cite an act of terror, from the sniper shootings in Washington to the bombings in Baghdad and Istanbul, and faith is close at hand. Many are now tempted to equate piety with venality — or worse — and it's here that Lewis may have the most to teach us.
Born in 1898, Lewis reached maturity in the 1930's, when Europe was being convulsed by the rise of new tyrannies: communism in Russia and fascism in Spain, Italy and Germany. At the same time, trends in psychology and theology were discrediting Christian doctrines of sin and repentance. The "root causes" of international disorder were said to be social and political arrangements, like runaway capitalism or the flawed Treaty of Versailles. But Lewis, like his friend J. R. R. Tolkien, knew the trouble lay deeper, and marshaled his literary imagination to explore it.
In a harrowing scene from his science fiction novel "Perelandra," the protagonist, Prof. Elwin Ransom, battles a mad scientist horribly disfigured by his lust for power. Lewis writes: "What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument." The Christians, Lewis argued, were right: the mystery of evil was rooted in the tragedy of human nature. Pride, and the poisoned conscience it created, functioned as the engine of the world's woes. Unchallenged, it led to a "ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the mark of Hell."
Many modern liberals dismiss Lewis's concept of the diabolical as a "medieval" superstition. Yet many religious conservatives seem to make evil the brainchild of God himself. For them, all individual and social sin — including the terror of Sept. 11 — is the perfect will of a Divine Judge (as the Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed at the time). Lewis disagreed: Evil is always man's doing, yet it is never his destiny. The power of choice makes evil possible, but it's also "the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."
While Oxford agnostics howled, Lewis gave BBC talks on theology that were a national sensation. Even his beloved children's stories, "The Chronicles of Narnia," ring with biblical themes of sin and redemption. No one did more to make "the repellent doctrines" of Christianity plausible to modern ears.
Nevertheless, Lewis acknowledged that religion easily becomes a device to exploit others — sometimes, as in the case of sexually abusive priests, at the very steps of the altar. The pretense of piety, he said, has left a record of violence that should shame every honest believer. "Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst," he wrote in "Reflections on the Psalms."
Yet, unlike the cynic, Lewis refused to blame the faith itself for the shortcomings of the church. Instead, his writings offer bright glimpses into the moral beauty of divine goodness, what Lewis called "the weight of glory." It is this vision of the Holy, he observed, that has produced many of the masterpieces of art and music. This same vision motivates the faithful to risk everything to relieve the world's suffering: caring for plague victims, defending the rights of children, guiding slaves to freedom, breaching war zones to feed the poor.
"If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next," he wrote in "Mere Christianity," one of his best-known works. "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this." In an era when God himself seems to be on trial, that's a timely message — for the half-hearted pilgrim as well as the devoted doubter. Probably just what C. S. Lewis had in mind.
Joseph Loconte, religion fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is editor of the forthcoming "The End of Illusions: America's Churches and Hitler's Gathering Storm, 1938-41.''
Did you read Chronicles of Nardia and God in the Dock?
Hmmmm---the author fails to credit (or doesn't know) that it was Tolkien who was responsible for Lewis's conversion to Christianity--although JRRT was somewhat saddened that Lewis chose the Anglican Church instead of adopting Tolkien's Catholicism.
Because Lewis died on the day JFK was assassinated, it has always seemed likely to me that this was Satan's way of obscuring the passing of this great Christian.
That was a terrible thing to witness on TV, much less being there, God bless you both.
I'm glad to hear another little one has been blessed by the writings of CS Lewis, I share her love of reading too.
His good deeds continue even now, eh?
- "Narnia" was the name of a Roman colony in central Italy. One surviving book of Livy's History of Rome contains an amusing (to us) passage describing that "in this year the Senate sent a thousand colonists to Narnia".
- "Aslan" is Turkish for "lion".
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. ~ C. S. Lewis
One reason why many people find [the false idea of the "force" or "life-force"] so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in [a god] and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere [chance evolution] of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great...force rolling on throughout the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the life-force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The life-force is a sort of tame god. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of its costs. Is the life-force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C.S. Lewis
There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. ~ C.S. Lewis
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself, and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. ~ C. S. Lewis
There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." ~ C. S. Lewis
[I felt] the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In...1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, "compel them to come in"...plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. ~ C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes yet with hope that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day.
~ C. S. Lewis (Inscription on his wife's, Joy Davidman's, memorial)
The further...in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside. ~ C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
[Believers] can't say "I'll be happy when God calls me [home]" without being afraid we'll be thought morbid. If we really believe what we say we believe – if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a "wandering to find home" why should we not look forward to the arrival? There are [only] three things we can do about death: Desire it, fear it, or ignore it. The third alternative, which is the one the modern world calls "healthy" is surely the most uneasy and precarious of all. ~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
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