C. S. Lewis

     This past summer I taught a class on C. S. Lewis. A graduating student had seen this class listed in the academic catalogue and asked me if I would teach it. I said yes with a little reluctance. Though I had read all of Lewis' fiction before, I had rarely read with much attention or care his non-fiction works.  


     I have to admit that I have been suspicious of how people (evangelicals in particular) say the name of Lewis with such reverence. "Well, as C. S. Lewis once said..." He is the 'thinking Christian's' patron saint and the champion of wisdom over knowledge. Oh, and everyone likes to read about talking animals. 


     Regardless of my previous prejudices, Lewis completely won me over. He is remarkably insightful and wisely subversive. When I say subversive I mean that he sees into the culture (both Christian and secular) and knows how to subtly deconstruct previous ways of understanding and then reframe the conversation with wit and depth. 


     What also surprised me was the relevancy of his voice. Even though he died in 1963, he addresses the same issues as students today wrestle to understand. I think part of this is because he lived in a culture (20th century war-torn Britain--Lewis fought in WWI and lost his best friend) that struggled with the relevancy of faith. Where was God in the midst of such evil and destruction? Or even, why believe in God when science and philosophy have shown the sheer ridiculousness of Christianity? 


     Despite all of this, Lewis--with the help of such friends as J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams--moved through his own atheism and then deism back to Christianity. This formed his thought and his pursuit for God. He speaks to the sincere yet cynical soul who is not sure if the God of their youth is really viable anymore. How do we pursuit God in an age of cynicism? Lewis seems to know how to lead the way...


     In class I read the very beginning of Lewis' famous sermon, "The Weight of Glory." In this sermon he talks about 'desire.' This is a very important theme for Lewis in his writings. He believed that the telling of stories had the power to awaken desire in the human heart. More specifically he talked about desire as Sehnsucht, that desire and longing for God's presence; a heart sickness for home. For example, Reepicheep, the chief of the mice in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, had a Sehnsucht for Aslan's country. As a theology teacher, I often wonder what it means to awaken desire for God. Again, Lewis is able to lead the way... 

“If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ("The Weight of Glory")