Unlike the dramatic, instantaneous conversion of the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, C.S. Lewis came to faith in Christ via a search for truth that journeyed through the twists, turns, and dead ends of a long, thirty-three year maze characterized by varying worldviews, ideas, and religions. This quest involved both his intellect—which sought logical, sound answers to the questions of life—and his heart, which longed for something to fill the lonely void within. As Lewis explored each worldview along the way, he would be enamoured by them all, only to eventually recognize the weaknesses of each and be disappointed by the conclusions of a particular ideology.
It was this thoughtful, careful, Socratic search for life’s meaning that enabled Lewis to understand so deeply the world’s religions and philosophies; and also to articulate how these views paled in comparison to the ultimate truth found in Jesus Christ. In other words, God shaped Lewis’ pre-Christian wanderings in false religions and philosophy into redemptive experiences. This enabled Lewis to communicate the truths of Biblical faith in ways that searching people could understand. After all, he had been there and done that.
In the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress, an allegorical look at his own conversion, Lewis writes:
“The sole merit I claim for this book is that it is written by one who has proved them [various world views] all to be wrong. There is no room for vanity in the claim. I know them to be wrong not by intelligence but by experiences, such experience as would not have come my way if my youth had been wiser, more virtuous, and less self-centred than it was. For I have myself been deluded by every one of these false answers in turn and have contemplated each of them earnestly enough to discover the cheat. To have embraced so many false Florimels is no matter for boasting: It is fools, they say, who learn by experience. But since they do at last learn, let a fool bring his experience into the common stock that wiser men profit by it.”
By “dating” various worldviews, over time, Lewis developed deep insight into ways in which a religion can at first appear attractive, only to lead to bitter disappointment when the honeymoon is over and the witch suddenly appears. It was this experience in the first thirty years of his life, before his conversion, that prepared him to become one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century.
Lewis had begun his life surrounded by Christian practice and thought, but the loss of his mother and the coldness of his father sent him reeling spiritually. From this point he describes his faith journey thusly:
“On the intellectual side my own progress had been from ‘popular realism’ to philosophical idealism; from idealism to pantheism; from pantheism to theism; and from theism to Christianity. I still think this a very natural road, but I now know that it is a road very rarely trodden.”
At 17, Lewis gained entrance to Oxford University. His first studies at Oxford would however be brief. He soon found himself in the British Army, serving as an officer in the trenches of WWI. As he witnessed first hand the horrors of war in France and was even wounded in action, men dying all around him, Lewis’ atheism became more entrenched. He would survive the war, return to Oxford, and then immerse himself in academia.
Lewis was an an outstanding student who achieved a triple first at Oxford in Classics, Philosophy, and English. This means that he was at the top of his class in each of these subjects. His photographic memory, writing ability, and skill as a logician made him a peerless scholar.
During his undergraduate days, many of his generation were recovering from the horrors of war and questioning the very meaning of life. Lewis himself began to sense that his atheism did not address his inner longings. He felt drawn to what he called philosophical idealism, as espoused by British Hegelians and Henri Bergson. They held that the world we perceive sensually is only a veneer behind which the absolute hides. In other words, Lewis was beginning to realize that there is more to life than just “matter” and the material world we inhabit.
Lewis’ commitment to logic soon found the British Hegelian ‘absolute’ too vague and ambiguous. He explored pantheistic religions like Hinduism and the monistic world of Buddhism. However, his logic again compelled him to realize that pantheism was unable to explain the physical and spiritual worlds in a way that seemed to bear any resemblance to reality. To totally abandon the obvious—the physical world—and claim that it is just an illusion, went too far. Lewis knew both through logic and from exploring his own heart that there must be another way to explain the world as we see it.
Lewis eventually became a tutor and lecturer at Oxford. He revelled in the lively discussions on philosophy, literature, and religion that took place amongst his colleagues. Lewis began to gravitate toward and develop strong friendships with Christians like J.R.R. Tolkien, Hugo Dyson, and Owen Barfield—all of whom encouraged Lewis to carefully consider the claims of Christianity. While Lewis on the one hand was approaching this quest from an intellectual perspective, he also began to sense that there was more to the human person than just the mind. In his book, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis writes:
“Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy.”
Another word for “fantasy” is “imagination.” Lewis noted that throughout his life, he was moved by particular writers as they painted pictures exciting his imagination, imparting a sense of joy or longing that was beyond his present experience of reality. In other words, there were things that his intellect or mind could not fully grasp that he knew were still important:
Over time, Lewis realized that he liked Christian writers such as George MacDonald, Dante, Milton, George Herbert, and G.K. Chesterton. Lewis knew that the truth would somehow reconcile the intellectual side of his life with the deep yearning he felt from the imaginative side of his being. Finally, after years of thinking, reading, arguing, debating, and reflection,
Lewis succumbed to the idea that God exists:
“In the Trinity Term of 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.”
But Lewis had still not found Christ. He knew that God existed, but still needed to explore Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. He looked closely at one question separating these three Abrahamic faiths: did Jesus exist, and if so, was He who He said He was, and did He really arise from the dead?
On 19 September 1931, Lewis went for a walk with his friends Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien. That night, they discussed the literary idea of myth. Myth as they defined it was a story that passed on some element of truth and touched the imagination. Tolkien argued that the difference between all other myths and Christian myth was that the Christian story really happened in history through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This answered perfectly Lewis’ question—Jesus was who He said He was and He really was resurrected. Tolkien urged Lewis to approach the New Testament story with the same passion he applied when studying other literary works.
A short time after that conversation, Lewis was riding in his brother’s motorcycle sidecar on the way to the zoo. By the end of that ride, Lewis suddenly realized that he was a Christian.
His powerful imagination had been intrigued by the Gospel story. His intellect conceded that the idea of God made the most sense out of reality; and now, he had finally submitted the innermost concentric circle—his will—to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. His long quest to discover truth had finally found the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus of Nazareth.
With full abandon and commitment to Jesus, Lewis now sought to submit all aspects of his life to God and live to the fullest as a disciple of Christ. During the ensuing 30 years or so, he
would publish nearly a book per year, using the genres of fantasy, fiction, apologetics, letters and other writings to share the Gospel with the world. Second only to Sir Winston Churchill, he would become the best known voice on the BBC during WWII, giving people cause to believe in and live out the truths of Christian faith. Today, his books continue to sell millions of copies annually.
Why is this? Perhaps God redeemed the many years of searching by Lewis. God turned the dead ends, the twists and turns of Lewis’ search for truth into a wealth of experience and wisdom by which Lewis could effectively point out the weaknesses of all other worldviews and shine the light of truth on Jesus.
Lewis was called names akin to “airhead” as some in the erudite Oxford academic community could not fathom how such a gifted intellectual could fall for the Christian ‘fable.’ He was denied promotions and suffered personal insults for his beliefs; but for him, there was no turning back. He has since helped countless others to discover the one true God, who redeemed Lewis’ past search for truth by using this brilliant Oxford professor to show new generations that God is not only reasonable and rational; He can also fulfill the deepest longings within the human heart.
The Narnia series illustrates this quest. No child of 8 or 80 who encounters the character of Aslan can fail to embrace his goodness and moral power. Upon opening the books, no heart can tame the irresistible gravity that draws the love and awe of wide-eyed children into the Lion’s noble battles against evil. Although not strictly a Christian allegory, Lewis saturates Aslan’s character with Christ’s virtues; and therein lays the foundation for the Gospel message with a myth that prefigures reality. The Narnia universe abounds with the alluring messages he lays like land mines below the surface of an adult’s wilful reticence at direct evangelism. Lewis, or “Jack” as he was known to his inner circle, intimately understood that it was not writers of overt religious themes who rhetorically moved culture; but writers in all niches of society who wrote with a Christian worldview. Lewis possessed that rare talent that allows truth to be apprehended on many levels, along with the wit and humour to hold a child’s rapt focus. Of the seven Narnia books, none extends above 110 pages. As such, his economy of words only highlights the enchanting and profound narratives found there.
During the London Blitz, Lewis gave a series of radio talks to brave people steeped in anxiety about a perilous future. Those broadcasts were later curated into a seminal book entitled Mere Christianity, which remains a perennial best seller. Cherished for its plain talk about the relationship of God, morality, and reason in an age of human power gone horribly awry, this masterpiece is a treasure trove of ideas and aphorisms loved more today than when they were first put to paper. His short book, The Abolition of Man remains one of the greatest testaments about education and the dangers attending indoctrination of young minds to a moral neutrality. Indeed, the current burgeoning phalanx of modern apologetics owes much to Lewis, who divined that it was not Science and Christianity that were at war; but instead the clashing theistic and anti-theistic assumptions of the two competing worldviews. Lewis revealed that by understanding Science through anti-theistic preconceptions, modern man holds the neutral scientific method hostage to what is in reality a secular theology. In so doing, anti-theism elevates man to the vacated status of God through the dishonest premises of a circular reasoning—wholly biased in the interest of Scientism or Philosophic Naturalism.
Lewis was a firm believer in the adage that “one man sharpens another” and therefore was not content living in an echo chamber where only his views were parroted. Anyone familiar with his prose knows that they are infused with a frank humility. He readily admitted the limits of his knowledge and it seems that he was ever fearful that the fame he earned would mar both his character and the integrity of his perception. Lewis spent the greater bulk of his life as an Oxford Don committed to the cultivation of many generations of students. Between his writing, teaching, and public addresses, there remained room for little else for this confirmed bachelor living in a “life of the mind” brimming with ideas. Near the intellectual apex of that full life, Lewis met the American divorcee Joy Davidson and there began one of the most odd and tragically beautiful romances in literary history. His eventual marriage of convenience to this former atheist turned Christian admirer blossomed into a tender union of kindred spirits. Following Joy’s lost battle with cancer, Lewis was thrown into a suffering worthy of the Book of Job. The relationship, dramatized in the film, Shadowlands, put to the test every fibre of a faith he had for decades counselled others upon. The torments of loss and doubt endured upon Joy’s death are heartbreakingly revealed in his then anonymously penned A Grief Observed. In that last handful of years before his death in 1963, Lewis dusted away the mental abstractions of a lifetime and learned harrowing lessons of love and loss that school us and rend our hearts in life’s bitter transaction of joy and pain.
To Lewis, if Christianity be true, then all the truths contained within the knowledge of Philosophy and Science could be reconciled in the Cross—despite claims of Materialism and Post-Modernity to the contrary. In reflecting the light from Divine Intelligence, Lewis popularized and reinvigorated the claim that belief was rational and respectable in a benighted age wherein the sterile promises of humanistic technical proficiency gave way to the expediency of bewildered alienation and gas chambers. Lewis had a way of enshrining old veritable truths into a new light; and in turn, emboldening believers to plumb the depths of a worldview they might never have considered before. How hearteningly he writes:
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
Let us consider one further proof of the prescient genius of C.S. Lewis before concluding this epitaph.
Lewis’ 1942 satire entitled Screwtape Letters might be the best literary work of its kind in terms of describing how evil and the devil subtly take root in our lives. We tend to think of evil as overt, malevolent, and obvious. We think ourselves wise enough to spot it at a glance, but Lewis rightly shows us that we most certainly are not.
In this classic primer, Uncle Screwtape, a Senior Demon, writes a series of letters to his nephew Wormwood, who is a junior apprentice Tempter. Screwtape disciples Wormwood on how to surreptitiously tempt a Christian man dubbed “The Patient” away from God. It is a revelatory tour de force by Lewis, who admitted it gave him no pleasure to write this story.
The book was to be light satire but is deadly serious and treated as such by literary critics and Christians worldwide.
In the West, evil is often overlooked since it does not come in a red velvet bodysuit, tail and horns. Still, evil is everywhere being mistaken for good. As Screwtape puts it:
“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in Reality our best work is done by keeping things out…turn their gaze away from Him [God] towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own souls.”
Many are so self-absorbed that there is no room for God or anything else. In fact, our culture is set up to deliberately turn attention away from God toward our own feelings. Tik Tok culture illustrates this perfectly; but here is the scary part: Lewis wrote the following Preface to Screwtape Letters to describe where evil is actually conceived:
“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”
The greatest evil for us today is incubated by the globalist one-world BlackRock-ers in places like Davos. The CDC, WEF, and the EU have not escaped contamination, either. We are mistakenly looking for evil in the discernible and the conspicuous; but it is being clandestinely hatched in slick private jets and plush private offices.
Screwtape cautions Wormwood not to be too transparent, but rather to hide his ominous intentions from “The Patient”, and instead to take the veiled, serpentine approach:
“Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…”
Let people believe that nothing is really happening; or if it is happening, it is not really important. Few thought it alarming when baby steps were taken decades ago to legislate social justice. We said “this will never go anywhere.” Now, we cannot even have a meeting or open a sporting event without first making an indigenous land acknowledgement, and we are everywhere set upon by Critical Race Theory, DEI, catch and release bail laws, and unprosecuted shoplifting sprees that we once properly called looting.
Screwtape gives Wormwood the following advice regarding The Patient:
“Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence to Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable “real life”.
The more a culture believes only in what is probative through science, the less likely its members are to seek truth in transcendence, because that trial leads inexorably to God. The “sad cases” refer to the many scientists, especially physicists, who have inadvertently been led to God precisely and surprisingly through scientific inquiry. The ordinariness of things like single-celled organisms, finding marine fossils high in the mountains, or gazing at distant galaxies often leads many a hard scientist to the sublime and transcendent. That is a huge loss for secular humanism, for Screwtape, and most of all, for his master—Satan.
The left emphasizes “follow the science” because science—or rather scientism—is the false idol which for them has replaced God. This refrain to ‘follow the science’ led to billions of humans risking their lives to participate in the largest ever mass drug experiment, which is ongoing. It also led certain misguided “experts” to describe child mutilation as ‘gender affirming care’. Such a mindset, estranged as it is from the divine, squirms uncomfortably with the reality that we are made in God’s image. This nervous intransigence gives rise to the wanton killing of babies in utero and out. After all, babies cannot be made in God’s image, because there is no God. He is a fiction created by primitive man to explain what could not yet be solved by almighty science.
But God does exist; and foul forces far more experienced than the inept Wormwood are everywhere tempting us—subtly, imperceptibly. A furious Screwtape, Wormwood, and other demons are at this moment hounding us away from what is good and Godly; toward that which is profane, angry, and vindictive. We remain unaware of Screwtape’s nihilistic, perverse plans for us at our own peril.
And so to conclude, the reality of the world was Lewis’ central hope. As we look around our world, it often seems that we are living in a place like Narnia once was, in which it was always winter, but never Christmas. Yet there is another glorious world within its history and experience. As Queen Lucy herself said:
“Yes, in our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”
When Lucy and Edmund are to return to this world, they fear separation from Aslan, and Lucy says
“We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
Richard Dawkins once wrote that Darwin had helped him to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Dear reader, C.S. Lewis has helped me and many others to become intellectually fulfilled Christians. I therefore pray that his works will have the same effect upon millions of his future readers, spanning vast generations to come.
