A Man of a Million Insights: Celebrating C.S. Lewis's Birthday
Yesterday was the 125th birthday of C.S. Lewis, a man beloved by us at Chapel Field. He is best known by many for his Narnia series, but he is the author of many other works ranging from high scholastic writing on Medieval literature to works of apologetics and theology. Lewis grew up in a nominal Anglican home with a devout mother and a distant father. As a young boy his mother died leaving him and his brother Warnie alone with their dad who shortly thereafter sent Lewis off to boarding school. The experience at boarding school was disastrous and he begged his father for relief. Eventually his dad sent him to study with a personal tutor, Mr. Kirkpatrick, known to Lewis as “the Great Knock.” Lewis studied Greek and Latin in preparation to one day enter Oxford. In the process, Lewis became an atheist. Under the tutelage of the Great Knock, Lewis found the teaching of Christianity implausible, especially the notion of a good God, given the horrid realities of evil, pain, and suffering in the world. Shortly after entering Oxford and having just turned 19 in 1917, Lewis was drafted to serve in the British military in WWI where he was introduced to the trenches at the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest battle the world had ever seen. A year later Lewis was almost killed by a mortar round. His wounds eventually landed him back in England. As he healed, he returned to his studies where he excelled and eventually became a tutor himself at Oxford. It was shortly after becoming a tutor that he met J.R.R. Tolkien. C.S. Lewis loved his friend Tolkien. The two were kindred spirits, each having a deep love for great literature. In 1931, after a long walk together Lewis returned to the faith. He would eventually go on to write over 25 works of Christian literature. He is a gift to the modern Christian church in that he brings a unique and imaginative perspective to the study of Christianity.
While Lewis has a million insights that provoke contemplation, one of his most potent points reminds us not to cling to the things of this fleeting age. In one of his speeches, “The Weight of Glory” he calls us not to fall in love with the things of this world, even the good things, which he brilliantly calls “Mudpies in the slums.” He says,
“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 isoffered 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.”
I remember looking across the harbor on a beautiful day on vacation at Cape Cod when this passage hit me. I was staring at the beauty regretting that I would have to leave and return home when I heard Lewis reminding me that even this beauty was a mere “mudpie in the slum”compared to what the Lord has in store for us. It reminded me to enjoy it as far as it takes me, but not to cling. For this world is but a mere foretaste of the glory to come. I realized there that it was not just the crumby things, but the best earthly things that are the mudpies. I thank Lewis for giving me a powerful image with which to contemplate and recognize my own tendency toward idolatry.
As a school we also owe to Lewis what he said he owed to George MacDonald, namely the “baptizing of our imaginations.” It was upon reading George MacDonald’s fairy tales as a boy that Lewis said a hunger for another world was stirred up in him, one which he loved but thought to be a mere fantasy. It was not until years Later, as Tolkien spoke to him, that he came to realize that the world he longed for was, in fact, an actual reality in Christ. Lewis then took up the challenge to write for kids (and adults) in such a way that would provoke that same hunger in his readers. He takes us through the wardrobe and into world of Narnia where Aslan rules, defeating the white witch by his sacrificial death for disobedient Edmund, where selfish and rude Eustace must be “un-dragoned” by the painful work of Aslan’s claws scraping the scales from him and returning him to the boy he was created to be, where forgetful Jill must be taught by the Marshwiggle, Puddleglum to remember the words of Aslan if they are to escape the destructive delusions of the green witch and save Prince Rilian. These and a host of other amazing stories are given to us by Lewis in the imaginative world of Narnia, a world that is fictitious and yet true, one that allows us to contemplate the realities of the faith as the followers of the truer Aslan.
This week, we celebrate the birth of the great C.S. Lewis, and we give thanks for the multitude of ways that he points us to Christ.
Below are several selections of Lewis’ writings that have found their way into the commonplace books of our students.
“The dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Kristina Spanjer: from The Weight of Glory
My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on his first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder and lightning which follow is alarming. Think of me as a fellow patient in some hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice.”
Hannah McKelvey: from C.S. Lewis’ Letters
“Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and other people) like a crutch is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course, it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc…) can do the journey on their own.”
Justin Chiarot: from C.S. Lewis’ Letters to Children
“For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose however you act, but it makes a difference whether you serve like Judas or like John.”
Gabby Caquias: from The Problem of Pain
“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true, they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false, they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”
John Torres: from C.S. Lewis’ Introduction to Athenasius’ On The Incarnation
“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”
Ryan Chien, Matt Kelly: from Miracles
“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.”
Michael Dingle: from a speech of Lewis’
“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Christina Quirk: from Screwtape Letters
(The letter from one demon to another on how best to destroy a young man’s faith. ie. “the enemy” is God)
Bill Spanjer serves as Head of Schools and Chairman of the Biblical Studies Department at Chapel Field.
