C.S. Lewis: Christian Mentor

My task is a daunting one. Writing on the greatest Christian thinker of modern times, on the 50^th anniversary of his death, leaves one with a sense of bewilderment. Lewis was walking this earth a mere half century ago – students who sat under him are still alive today – yet already volumes upon volumes of works have been written on his life and work. Perhaps no Christian thinker since the Reformation has proved so influential. And how gloriously ironic this fact is, as no Christian thinker since that time has been so widely revered by both Catholics and Protestants. He is an evangelical hero, even though he was no evangelical. He is frequently the only protestant whose works can be found in Catholic bookstores, and his works even make appearances in the Catholic prayer book Magnificat. Legend has it that the Fundamentalist Methodist pastor Bob Jones II once met Lewis, and later remarked. “That man smokes a pipe….and that man drinks liquor….but I do believe he is a Christian.” Similarly, many Catholic friends have confessed to me their belief that Lewis was so obviously inspired by the Divine, despite his unfortunate lack of membership in the one true Church.

Lewis’ legacy is as diverse as it is great. He was a poet, an apologist, a storyteller, a science fiction author, a philosopher, and a theologian. However, in writing about his legacy, I will stick to the one role for which I, and surely many others, know him best: as a mentor and a friend.

According to Lewis, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too?” And how fitting this is. So many people of my generation who were raised in the Church ended up leaving because they felt Christianity to be anti-intellectual and made of stodgy old puritans who have no joy. Then they read Lewis for the first time – surprised by joy indeed. Here is man who enjoyed tobacco and beer, quoted poetry and philosophers, taught at the best Universities in the world, whose joy seemed to flow off the page into the very soul of the reader – and the man with all these qualities is an adamantly orthodox Christian? What! You?

At that moment a friendship is born. The reader knows that even though he is separated from the author by a half century he now has someone to lean on and seek out for guidance. Those books sitting on the mantle are not objects that are present only for their use. They are subjects, conversing with us, and as dear and instructive as letters from a best friend.

Such was my initial encounter with Lewis. As a young college student, living neither a sincerely Christian or un-Christian life (which is to say an un-Christian life), I somehow found myself reading The Abolition of Man. It is a spiritually haunting book, but it is not primarily a Christian apologetic or call to Christian living. It challenges the intellect – which led my conversion down a path similar to Lewis’ own. Thanks to Lewis, my brain could fathom the existence of God long before my heart could feel it.

I’ve always considered it to be a great cosmic comedy that while it was Lewis the Christian who opened my mind, it was a pagan, and Lewis’ favorite pagan, who opened my soul. The same semester I first read The Abolition of Man, I was enrolled in a Latin course, and studiously working my way through Virgil’s Aeneid. After seeing the modern world in the shadow of Aeneas it is difficult to imagine that the abolition of man is not already upon us. Virgil’s hero seemed so alien. In fact, Lewis noted that “Aeneas lives in a different world: he is compelled to see something more important than happiness.” He does his duty, and despite trial and tribulation his piety remains unmatched. Next to this great hero we all look like men without chests.

At the time, I couldn’t appreciate how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It is only by looking back years later, with Lewis’ help, that I see how God was working. Lewis referred to Virgil as “almost a great Christian poet.” He died mere decades before the coming of Christ, and his work is full of great, if incomplete religious truths that Lewis later came to understand better than anyone. He once said of the great book, “no man who has once read it with full perception remains an adolescent.”

Virgil set on me on the road, if you will, and Lewis put up the right signposts. After reading Abolition, I determined I simply must have whatever Lewis had. I bought all his books I could find – not only that, but I also began jotting down the names of every work or author he cited. Lewis therefore introduced me to Chesterton, Johnson, Boethius, MacDonald, Hooker, Gore, Traherne, Herbert, and to Arthur, and Cupid and Psyche, and the list goes on.

Perhaps even greater though, is that it is through Lewis that I looked upon all my subsequent readings. Lewis taught that our entire way of looking at the world must change. In fact, this world is not the real world at all. The real world has blades of grass that are much too hard for our mortal feet. The real world is something far grander and much too real for us. Everything we think we know must be unmade.

Chesterton once said that if we saw the mass of ordinary things for what they really were we would fall down in reverence before them. That is a sentiment that Lewis would undoubtedly share. There is a certain quality in the world that even the most orthodox among us no longer speaks of, and that is its awfulness. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard a sermon reference the awfulness of God. I can’t remember a time I’ve heard of His terribleness. But terrible and awful God is, and so is His creation.

“Is he-quite safe?” Susan asked about Aslan, the great lion. “Safe?” came the reply, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.” He is a lion – he is the lion, and he has a lion’s nature. The awful truth is that “the Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is.” When we finally see it, it invokes fear and trembling, a trembling that is “the salute mortal flesh pays to immortal things.”

But after all that fear and trembling, only after feeling the weight of glory, are we ready to be surprised by joy. We wonder, are the gods just? And then comes the reply, “Oh no, child.  What would become of us if they were? But come and see.”

Safe? No the gods aren’t safe, but that’s not the end of the story. Myth became fact and turned the world upside down. Christ completed the story.  No more must great heroes wander, for God came to us. Our trembling is a necessary stage, but then comes the good news: “Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Lewis once said that after his initial conversion he didn’t pay much attention to his further spiritual development. Not that he ceased thinking or engaging in self-examination, but because when you are lost and finally come upon a signpost in a weary land, you rejoice and remember that moment clearly. But then, when you are on the highway, you pay less attention to all the signs because you are now thinking of the final destination.

I’m not sure what Lewis would think of being a bestselling author for decades after his death, or for being the most quoted and recognized name in Christianity. I’m sure titles and fame would matter very little to him. But I do think one thing that may give him great joy is to know that for many thousands of people he has been a signpost when they needed it most. Indeed, he is more than just a single sign, for his works have also become a map and guide for so many as they travel through this crazy world. From the young children who are just exploring the world of Narnia, to the college book-club trying to unravel The Problem of Pain, Lewis has been more than a name on a shelf. He has been something far greater: a sure guide and a steady friend.

Lewis’ own friends say that in his final days he retreated to his home with a few of his favorite books. Among them was Virgil’s Aeneid.

In his book The Great Divorce, Lewis selects his own mentor, George Macdonald, to guide him through the purgatory like state. I have often wondered if MacDonald was actually there to meet him, or if perhaps Virgil himself were there to serve as a guide once again. It seems fitting that the great comedy be extended just a little further – that those who have guided us on earth will guide us on the final leg of our journey. Of course, Dante and Lewis are not canonical, but like them, I like to imagine that when I step off the bus, when I begin my final journey to cast off that hideous strength, a friend will be there to give me one final lesson.