Gordon Christopher - A life inspired : C.S. Lewis

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Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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A man of reason and vigorous discourse, and a renowned professor of literature and philosophy, C.S. Lewis, always Jack to family and friends, never shied from intellectual debate, and through his written works encouraged others to wrestle with the difficult questions of faith.

A master of visual illustration and allegory, Lewis wrote with the intuitive understanding that his readers wrestled with the same questions about the Christian story, about pain, suffering, and notions of Heaven and Hell, as he himself had wrestled. He also understood that others found reason and imagination to be incompatible aspects of an understanding of God and the universe.

I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitudeAlso, of endless books...

Clive Staples Lewis, born in Belfast, Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century and dragged, kicking and screaming, into the [Christian] faith would prove to be not only one of the most influential and widely-read Christian theologians of the twentieth century, but one whose prolific writings continue to enthrall, irritate, provoke, and inspire readers to this day. A man of reason and vigorous discourse, and a renowned professor of literature and philosophy, C.S. Lewis, always Jack to family and friends, never shied from intellectual debate, and through his written works encouraged others to wrestle with the difficult questions of faith. A master of visual illustration and allegory, Lewis wrote with the intuitive understanding that his readers wrestled with the same questions about the Christian story, about pain, suffering, and notions of Heaven and Hell, as he himself had wrestled. He also understood that others found reason and imagination to be incompatible aspects of an understanding of God and the universe.

Lewis was a cerebral type, skilled at building logical arguments, and large in personality. A professor known for a booming voice which often built up steam as he entered a lecture hall, his lecture already well underway, Lewis, through his teachings, inspiredno, demandedconsideration of the world as one assumed it to be, and consideration as to whether what one perceived was, indeed, the truth. Outside the university setting of Oxford and the books he published in his professional field, his writings would not only receive waves of public response and help readers take a good look at their faith or lack of one, but would also serve as a lens turned mindfully inwards to the workings of Lewis own musings, which he shared. Once settled in his Christian convictions after a circuitous migration through several different philosophical doctrines, Lewis admitted in his autobiographical book Surprised by Joy that most of [my] books are evangelistic, from his apologetic writings to his works of fiction for adults and children. (Here in this text, any quotations not noted otherwise come from this same volume, whose title reveals much about the way Lewis arrived at faith, as we shall see.) Today, though still respected for his entire body of published work, Lewis is often associated with the fictional series he wrote for children, that of the Chronicles of Narnia, a series whose timelessness illustrates the authors singular talents.

Talent attracts critics and scrutiny, however, and this series, along with the modern movies made from them, spark debate to this day, a legacy which also testifies to the durability of Lewis storytelling. Something in the writings of Narnia still resonates strongly, though todays readers are of an era quite unlike the war years and Oxford mindset of which Lewis himself was a product. Criticized in his own time for both an unorthodox style of crafting fictionthe mixing of elements of mythology with Christian allegory was positively scandalous to Lewis friend J.R.R. Tolkienand for the enthusiasm of his apologetic works which brought embarrassment to his professional peers, and criticized in modern times for the hints of misogyny and racism that some examiners find in his works, Lewis nonetheless produced a prolific body of work throughout his career inside and outside of the university, adding to the significant contributions to both the Christian faith and the field in which he taught, that of English literature.

Were he alive today, C.S. Lewis might offer us a reminder of one essential tenet that unites the entire body of his lifetimes work: that in examination of a thing, it is possible to lose sight of the thing itself. If modern readers can step beyond the lenses of their own era and the scrutinizing subjectivity of individual perspective, and are able to strip away the distractions of Lewis own personality and temporal prejudices, then theyll see the Narnian forest for the trees. Above all else, Lewis legacy has helped many readers to recognize the great joy that transcends all time, denominations, and limitations of human mind, and to simply become aware of the delightful presence of a loving, everlasting God.

Theres a certain irony in the fact that Lewis, who never had children of his own nor seems to have been particularly fond of spending time around them, is today most often associated with the Narnian fantasy series. But it was in books that Lewis himself had some of his earliest childhood experiences of joy, a sensation that encapsulates the whole experience of the presence of God, and which, by Lewis description, is an altogether different experience from either happiness or pleasure and key to all relationships with the divine. Surprised by Joy , candid in its personal revelations, offers an openness quite unlike the authors personality in real life, in which he was notably private about personal affairs.

Born in 1898 to Albert and Flora Lewis, Jack grew up among the sweeping views of hill and coastline of County Down in Ireland, though many of those early rainy Irish days were spent indoors in a house of modest size and modest garden, a period of humdrum, prosaic happiness punctuated by moments of joy with days spent in the company of elder brother Warren, called Warnie, four years Jacks senior. The brothers created a play-haven of sorts in their indoor playroom that looked out over the Castlereagh Hills, the hills beckoning from far beyond the rain. Young Jack, content to sit for days on end drawing an invented place called Animal Land, entertained himself with a world of fantasy illustrations, which by todays standard might be considered imaginative play, though Lewis firmly refuted that this world of sketches was imaginative at all. In fact, in works written many decades later in life, Lewis would use the creatures of Animal Land to illustrate the distinction between what is made by a creator, and what is begat, a concept we will explore further on.