God In Our Lives: The Writings of C. S. Lewis
My final essay for Dr. Dauphinais' C.S. Lewis class, handed in on August 14, 2021.
Welcome to our final Theology on Tap on the subject of the works of C. S. Lewis. When we began this journey, many of you knew Lewis only for the Chronicles of Narnia. Some of you had never read any of his works; others had read only The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Tonight, we’re going to weave these sessions together, examining some of the main themes which run through his works: God is real, God loves us, God is in our lives in ways we do not even realize.
Had Lewis not converted to Christianity, he may have been just another academic of little or no success. Perhaps I should say returned to Christianity, as he turned to atheism during his adolescence. He converted back to Christianity in 1931, when he was in his early thirties. It was after this conversion that he first achieved true success in writing.
“In his youth Lewis aspired to become a notable poet, but after his first publications . . . attracted little attention, he turned to scholarly writing and prose fiction. His first prose work to be published (except for some early scholarly articles) was . . . an account of his search to find the source of the longings he experienced from his early years, which led him to an adult acceptance of the Christian faith.”[1]
Lewis’ work reflects his Christianity, in both essay and his fiction.
“One of the factors that brought Lewis to public attention was his unblushing affirmation of the supernatural—God, demons, miracles, and all.”[2]
Lewis is perhaps most widely known for the Chronicles of Narnia, his seven-book series of children’s literature that describes the history of the world of Narnia. While he never references God by name in the series, only someone with no knowledge whatsoever of Christianity would not see the Christian story depicted in the stories of Narnia. For example, in the first published book of the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), we are given no doubt as to the divine character of Aslan, the lion, who offers himself freely to die in the place of another, only to come back to life.
Lewis’s nonfiction works permit us to delve deeper into theology. Indeed, it would be difficult to find anything written by Lewis after his conversion which does not at least touch on Christianity. In his work Miracles (1947), he seeks to define what makes an event a miracle, and specifically states:
“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”[3]
He posits that miracles are acts of God which do not break the laws of nature but rather draw from those laws. For example, in discussing the Miracle at Cana, he states:
“Thus, in a certain sense, He constantly turns water into wine, for wine, like all drinks, is but water modified. Once, and in one year only, God, now Incarnate, short circuits the process: makes wine in a moment: uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water. But uses them to do what He is always doing. The Miracle consists in the shortcut; but the event to which it leads is the usual one.”[4]
Lewis tells us the reason we don’t appreciate the presence of God in our lives and see the miracles which take place is that our own feelings of inadequacy block us from understanding:
“We have discovered our insignificance and can no longer suppose that God is so drastically concerned in our petty affairs.”[5]
Lewis illustrates this in another of the Narnia books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. During that journey, Lucy is tasked with reading from the Magician’s Book “a spell to make hidden things visible.”[6] As she reads it, she thinks
“I suppose I've made everything visible, and not only the thumpers. There might be lots of other invisible things hanging about a place like this. I'm not sure that I want to see them all.”[7]
She quickly learns that she is right, that there are other invisible things, but there is least one newly visible thing she does want to see:
“For what stood in the doorway was Aslan himself, The Lion, the highest of all High Kings. And he was solid and real and warm and he let her kiss him and bury herself in his shining mane. And from the low, earthquake-like sound that came from inside him, Lucy even dared to think that he was purring.
‘Oh, Aslan,’ said she, it was kind of you to come.’
‘I have been here all the time.’ said he, ‘ but you have just made me visible.’”[8]
God is present in our lives, even when we don’t see him. God is present in our lives in ways we do not even realize.
Our ability to see God in our lives has a direct relation to how open we are to God in our lives. Lewis illustrates this in Prince Caspian. When the four Pevensie children unexpectedly are brought back to Narnia, they first wander for a very long time. At last, late one night, Lucy is woken by a voice calling to her. She investigates, and is joyfully reunited with Aslan, who gives her direction. When she awakens her siblings and tells them, they are slow to believe her. Edmund tells her all she sees is an optical illusion. “‘I can see him all the time,’ said Lucy. ‘He's looking straight at us.’”[9] Lucy, whose belief in Aslan has remained the strongest, sees him clearly, while the others cannot. Susan, who, by the last book of the Narnia series, will consider all their adventures in Narnia just games they used to play, snaps at Lucy, and says she is just being naughty. When the four of them do meet with Aslan, Susan is silent:
“Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, ‘Susan.’ Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. ‘You have listened to fears, child,’ said Aslan. ‘Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?’
‘A little, Aslan,’ said Susan,”
Lewis does not say what fears Susan may have been listening to, but we may understand that she has been exposed to “enlightenment” and finds it harder to hold true to what she ought know.
The active presence of God in our lives is shown by Lewis most clearly in The Horse and His Boy. At the start of the story, Shasta has never even heard of Aslan. Ultimately, Shasta and Aslan have quite a long conversation before Shasta actually sees Aslan. Shasta tells Aslan of his journey and the many lions he has had to escape from. Aslan responds:
“‘There was only one lion... There was only one: but he was swift of foot.... I was the lion.... I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave your horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you....’
‘Who are you?’ asked Shasta.
‘Myself,’ said the voice very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again ‘Myself,’ loud and clear and gay: and then the third time ‘Myself,’ whispered so softly you could hardly hear it and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.”[10]
Lewis could not have made the relation between Aslan and God clearer even only iif he had directly quoted Exodus 3:14: “God replied to Moses: I am who I am.”t
Even when we don’t show our belief externally, we hold that the truth of God internally. We reach out to God in prayer, especially in our times of need, tacitly admitting our faith in His presence and in His miracles:
“Theology says to you in effect, ‘Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in human uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events.’”[11]
We can't just admit to God in a general sense, unless we know what we are admitting to. We must be able to explain and understand what we mean when we say God. Lewis discusses the various conceptions of God:
“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.”[12]
He goes on to describe the difference between Pantheism and the Christian idea of God:
“Pantheists usually believe that God, so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost is God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite different. They think God invented and made the universe - like a man made making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed.”[13]
That is not to say that God made the world and then left us alone with no responsibility for ourselves or our actions:
“But [Christianity] also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God has made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”[14]
A God who loudly insists that we put things right again must thus be a God who is real and who is in our lives. When we do not see God in our lives, it is because we are blind to his presence. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy did not see Aslan until he made himself visible to her. In the Narnia creation story, The Magicians Nephew, Lewis gives us Uncle Andrew, who has made himself blind to the presence of God. He sees himself as quite superior and above such things as consideration for the rights of others:
“Rules … can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages….Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules….”[15]
His nephew, Digory, lets us know just what Uncle Andrew means by this:
“‘All it means,’ he said to himself, ‘Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”[16]
And because of Uncle Andrew’s self-inflicted blindness to the good of others, he is unable to see and hear what Polly and Diggory experience; he does not see the creation of Narnia. He is unable to hear Aslan’s speech; he only sees a wild lion that paces back and forth and roars. His sin of pride keeps him deaf and blind before the sight of Aslan:
“But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. A bad man, happy, is a man without the least inkling that his actions do not ‘answer’, that they are not in accord with the laws of the universe.”[17].
Uncle Andrew, who has travelled to Narnia and who is directly responsible for the entry of evil into Narnia, never accepts responsibility for any of his actions. While Aslan sings Narnia into life, Uncle Andrew is uncomfortable. He does not like the song:
“It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.”[18]
He does not know or at least does not follow the Moral Law. He cannot repent, for he fails to see his own shortcomings:
“And if, now that we are grown up, we do not howl and stamp quite so much, that is partly because our elders began the process of breaking or killing our self-will in the nursery…”[19]
This failure to see God in our lives ultimately leads to the failure to believe in God. At the time of the setting of The Last Battle, it has been a very long time since Aslan has been seen walking in Narnia, and there are many, especially those who are not Narnians, who no longer believe in Aslan. Similarly, the people of Calormene have lost contact with their own evil god, Tash. The cat, Ginger and a Calormene, Rishda Tarkaan, are conspiring to take over Narnia, capitalizing on their belief that neither Aslan nor Tash truly exist:
“‘You mean, says Ginger, ‘that there's no such person as either.’ ‘All who are enlightened know that,’ said the Tarkaan. ‘Then we can understand one another,’ purrs the Cat.[20]
To be enlightened, Lewis tells us, is not the same thing as to know God and the Moral Law:
“Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”[21]
As Lewis reminds us, we know from scripture that we do, in fact, know the difference between right and wrong, and we know God’s law:
“Christ calls men to repent – a call which would be meaningless if God’s standards were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practise.”[22]
We fail, and we seek forgiveness. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Edmund learns the price of failure when, by betraying his own siblings, he has forfeited his life, and Aslan voluntarily dies in his place. Edmund repents and receives forgiveness:
“[T]hey saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court. There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation which Edmund never forgot. As the others drew nearer Ashland turned to meet them, bringing Edmond with him.
‘Here is your brother,’ he said, ‘and - there is no need to talk to him about what is past.”[23]
God loves us, and he demands our love in return if we are to remain in friendship with Him. We are free to turn from Him, but if we do, we must realize that we have made our choice and He will not force us back to Him:
“The demand that God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.”[24]
By our belief in God, by admitting God into our lives, we bind ourselves to Him and to the Moral Law. The Moral Law draws us to live as in the presence of God, not because He is in heaven looking down at us, but because He is present among us. The Moral Law is not some random good ideals, it is a gift from God, one which we are called to follow:
“It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”[25]
In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis illustrates how evil works in turning us from God and the Moral Law. As you may recall, it is written in the form of letters from one demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, advising him on his work of trying to capture a soul. Screwtape tells Wormwood that a shallow belief in God can work to Wormwood’s advantage:
“Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours – and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours.”[26]
One way we make our belief shallow is by following that so-called enlightenment, that which moves us away from God on the pretense that such movement is really growth. That’s a tactic the Un-Man used on the Green Lady in Perelandra, telling her that Maleldil wants her to learn from others, not directly from Maleldil himself:
“Do you not see that He is letting go of your hand a little? ... He is making you older – making you learn things not straight from Him but by your own meetings with other people and your own questions and thoughts.”[27]
It is in Perelandra that Lewis gives us a suggestion of how Satan loves our turn from following the Moral Law; loves our slightest turn away from God:
“Now that the conversation was over, [Ransom] realised, too, with what intense anxiety he had followed it, At the same moment he was conscious of a sense of triumph. But it was not he who was triumphant. The whole darkness about him rang with victory.“[28] (Chapter 8 page 214)
In fact, Lewis suggests that even if we are faced with the supposed fact that there is no God, if we consider what we do know, we will hold onto the truth of God. we willIn John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan says “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”[29] Our choice, though, is to serve in Heaven or be a slave in Hell. And so, let us all join in with Puddleglum as he states:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”[30]
And that is what we are all called to do, to live as Narnians, to live in faith, to live in the Moral Law, to live in Christ both on earth and forevermore.
Works Cited
"C.S. Lewis | Biography, Books, Mere Christianity, Narnia, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-S-Lewis.
Lewis, C. S, and Lyle W Dorsett. The Essential C.S. Lewis. Reprint, New York: Scribner, 2017.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Reprint, Coppell: Valde Books, 2021.
Lewis, C. S. Miracles. Reprint, Vancouver: Mercy House, 2020.
Lewis, C. S. "Perelandra". In The Essential C. S. Lewis, 19th ed. Reprint, New York: Scribner, 2017.
Lewis, C. S. Prince Caspian. Reprint, Croydon: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C. S. The Abolition Of Man. Reprint, Vancouver: Mercy House Publishing, 2020.
Lewis, C. S. The Horse And His Boy. Reprint, Croydon: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle. Reprint, Croydon: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. Reprint, London: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2021.
Lewis, C. S. The Magicians's Nephew. Reprint, Croydon: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C. S. The Problem Of Pain. Reprint, HarperCollins e-Books, 2009.
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. Reprint, New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021.
Lewis, C. S. The Silver Chair. Reprint, Croydon: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C.S. "The Weight Of Glory". In The Essential C. S. Lewis, 361-370. C.S. Lewis. Reprint, New York: Scribner, 2017.
Lewis, C.S. The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Reprint, London: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
[3] Miracles, Chapter 14, 180
[4] Miracles, Chapter 15, 227
[5] Miracles, Chapter 7, 80
[6] The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 10, 122
[7] The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 10, 122
[8] The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 10, 122-123
[9] The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 10, 127
[10] The Horse and His Boy, Chapter 11, 131
[11] Miracles, Chapter 13, 177
[12] Mere Christianity. Book II, Chapter 2, 20
[13] Mere Christianity. Book II, Chapter 2, 20-21
[14] Mere Christianity. Book II, Chapter 2, 21
[15] The Magician’s Nephew, Chapter 2, 23
[16] The Magician’s Nephew, Chapter 2, 23-24
[17] The Problem of Pain, Chapter 6, 63
[18] The Magician’s Nephew, Chapter 10, 116-117
[19] The Problem of Pain, Chapter 6, 62
[20] The Last Battle, Chapter 10, 77
[21] C.S. Lewis, "The Weight Of Glory", in The Essential C. S. Lewis, 364.
[22] The Problem of Pain, Chapter 3, Divine Goodness, 30
[23] The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 13, 126
[24] The Problem of Pain, Chapter 8, 82
[25] Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, 17
[26] The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 7, 32-33
[27] Perelandra, Chapter 8, p. 213
[28] Perelandra, Chapter 8, p. 214
[29] John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
[30] The Silver Chair, Chapter 12,145
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