Some Thoughts on C.S. Lewis

I first read C.S. Lewis when I was eight or nine years old. I read all seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia over one Christmas break. At the time, what I mostly appreciated about the books was the exciting adventure stories—the allegory about spiritual truths didn’t come through to me as much. After that, I didn’t read anything by C.S. Lewis for a long time, not until my sophomore year of high school. That year, I first read Mere Christianity, and I thought it was amazing. I was deeply impressed by Lewis’ ability to communicate complicated ideas in ways that were easily accessible, but at the same time captured the depth and the elegance of those ideas. He conveyed what he meant smoothly and clearly, but without a hint of reductionism. 

For me, Lewis was the first intellectual voice of Christianity. He was the first to inspire me to think deeply about my faith, and I began to read some of his other books. I think that I’ve read all of them now, and reread quite a few of them. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis addresses the question of how a good God can allow suffering. One of Lewis’ strongest objections to Christianity prior to his conversion had been the juxtaposition of nature’s cruelties with the idea that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being had created it. I also read The Abolition of Man, in which Lewis argues that people need to be taught the natural affections, such as love for good and hatred for evil; he opposes the modern ideologies that say that such natural values are worthless or invalid. The Four Loves is an explanation of the four kinds of love that man experiences: friendship, eros, affection, and charity, and how each of them is different and valuable. For the record, I don’t remember if I ever made it all the way through Miracles, which is pretty dense. It is Lewis’ philosophical argument for why miracles are not incompatible with science and our knowledge of the natural world.

 After reading so much of his writing, I gradually became disillusioned with him personally. His seeming ability to win every argument and answer every objection seemed to suggest a level of professorial sophistry. He was too certain of himself and of what he had to say. But recently, I have come to appreciate Lewis again. A large part of this renaissance was reading two more of his books: Letters to Malcolm and A Grief Observed. Letters to Malcolm is a collection of Lewis’ letters to a friend of his on the subject of prayer. They are personal letters, more raw and more candid than his philosophical works. In his letters, Lewis is articulate and clever but more vulnerable. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed shortly after the death of his wife. In it, he candidly and openly questions his faith, expressing his deep sorrow and real struggles. It is a very honest and affecting work.

After being given a chance to see him as a real human being, I now love Lewis again. He was a man who had thought deeply about his faith- perhaps more deeply than any of us ever will. Yet he remained, as Letters and Grief show, a true human being, vulnerable like the rest of us. In his search for God’s truth, he never lost his humanity. For all those looking for somebody to read, somebody who can help you to start your journey to the Truth, or somebody to continue the journey with, I cannot recommend Lewis more highly.