This post was written by Randy Newman on December 2, 2008
Last week, November 29th, was C.S. Lewis’ birthday. I hope this news brings you as much joy as it does to me.
Lewis continues to inspire me through his writing and motivates me to encourage those who love the life of the mind.
Here are three observations I have about my own experiences of reading Lewis. I hope you’ll want to join me in the lifelong goal of reading everything the man wrote.
First, to read C.S. Lewis is to experience verbal delight. He writes so well that one engages both with the content conveyed and the words employed. I can’t help but smile at sentences which are crafted by such a skilled artisan.
Consider this line from the introduction of The Screwtape Letters. After stating that we could make two mistakes regarding demons - one to disbelieve and the other to show too much interest - he adds, “They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
He grieved over our culture’s declining use of language and saw it as far more serious than stylistic evolution. In “The Death of Words” he demonstrated how certain words stopped meaning what they originally meant and eventually ended up meaning nothing at all. The word “gentleman” once meant someone who owned land. Later it took on a qualitative sense of someone who was polite. Eventually it simply meant someone who wasn’t a woman. The problem is that we already have a word for “man.” “Gentleman” no longer means anything different from someone of the masculine gender.
The case is far more serious with the word “Christian.” That word once had a precise theologically restricted use. Later it came to mean something like “nice.” Now it means nothing. Lewis presses the point to establish the reason this should bother us so much: “Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say” he warned. His words have proven prophetic.
Second, to read Lewis is to be constantly reminded that we are meant for another world. He used to love to talk of “joy” or “longing” or “Sehnsucht.” It may have been his most frequently expressed theme. He defined it as “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” In perhaps his fullest treatment of the idea, the essay “The Weight of Glory,” he says:
Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.
Finally, to read Lewis is to be pointed to the cross and to feel a sense of awe at the goodness of God displayed at Calvary. We spend so much energy defending our faith - arguing, proving, reasoning, declaring - that it is true, that we sometimes lose sight of the fact that it is also good. I sometimes find myself saying, “Oh, yes. That’s right. The gospel is so very good!” when reading Lewis. He turns many internal dialogues from reason to appreciation, from agreement to adoration.
In one of his “Letters to Malcolm,” he wrote, “Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.”
(Did you stumble on the word “coruscations?” It means “a flash of light.” He could have said it more simply. But, perhaps, he wanted to rescue a word from the brink of death…or maybe he wanted to add some delight to his readers’ experience! For whatever reason, the quote makes me smile and praise our God.)
I hope you’ll find some time to celebrate this day. Pick a short essay of Lewis’ and read it. See if you don’t smile along the way.
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