On a popular homeschooling discussion list, someone recently posted a quote (found on a website) from C. S. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed, proclaimed with alarm that this was not Bible truth, suggested that Lewis was not a Christian, and advocated reading Lewis’s “quotes” to detect his “dangerous” mixture of lies with truth.
Here is the passage she quoted:
Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?
This was my reply:
Merely reading any author’s “quotes” is a dangerous and inaccurate way to evaluate him. Consider, for example, what we might think was being taught about God if we read certain verses (or even most of the book) of Ecclesiastes out of context.
I took the time to read A Grief Observed last week to put the quote in its context.
The quote above appears on page 4 out of 89 pages of Lewis’s personal journal after the painful death (by cancer) of his beloved wife. This quote was part of the outpouring of his grief in the first couple of weeks after her death. Nowhere does Lewis assert that his reaction is “Bible truth.” In fact, reading the whole book would show you that later in the book he acknowledges that his early reaction was inaccurate. On page 53, for example, he writes, “I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face?”
A Grief Observed is not a theological treatise but a personal journal, originally private, that Lewis eventually published, perhaps in the hope of reaching other grieving people with the comfort he ultimately found in God. It is a deeply felt exploration of his personal grief, including his temporary sense of God not answering his prayers, and ultimately a restatement of his faith in God.
Was Lewis’s theology 100% accurate? I doubt it. Is anyone’s theology 100% accurate here on earth? I doubt it. There are some of Lewis’s statements I disagree with. But there is a wealth of biblical truth in his writings.
Please, don’t limit yourself to reading Lewis’s “quotes.” Read his books. At least, if you want to make public proclamations that he is not a Christian, read his books—in fact, read all of them before you draw and publicize such a conclusion. If you want to ignore his books, or even announce that you have chosen not to read them because you disagree with what little you know of his theology, that’s fine. But please don’t make public judgments about a person’s eternal destiny on the basis of a few out-of-context quotes on a website.
Mary Jo
Copyright 2005 by Mary Jo Tate
Thank you for writing this. I totally agree! I do love CS Lewis’ work for the most part, and I have ‘A Grief Observed’ waiting on my nightstand to read next.
You preach it, girl!
Of course, Lewis is in great company. People do the very same thing to God all the time.
Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C
If only every author had you for his/her adovocate. Thanks for the post. I came to know so much about my new found faith by reading C.S. Lewis in college. Later, I found some things with which I couldn’t agree, but you are so wise to point out that no one has perfect theology – how could we in our finite minds, in our finite worlds?
I tell my children it’s pointless really to argue. Better to spend the energy on maintaining your own relationship with God. We are doing a unit study on the Chronicles of Narnia this year. I am quite sure there will be content in there that doesn’t quite jive with what we believe, but I will take those opportunities to show my children how C.S. Lewis was nevertheless a man of faith, that this is evident in even his fictional writings, that the important thing was he did search for truth, even while wallowing in doubt. I don’t have a problem with my children being presented with content that doesn’t necessarily align with our faith, so long as I have the chance to explain why it doesn’t from an educational & biblical point of view. This is also part of the reason why I needed to take them out of public school. The school constantly bombarded my children with religous customs, despite the so-called separation of church and state. I am a big believer in letting the customs and celebrations of various seasons being left to the parents, and not enforced on children, who aren’t necessarily taught to believe in a Santa, or an Easter Bunny. My children will grow up knowing I always told them the truth. That’s important to me, especially since faith can be such a fragile thing as children grow older and start making the distinction between reality and fantasy. Ever since I read the Bible, I mean truly read it (I had just given birth to my first child), I knew then and there I would never deceive my children into believing any lies. (I grew up believing in them and my mother is still freaked out by the fact I never had my kids believing in these seasonal characters LOL) I say “To each his own”!
…and came across this post. Very good! I’m so glad you addressed this issue; I, too, have run into folks in “cyberworld” who have asserted that Lewis was not a Christian.
I have enjoyed all of Lewis’s writings and have no question that his conversion experience was genuine. 🙂 I love this book in particular because it is so honest and personal.
I felt the same way for a stretch of time after the tearing of a baffling, deep loss that seemed outside the bounds of a promise-keeping and loving God. Not a place I want to ever visit again. It was heart rending and it turned my world upside down and inside out for a while.
C.S. Lewis expressed what he was feeling and the confusion and hurt of feeling rejected by God in his deepest moment of need. Why we sometime experience such a painful passage is at the top of my list of questions that I want to ask God on the other side. I felt at the time as he did. Why were there times of lesser loss when I skipped through the flowered fields of His presence? Yet, now, when immersed in the shock of a pain so utterly beyond human capability to endure did His presence seem completely withdrawn. Yes, I felt the same way.
There wasn’t even comfort in pouring out my pain to others because of fear that other Christians would react to my feelings with such disgust that they too would abandon me. Not comfort, but judgment. So I ached alone.
That was many years ago. And much healing, restoration, and growth has occurred since then. I still cannot fully explain those long months of pain except in the verse that God gave me long after the depths of it had passed. It was the verse that created an analogy between Isreal and Rachael – Rachel crying out for her children and she would not be comforted. As all powerful as God is, sometimes our grief is so deep that He cannot penetrate the depths of it for a time. But all time inevitably lead to God and when time has run its course He finds us again.