This approach to Lewis is a nonsense, not least because it does a grave injustice to the man himself and the complexity of both his faith and life experience. Lewis was not an ecstatic Christian, much less an "evangelical" in the sense conveyed by those presently making the aforementioned triumphalist noises. Like most people, Lewis' Christian faith was a process, an ongoing and ever-developing evolution based on his experience of being, and the conclusions to which his reflections on that experience lead him. Nor did it become "fixed" after his conversion: the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, forced him to confront the meaning of his faith in the context of mortality, thereby stripping away the many comfortable assumptions and complacencies with which he had hitherto associated Christian belief and practice. It was an experience that rocked him, and redefined his understanding of faith.
This is a side to Lewis which those presently singing Lewis' praises conveniently ignore. And it is a side that is fully explored in the film Shadowlands, based on Lewis' relationship with Joy Davidman, and in Lewis' own book, The Problem of Pain. These reveal that, far from being the "ecstatic" Christian infected with a simplistic approach to faith and being, Lewis was in fact a powerful thinker and feeler of faith who explored the depths of his being and life experience in order to ensure the integrity of his relationship with God. This was frequently a painful process, and perhaps sums up why he once described himself as the most reluctant atheist, and the most incredulous Christian, in England.
Both Shadowlands and The Problem of Pain explore a very simple, yet exquisitely profound, question: if God were good, why do humans suffer? Shouldn't the goodness of God ensure that God's creation is free from pain and misfortune? Isn't saying that God is good just wishful thinking? Indeed, doesn't the existence of pain and suffering and evil point to the fact that God is not good - indeed, that God doesn't exist at all?
Shadowlands responds to this question by suggesting that, in placing human happiness at the centre of creation, human beings are in fact making a grave mistake. The point being that it's not actually a question of whether God wants us to be happy; God doesn't want us to be unhappy, either, it's just that our happiness is not the issue. What God wants is for people to grow up, to leave the nursery of existence so that we can respond to God as fully rounded creatures; so that we can be who God desires us to be, instead of one-dimensional beings lacking the substance of creation. In this context, suffering is the vehicle through which God calls us to wake up to ourselves. Humans are like blocks of stone being shaped by a sculptor's chisel; the blows of the chisel cause us inestimable pain, but they are also what make us whole and complete. In other words, suffering is not a thief, robbing us of equanimity and innocence; rather, it is the agency through which we are stripped of our life-denying delusions.
The Problem of Pain tackles the issue from a slightly different perspective. It doesn't attempt to describe the nature of suffering; rather, the book seeks to elucidate why suffering occurs. Lewis argues that humans suffer because they exist in a condition - the created universe - that is other than God. Lewis affirms that the universe is God's creation, and the creation is good since it represents an articulation of God's loving will. However, being other than God, creation cannot share in the perfection that is God; creation can only aspire to communion with God, and since this aspiration naturally arises from a self-awareness of imperfection, suffering is implicit in existence.
However, Lewis proposes three consolations that mitigate against what might be a rather gloomy conclusion about the nature of being:
- This condition of otherness is necessary in order for created beings to enter into relation with God. Humans are self-aware, and a necessary corollary of self-awareness is an awareness of others as individuals differentiated from our own Self. The awareness that arises from this differentiated otherness is the mechanism that enables us to enter into relationships. Likewise, our awareness of Self as created, and thus as other than God, enables humans to enter into relationship with the divine. The absence of this self-awareness would prevent us from having an awareness of God; we therefore could not enter into relation with God. Thus, the suffering that is implicit in existence arises from the same condition that enables us to come into relation with God.
- The physical conditions which often cause suffering are also necessary for the physical existence of our species. That is, humans could not exist in a world in which the weather conditions and geological structures did not result in tornadoes and earthquakes. This is evidenced by the fact that earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics; plate tectonics arise from the fact that the ground on which we walk is a thin crust that floats over a vast substructure of molten rock that is constantly in motion; and this molten rock is constantly in motion because at its core is a sphere of spinning metal, composed mostly of iron. This spinning core creates the tides in the molten rock that produce the plate tectonics that end in earthquakes. But this spinning core also produces a vast magnetic field about the earth that deflects most of the harmful gamma and ultra-violet rays from the Sun that would otherwise irradiate the planet and make life impossible. In other words, earthquakes are the price we pay for having a planet that can support life.
- A universe in which God was constantly intervening and altering reality in order to prevent suffering would, in fact, be unlivable on two grounds. Firstly, the alteration to reality would have disastrous consequences for anyone in the immediate vicinity of the alteration; it would most likely cause their own destruction, and thus the alteration would be inherently self-contradictory in its effect (and thus itself require altering). Secondly, constant intervention by God in reality would render the individual will impotent; humans might have free will, but it would be irrelevant because it would be liable to immediate contradiction. The result would be an existential ennui that would do more to destroy life than the events such as accidents and natural disasters that periodically cause suffering and hardship.
The point of these consolations is that suffering is never pointless, nor is it the product either of an indifferent universe or a cruel and capricious deity. Rather, suffering is a necessary fact of existence because it arises from precisely the same conditions which make life itself possible, and which facilitate a relationship between God and the created order. In essence, therefore, life is not an either/or proposition, it is an and/both dynamic; as the character of C S Lewis says in the film Shadowlands, "The suffering we experience later is the price we pay for the happiness we have today; that's the deal".
What all this means is that Lewis was not the kind of superficial "ecstatic" Christian which many "evangelicals" would have you believe. Nor was he a Christian propagandist, or even a Christian apologist in the proper sense of that term. His faith was not the product of a "born again" experience, but the result of a considered and lived meditation on the experience of being. Beneath the jingoistic triumphalism of the publicity surrounding the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the consequent claims that are being made about Lewis, lies the profound, resilient, and evolving faith of a Christian Stoic who lived, thought through, and suffered for his relationship with the divine.
Talk to you soon,
BB
Quote for the Day: Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. (Boethius)
6 comments:
While I appreciate your comments on taking C.S. Lewis out of his context (he was not what we would consider today an 'evangelical' christian) I would have to disagree with your assessment of his life. I've read most of what Lewis is written, and I'd say I know his works fairly well. While Lewis' faith never stopped growing, changing, and being challenged, if you read his biography Surprised by Joy, there was a period in his life when he changed from being an atheist to a theist. Later there was one day when he went from not believing in Jesus Christ, His substitutionary death, nor his resurrection from the dead, to believing. This happened while he rode in the sidecar with his brother to the zoo. I would venture to say that while he did not live without his doubts and struggles, he never seems to have doubted the fact of Jesus Christ. I'm aware of the claims that Shadowlands puts forth. I'm just not convinced that the best way to inform yourself on a person is to watch a made for t.v. movie about them.
Boydmonster:
Thanks for your post.
Like yourself, I have read most of C S Lewis' works, including Surprised by Joy, so I wasn't basing my assessment of Lewis on the basis of one bio-flick - although I do think Shadowlands offers some important insights into Lewis'faith journey, insights confirmed by what Lewis himself says in his autobiographical writings. I don't think my post claimed that Lewis was ever in danger of reverting back to atheism from Christianity; rather, that Lewis understood that faith was not a matter of "givens", that it was a process of growth and development which at times involved the necessary existence of doubt and struggle. I think that in particular is borne out by what he says in A Grief Observed. Moreover, I am convinced that Lewis' faith experience was not divorced from his life experience; how he understood faith was shaped by his encounter with both the pleasurable and painful experiences of existence, as, for example, he makes clear in The Problem of Pain.
The essential point of my post was that Lewis was not the kind of "born again evangelical" in which life became a simplistic triumphal procession after his conversion; rther, that Lewis was a deep thinker and feeler of his faith, and that his faith engaged with those moments of crises he experienced - not in order to provide banal platitudes of comfort, but in order for him to be able to explore the meaning of the human/divine relationship.
Well, it's great that you find so much that is useful/nourishing/insightful in Lewis's works, but maybe it would be good if you had tried to appreciate him without so much gratuitous bagging of your evangelical brothers and sisters.
Yes, I get it - you don't like them. But "an offended brother is more unyielding than a walled city, and disputes are like the barred closed gates." Likewise... "if you have anything against your brother, go and tell him quietly, and if he listens ... well, you've gained a brother!"
Slinging around words like simplistic, and putting evangelical in quote marks (why?) just looks like abuse.
Dear Anonymous:
I am sorry you feel that I was bagging anyone, for this was not my purpose or intent. However, I do not apologize for criticizing the errant nonsense that is often claimed on Lewis' behalf (similar to the errant nonsense that is claimed on Darwin's behalf by militant atheists) - often, as it turns out, by Christians of a certain theological persuasion.
Lewis was not a propagandist for Christianity but a popular theologian who sought to make the essential teachings of Christianity accessible to a wider audience - a subtle but important difference. And while Tolkien certainly criticized (and disliked) the Narnia stories for being too overtly allegorical, nonetheless, careful reading of Lewis' work across its whole body reveals that he was a deeply thoughtful Christian who eschewed simplistic approaches to faith and likewise wrestled with many of faith's darker complexities. As I said in another post, Lewis did not regard faith as a series of "givens" (or fundamentals) but as a life-long engagement with the mysterious presence and possibility of God.
As for speaking softly to one's brothers and sisters...well, as those same Christians of a certain theological persuasion are frequently loudly and publicly bagging their brothers and sisters of a different theological persuasion, perhaps I might respectfully suggest that as soon as they start practicing what you preach, then the rest of us might follow their lead. :0)
BTW, the word "evangelical" is in quotation marks because the word itself has a variety of meanings, and thus means different things to different people. But I am using it quite deliberately in the sense of those people whose simplistic, reductionist approach to faith makes of Lewis nothing more than a propagandist (and who in turn propagandize him) instead of recognizing him for the complex and multi-valent individual he was.
Well, as for "perhaps I might respectfully suggest that as soon as they start practicing what you preach, then the rest of us might follow their lead" - two wrongs don't make a right, and it's up to the wiser man to lead...
best wishes. :)
No, two wrongs don't make a right - but then, I never claimed to be the "wiser man" either. I merely try to engage in the struggle of discipleship in my own inept way without trying to tell others how they ought to go about theirs. Best wishes to you, too. :0)
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