by Jerry Root
Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a university graduate with a degree in mathematics. He was preceded in birth by his brother Warren Hamilton Lewis, who was a constant friend and companion.
When Lewis was a boy his mother became ill. In the days of her sickness Lewis was told that if he prayed for his mother she would recover. She didn’t. He was later told that if he prayed harder and with more sincerity she would get better. Then, when he was nine years old, she died of cancer. In some ways the young Lewis felt responsible for her death because maybe he could have prayed harder. In time, Lewis came to believe that if God did exist it wasn’t very important, and eventually he abandoned his childhood faith altogether.
Lewis had what might be called spiritual experiences in his youth that haunted him throughout his early life. Most of these came through his reading of romantic literature. He was particularly affected by stories of Norse mythology and medieval knights and their acts of chivalry. One gets the impression that God was wooing Lewis to himself by awakening a longing in him that, if properly followed, would lead Lewis back to faith. Still, Lewis seemed to keep these longings separate from his intellectual life and, at that time, called himself an atheist. Nevertheless, he later observed that the first great problem in life is how one could fit romantic longings of the heart together with the robust intellectual quests of reason. This was certainly Lewis’s desire: to find the object of his deepest longing and have it be intellectually coherent and satisfying.
Lewis’s formal school experiences were difficult for him. Although he was an intelligent and successful student, he was often bullied and found himself the object of scorn and ridicule. When he was a teenager he was sent to Surrey, England, to be tutored by the senior Lewis’s old headmaster, William T. Kirkpatrick, affectionately called the Great Knock. Lewis was to study Greek, Latin, and logic in preparation for his university entrance exams. Those days with Kirkpatrick were idyllic for Lewis. It was during that time in his life he discovered a book titled Phantastes, by George MacDonald. The book recounts the adventures of a man named Anodos (Greek for “no way”). Anodos must go on a pilgrim quest through a fairyland, but “No Way” must be given a way or path. As Anodos follows on his pilgrimage, Lewis found his one quest for the object of his deepest longing also rekindled. Lewis would later write that his imagination was baptized by reading MacDonald.
But what was it Lewis most longed for? During this time in his life he went through what he called the dialectic of desire. He would have his longings awakened by some experience, and with raised expectations he would tether his heart to that object, only to be disappointed when it did not fulfill him. He would untether his desire only to retether it to something else and be disappointed once again. In time he wondered if his deepest desire was really for a mere earthly object. Perhaps he wanted something more.
Lewis sat for “responsions”—the entrance exam to Oxford University—and passed all but the mathematics paper. He was accepted to the university provided that he passed the math section at a later date—something that in fact he failed to do. However, his student career was interrupted by the First World War, and his sense of duty to his adopted country drove Lewis into enlistment in the British Army. He trained for the war in the Officer’s Training Corps at Keble College and was made a lieutenant of the Somerset Light Infantry, arriving at the front in the trenches of the valley of the Somme, on his nineteenth birthday. During this time he began to read the works of G. K. Chesterton and discovered a plausible apologetic for the Christian faith. As he wrote in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, all of his reading began to close in on him. He was discovering that the authors he most enjoyed were Christians. After the war he found to his delight that the university had waived, for returning officers, the requirement for passing responsions, and he returned to Oxford. Lewis received three degrees—in classics, literature, and philosophy. Later, he would win a teaching post at Magdalen College, Oxford. It was during his early years at Oxford that Lewis began the more serious business of reconsidering the claims of Christianity.
Lewis had many intellectual barriers he had to hurdle, and slowly he passed over each one, moving from his atheism and materialism, through a period of agnosticism and idealism, until he finally became a theist. And it was at this time in his life that Lewis felt he could go no further. He believed he could no more know God personally than Hamlet could know Shakespeare. Nearly two years later Lewis did in fact convert to Christianity. One of his friends at Oxford was J. R. R.
Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a Christian, and Lewis says he was one of the human causes of his conversion; in essence it was Tolkien who led Lewis to faith in Christ. Lewis revisited the Hamlet-Shakespeare analogy and decided it was a good one. Certainly Hamlet, a character in a play, could never break out of the play and introduce himself to the author. But Shakespeare, the author, could have written himself into the play as Shakespeare the character and thereby made an introduction between author and character possible. And Lewis believed that something like this actually occurred in history when God the Son became a man.
Lewis’s conversion to faith was followed by a life of spiritual discipline. He spent time daily in Bible study and prayer. He committed himself to a community of faith and even went to a spiritual director to be discipled. Furthermore, he gave of his resources—both money and time—in service to Christ. He took what he had, his pen and his brilliant mind, and harnessed the gifts God gave him for service to Christ. All who have read his works are the beneficiaries.