C. S. Lewis was born in November 1898 in Belfast. He gained a "triple first" at Oxford and was fellow and tutor from 1925 to 1954. In 1954 he became professor of medieval and renaissance English literature in Cambridge. He was loved and revered as a most inspiring teacher. But it is as one who opened windows on true religion that he has become a light to all the world. Until he was 31 he was an atheist. In the summer of 1929 he "admitted that God was God. . . and became the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." He died on November 22nd 1963, the day of President Kennedy's murder. As we keep the anniversary of his death and the centenary of his birth we turn again to the limpid prose, the profound thought and the sparkling wit of this great teacher. He ranks among the most notable thinkers of this century. Any time spent in his company leads swiftly from complacent darkness to life-giving light.
One of his most brilliant and most popular books is the Screwtape Letters, the correspondence between a very senior devil and his nephew, Wormwood. As one reads one smiles and shakes with laughter - and is forced to think. Jargon and cliche and shibboleths are revealed in all their emptiness as the reader emerges from fog and mist and half-light into the radiance of compelling truth.
The young devil is told to guide his subject away from asking if any doctrine is really true or false and to babble about a teaching as "outworn or contemporary. . . academic or practical". Also, an experienced devil must not allow any victims to get a genuine interest in science lest they awaken to the reality that deep research may mean a glimpse of God. Pasteur and Mendel and countless others cause dismay in lower regions.
The aspiring devil must fill our minds with picture-book images of early Christians with togas and flowing robes and sandals. Then we may be depressed at the sight of ordinary people in everyday clothes kneeling in a contemporary church or chapel. "Never let them stop to reflect as to what sort of people they could possibly meet . . . Never let them awaken to reality by asking the difference between dreaming aspiration and laborious doing. Fill their minds with unspoken prejudices that add up to: `My religion is genuine. These smug people are humbugs. Their devotion is sham.' "
The young devil must fill us with vague ideas of tolerance and charity while we are so rude to parents and spouses and can only see human faults as infuriating vices. In wartime there is a real danger that people will take care to walk prepared for a sudden call from pilgrim state to eternal life. Better to have them in costly nursing homes where the staff will lie and leave each patient unaware of the true situation and keep priest and prayer and preparation far away. Conditions of modern life help greatly with this line of attack.
In leading people to sin by lust a devil must take care to separate all sexual desire from sincere love so that an ever-growing fever for pleasure will produce diminished thrill. If the candidates must drink alcohol, let them do so in gloom and dark depression lest they come to see their drink as a precious gift of God to make glad the human heart. If they must have bodily pleasure, let it be dark and dismal leaving them sad and confused and more miserable than ever. That is the demon task.
Lead them more and more astray so that at life's end they will see they spent their days and nights doing neither what they ought nor what they enjoyed. This is a real achievement in the lower world.
If and when you and I spend a quiet hour with C S Lewis - See also Mere Christianity, Surprised By Joy, Miracles and The Problem of Pain - we will emerge from mental fog into the shining light of reality and walk more safely on the once-made journey.
Lord that I may see!
Come O Holy Spirit!
F.MacN.