[This is the final paragraphs from the current draft of my book tentatively titled, C. S. Lewis in Crisis.]
As I’ve written this book, I’ve found myself poring
over others’ words about Lewis, several of his biographies, and especially
every work of Lewis that I could get my hands on (including some unpublished
pieces at the Wheaton's Wade Collection and the Bodleian in Oxford). All the time I’ve pondered the depth of this man and particularly the
reason his words still resonate to the crises of millions and have not stopped
speaking fresh insights to me. Lewis remains for me a constant source of
interest and even mystery. I found that I want to truly grasp, to definitively
summarize, what he expressed. I want to know more where I continue to be
stunned by his insights, and where I disagree.
There are three
reasons for this: First of all, Lewis was the voice that woke me up to the
possibility of God, of that Something More beyond this world. The amazing thing
is that there are other voices that have led me to Christian faith, but it is Lewis’s
that keeps leading me back, “deeper and further in.” So I suppose that, in some
way, I’m repaying a debt I feel I owe to him. Secondly, I sense that I become a
better person when I read Lewis, this beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, highly
imperfect human being. This is part of the moral formation that’s
characteristic of Lewis’s writings. And yet in his words, there’s something
numinous, a voice that calls me deeper. And still does. Maybe it’s what he read
in MacDonald, when he tasted something “holy” in his words.
Finally, it
strikes me that Lewis is the great translator of Christian faith. And that
inspires me. The earliest Christian writers—following Jesus himself—took great
pains to be comprehensible, using street language and story. In their determination
to speak clearly, they never left the scandalous demands of Jesus’ message. Too
many theologians speak in impenetrable language, hardly caring whether any
public can understand them. Lewis changed that by stepping aside from the
precise, though often distancing language of the academic. Instead he spoke in
plain English. Lewis’ legacy is that he believed the strange hardness of Gospel
remains its greatest strength and he dared to use language as clear as crystal
and his creative imagination. Both still make good sense. That is why he still
speaks to millions, and even just a few years ago, Time could still name him today’s “hottest theologian.”
Even
as I type these lines, artists are preparing the memorial on the 50th anniversary of his death in the famed Poets’ Corner
at Westminster Abbey, an honor he will share with the likes of William
Shakespeare, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, John Milton, William Wordsworth, among
many others. I realize that many millions of others have found inspiration in
his voice, and as I’ve written, resolution to their crises. For that reason, it
is natural that Lewis has become a Christian cult figure. This represents
another sort of “immortality.” And yet, as I read the man himself, I think he
would found deplorable the development of “St. Clive” (which, as I mentioned, I
jokingly call him) or the Writer of the Fifth Gospel (another quip by some
admiring, though not idolizing, friends). Yes, he has been an important voice
for me, and I suppose I’m writing this book trying to figure out St. Clive once
and for all. I have never enjoyed writing a book so much. Now I'm a little sad
that I have arrived at the end. To be honest, I don’t feel that I’ve totally
grasped him, and yet I also sense that he’s entirely worth the continual
effort. His good friend, J.R. R. Tolkien once commented about Lewis, “You’ll
never get to the bottom of him.” Maybe
the best method is to simply accept that advice and enjoy the journey
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