C. S. Lewis died 51 years ago this month, and this leads to a
question: Why do his book sell more today than when he was alive? Why has this
man almost achieved sainthood in the eyes of many? Why? Because “St. Clive” had
significant crises that he resolved thorough his writing—and the resolution of
these crises speaks to millions of readers. As a friend—who is also a religion
book editor—once quipped, “Christians love Lewis because he does the thinker
for them!” Not completely true, but not entirely off-based either. Yes, this
Oxford-trained intellectual became well known for his rational defense of
Christian faith—so well regarded and read that his Mere Christianity is well into the hundreds of millions of copies sold.
On the other hand, Lewis doesn’t ultimately give
us answers—he invites our response. And so we as his readers learn to
engage our questions, grasp Lewis’s resolutions and ponder our own answers.
I,
perhaps foolishly, make two conclusions for Lewis would tell us. If Lewis were
asked to speak today, I'm sure he’d repeat the contention that scientific materialism
provides an argument for many against faith. Put simply, many atheists use
science to argue that all there is the material world. Lewis replied that
materialism is self-defeating, and that we need to look beyond this world, and
that such a life brings incredible joy. As he intoned over the airwaves of the
BBC in the early ‘40s, “If I find in
myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most
probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” This
is how he leads us to resolve the crisis of atheism—that it does not satisfy. Of
course, this might evoke the ire of “New Atheists,” old atheists, or
those who like reading them. But it might also lead those who find that
atheism, old or new, has brought them to a crisis of dissatisfaction to a new
resolution.
Now to my second assertion: if Time magazine was right to call him today’s
“hottest theologian,” what else does Lewis say to us today? Lewis would tell us
we have to engage the imagination, not simply our reasoning. If anything, this
is what cognitive science tells us—we hardly ever rationally reflect without
also simultaneously feeling. And culturally, this is particularly important. Consider
this: What are the influencing factors in our country? What I see are these
grand stories that we read in novels and watch in movies. (Super heroes will be
with us forever.) St. Clive was more than willing to engage imagination with
the truth of Christian life. I could put it this way: if we imagine that imagine
that God exists, what would the world? That's what Lewis is fiction and even
just analogies he peppered throughout his writings did. What would Lewis say
today? With fourth Chronicles of Narnia in
production, maybe St. Clive is still speaking…