Lewis:
The contemporary book that has helped me the most is Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Others are Edwyn Sevan's book, Symbolism and Belief, and Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy, and the plays of Dorothy Sayers.2
Mr Wirt:
I believe it was Chesterton who was asked why he became a member of the church, and he replied, "To get rid of my sins."
Lewis:
It is not enough to want to get rid of one's sins. We also need to believe in the one who saves us from our sins. Not
2Such as The Man Born to be King (London, 1943; reprinted Grand Rapids, 1970).
only do we need to recognize that we are sinners; we need to believe in a savior who takes away sin. Matthew Arnold once wrote, "Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread." Because we are sinners, it does not follow that we are saved.
Mr Wirt:
In your book Surprised by Joy you remark that you were brought into the faith kicking and struggling and resentful, with eyes darting in every direction looking for an escape.3 You suggest that you were compelled, as it were, to become a Christian. Do you feel that you made a decision at the time of your conversion?
Lewis:
I would not put it that way. What I wrote in Surprised by Joy was that "before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice."4 But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. I was glad afterwards at the way it came out, but at the moment what I heard was God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk."
Mr Wirt:
That sounds to me as if you came to a very definite point of decision.
Lewis:
Well, I would say that the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action. It is a paradox. I expressed it in Surprised by Joy by saying that I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the opposite.5
Mr Wirt:
You wrote twenty years ago that "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this
'(London, 1955), ch. xiv, p. 215. '•Ibid., p. 211.
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man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."6 Would you say your view of this matter has changed since then?
Lewis:
I would say there is no substantial change.
Mr Wirt:
Would you say that the aim of Christian writing, including your own writing, is to bring about an encounter of the reader with Jesus Christ?
Lewis:
That is not my language, yet it is the purpose I have in view. For example, I have just finished a book on prayer, an imaginary correspondence with someone who raises questions about difficulties in prayer.7
Mr Wirt:
How can we foster the encounter of people with Jesus Christ?
Lewis:
You can't lay down any pattern for God. There are many different ways of bringing people into His Kingdom, even some ways that I specially dislike! I have therefore learned to be cautious in my judgment.
But we can block it in many ways. As Christians we are tempted to make unnecessary concessions to those outside the faith. We give in too much. Now, I don't mean that we should run the risk of making a nuisance of ourselves by witnessing at improper times, but there comes a time when we must show that we disagree. We must show our Christian colors, if we are to be true to Jesus Christ. We cannot remain silent or concede everything away.
There is a character in one of my children's stories named
"Mere Christianity (London, 1952), ch. iii, p. 42.
7He is speaking of his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London, 1964).
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Asian, who says, "I never tell anyone any story except his own."8 I cannot speak for the way God deals with others; I only know how He deals with me personally. Of course, we are to pray for spiritual awakening, and in various ways we can do something toward it. But we must remember that neither Paul nor Apollos gives the increase.9 As Charles Williams once said, "The altar must often be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place."10
Mr Wirt:
Professor Lewis, your writings have an unusual quality not often found in discussions of Christian themes. You write as though you enjoyed it.
Lewis:
If I didn't enjoy writing I wouldn't continue to do it. Of all my books, there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing.
Mr Wirt:
Which one?
Lewis:
The Screwtape Letters. They were dry and gritty going. At the time, I was thinking of objections to the Christian life, and decided to put them into the form, "That's what the Devil would say." But making goods "bad" and bads "good" gets to be fatiguing.
Mr Wirt:
How would you suggest a young Christian writer go about developing a style?
Lewis:
The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know
"Except for slight variations in the wording, Asian says this to two children who ask him about other people's lives in The Horse and His Boy (London, 1954), ch. xi, p. 147 and ch. xiv, p. 180.
9I Corinthians iii. 6.
'""Usually the way must be made ready for heaven, and then it will come by some other; the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar." Charles Williams, He Came Down from Heaven (London, 1938), ch. ii, p. 25.
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exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.
Mr Wirt:
Do you believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to the world through Christian writers today?
Lewis:
I prefer to make no judgment concerning a writer's direct "illumination" by the Holy Spirit. I have no way of knowing whether what is written is from heaven or not. I do believe that God is the Father of lights-natural lights as well as spiritual lights (James i. 17). That is, God is not interested only in Christian writers as such. He is concerned with all kinds of writing. In the same way a sacred calling is not limited to ecclesiastical functions. The man who is weeding a field of turnips is also serving God.
Mr Wirt:
An American writer, Mr. Dewey Beegle, has stated that in his opinion the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," is more inspired by God than is the "Song of Solomon" in the Old Testament. What would be your view?
Lewis:
The great saints and mystics of the church have felt just the opposite about it. They have found tremendous spiritual truth in the "Song of Solomon." There is a difference of levels here. The question of the canon is involved. Also we must remember that what is meat for a grown person might be unsuited to the palate of a child.
Mr Wirt:
How would you evaluate modern literary trends as exemplified by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre?
Lewis:
I have read very little in the field. I am not a contemporary
scholar. I am not even a scholar of the past, but I am a lover of the past.
Mr Wirt:
Do you believe that the use of filth and obscenity is necessary in order to establish a realistic atmosphere in contemporary literature?
Lewis:
/> I do not. I treat this development as a symptom, a sign of a culture that has lost its faith. Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse. I look upon the immediate future with great apprehension.
Mr Wirt:
Do you feel, then, that modern culture is being de-Christianized?
Lewis:
I cannot speak to the political aspects of the question, but I have some definite views about the de-Christianizing of the church. I believe that there are many accommodating preachers, and too many practitioners in the church who are not believers. Jesus Christ did not say, "Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right." The Gospel is something completely different. In fact, it is directly opposed to the world.
The case against Christianity that is made out in the world is quite strong. Every war, every shipwreck, every cancer case, every calamity, contributes to making aprimafacie case against Christianity. It is not easy to be a believer in the face of this surface evidence. It calls for a strong faith in Jesus Christ.
Mr Wirt:
Do you approve of men such as Bryan Green and Billy Graham asking people to come to a point of decision regarding the Christian life?
Lewis:
I had the pleasure of meeting Billy Graham once. We had dinner together during his visit to Cambridge University in 1955, while he was conducting a mission to students. I thought he was a very modest and a very sensible man, and I liked him very much indeed.
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In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question. In the Soviet Union it is different. Many people living in Russia today have never had to consider the claims of Christ because they have never heard of those claims.
In the same way, we who live in English-speaking countries have never really been forced to consider the claims, let us say, of Hinduism. But in our Western civilization we are obligated both morally and intellectually to come to grips with Jesus Christ; if we refuse to do so we are guilty of being bad philosophers and bad thinkers.
Mr Wirt:
What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life-the need for taking time to be alone with God?
Lewis:
We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by our Lord; and since they are His commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what He said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door."
Mr Wirt:
What do you think is going to happen in the next few years
of history, Mr. Lewis?
Lewis:
I have no way of knowing. My primary field is the past. I travel with my back to the engine, and that makes it difficult when you try to steer. The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one's post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.
We have, of course, the assurance of the New Testament regarding events to come.12 I find it difficult to keep from
"Matthew vi. 5-6.
"Matthew xxiv. 4-44; Mark xiii. 5-27; Luke xxi. 8-33.
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laughing when I find people worrying about future destruction of some kind or other. Didn't they know they were going to die anyway? Apparently not. My wife once asked a young woman friend whether she had ever thought of death, and she replied, "By the time I reach that age science will have done something about it!"
Mr Wirt:
Do you think there will be widespread travel in space?
Lewis:
I look forward with horror to contact with the other inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism. I can't bear to think of it. But if we on earth were to get right with God, of course, all would be changed. Once we find ourselves spiritually awakened, we can go to outer space and take the good things with us. That is quite a different matter.
25.
THE SERMON AND THE LUNCH
AND SO," SAID THE PREACHER "THE HOME MUST BE THE FOUN-
dation of our national life. It is there, all said and done, that character is formed. It is there that we appear as we really are. It is there we can fling aside the weary disguises of the outer world and be ourselves. It is there that we retreat from the noise and stress and temptation and dissipation of daily life to seek the sources of fresh strength and renewed purity...." And as he spoke I noticed that all confidence in him had departed from every member of that congregation who was under thirty. They had been listening well up to this point. Now the shufflings and coughings began. Pews creaked; muscles relaxed. The sermon, for all practical purposes, was over; the five minutes for which the preacher continued talking were a total waste of time-at least for most of us.
Whether I wasted them or not is for you to judge. I certainly did not hear any more of the sermon. I was thinking; and the starting point of my thought was the question, "How can he? How can he of all people?" For I knew the preacher's own home pretty well. In fact, I had been lunching there that very day, making a fifth to the vicar and the vicar's wife and the son (R.A.F.)1 and the daughter (A.T.S.),2 who happened both to be on leave. I could have avoided it, but the girl had whispered to me, "For God's sake stay to lunch if they ask you. It's always a little less frightful when there's a visitor."
Lunch at the vicarage nearly always follows the same pattern. It starts with a desperate attempt on the part of the young people to keep up a bright patter of trivial conversation: trivial not because they are trivially minded (you can have real conversation with them if you get them alone), but because it would
'Royal Air Force.
2Auxiliary Territorial Service.
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never occur to either of them to say at home anything they were really thinking, unless it is forced out of them by anger. They are talking only to try to keep their parents quiet. They fail. The vicar, ruthlessly interrupting, cuts in on a quite different subject. He is telling us how to reeducate Germany. He has never been there and seems to know nothing either of German history or the German language. "But, father," begins the son, and gets no further. His mother is now talking, though nobody knows exactly when she began. She is in the middle of a complicated story about how badly some neighbor has treated her. Though it goes on a long time, we never learn either how it began or how it ended: it is all middle. "Mother, that's not quite fair," says the daughter at last. "Mrs. Walker never said-" but her father's voice booms in again. He is telling his son about the organization of the R.A.F. So it goes on until either the vicar or his wife says something so preposterous that the boy or the girl contradicts and insists on making the contradiction heard. The real minds of the young people have at last been called into action. They talk fiercely, quickly, contemptuously. They have facts and logic on their side. There is an answering flare-up from the parents. The father storms; the mother is (oh, blessed domestic queen's move!) "hurt"- plays pathos for all she is worth. The daughter becomes ironical. The father and son, elaborately ignoring each other, start talking to me. The lunch party is in ruins.
The memory of that lunch worries me during the last few minutes of the sermon. I am not worried by the fact that the vicar's practice differs from his precept. That is, no doubt, regrettable, but it is nothing to the purpose. As Dr. Johnson said, precept may be very sincere (and, let us add, very profitable) where practice is very imperfect,3 and no one but a fool would discount a doctor's warnings about alcoholic poisoning because the doctor himself drank too much. What worries me is the fact that the vicar is not telling us at all that home life is difficult and has, like every form of life, its own proper temptations and corruptions. He keeps on talking as if "home" were
a panacea, a magical charm which of itself was bound to produce happiness and virtue. The trouble is not that he is insincere but that he is a fool. He is not talking from his own experience of family life at all: he is automatically reproducing
'James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford, 1934), vol. IV, p. 397 (December 2, 1784).
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a sentimental tradition-and it happens to be a false tradition. That is why the congregation have stopped listening to him.
If Christian teachers wish to recall Christian people to domesticity-and I, for one, believe that people must be recalled to it-the first necessity is to stop telling lies about home life and to substitute realistic teaching. Perhaps the fundamental principles would be something like this.
1. Since the Fall no organization or way of life whatever has a natural tendency to go right. In the Middle Ages some people thought that if only they entered a religious order they would find themselves automatically becoming holy and happy: the whole native literature of the period echoes with the exposure of that fatal error. In the nineteenth century some people thought that monogamous family life would automatically make them holy and happy; the savage antidomestic literature of modem times-the Samuel Butlers, the Gosses, the Shaws- delivered the answer. In both cases the "debunkers" may have been wrong about principles and may have forgotten the maxim abusus non tollit usum:" but in both cases they were pretty right about matter of fact. Both family life and monastic life were often detestable, and it should be noticed that the serious defenders of both are well aware of the dangers and free of the sentimental illusion. The author of the Imitation of Christ knows (no one better) how easily monastic life goes wrong. Charlotte M. Yonge makes it abundantly clear that domesticity is no passport to heaven on earth but an arduous vocation-a sea full of hidden rocks and perilous ice shores only to be navigated by one who uses a celestial chart. That is the first point on which we must be absolutely clear. The family, like the nation, can be offered to God, can be converted and redeemed, and will then become the channel of particular blessings and graces. But, like everything else that is human, it needs redemption. Unredeemed, it will produce only particular temptations, corruptions, and miseries. Charity begins at home: so does un-
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