C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland into a middle-class protestant family. When he was nine years old his mother died. This was, of course, devastating for the young boy who had been very close to his mother. C. S. Lewis was raised by an emotionally distant father and as well as growing up for many years in boarding schools. After his basic education he served in the Infantry and experienced the horrors of World War 1. However, after two years he was dismissed from the military after he was accidentally wounded in the back.
Lewis was a brilliant man and found that he excelled in English Literature so after he graduated from Oxford he became a professor of Medieval English at Oxford University. He spent the bulk of his academic career at Oxford.
The watershed in Lewis's life was his conversion from atheism to Christianity. One late spring night, as he sat alone in his university residence he was overwhelmed with doubts, insecurities, fears, and questions. In his struggle with his faith, Lewis wanted to know if true joy was possible. And, Lewis wanted to know if God, or more specifically if Christianity was the answer to true joy. But, C.S. Lewis had a difficult time giving up his stubborn atheism. Later he wrote of his conversion experience in his book, Surprised by Joy.
"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalon, night after night feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. (During the year) of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed. I was perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England." -Surprised by Joy
Several weeks later on a trip to the zoo with his brother Warren, Lewis was enraptured by the joy for which he had sought for so many years.
Shortly after his conversion, national radio in Britain required a section of broadcasts devoted to religion. Lewis was chosen to speak early in the morning when few would be listening. He soon gathered one of the largest audiences by simply explaining why he thought Christianity must be true. These talks became the basis for his famous book Mere Christianity.
By the early 1950s, Lewis was well-known on both sides of the Atlantic because of his WWII BBC broadcasts urging his countrymen to remain steadfast in their faith and because of his logical defense of Christianity and its doctrines. His reputation was secure as a Christian communicator and thinker, though he would never call himself a theologian because he was an academic in English, not Theology.
To many today, Lewis is best known for his children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia series, and his science fiction trilogy. Yet most, who have enjoyed these books, as children, probably do not realize the Christian symbolism and parallels that are in the stories at a deeper level. Lewis wanted to create good, imaginative stories that led people to deeper questions about life, who we are and who God is. In fact, his much loved novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is basically an allegory of the Christian experience and The Gospel.
His approach to people was non-threatening. He called himself the laymen's laymen, having never studied theology extensively. Never did Lewis want to appear as if he had life all figured out. Many of his writings, The Problem of Pain for example, were very clear that life hurt him and disappointed him deeply in many ways. Yet, he always returned himself and his audience to the facts that God was indeed good--we were the ones with the problem.
Lewis, although humble in some ways, was very arrogant in others. And he preferred the company of men because he considered that women's minds were inferior to men's. He was a self-proclaimed life long bachelor until he met a woman by the name of Joy Davidman.
Joy was a divorced, Jewish American with two children who, after 10 years of correspondence, had traveled to England to meet Lewis and his brother. She had sought him out in the early 1950s to talk with him about Christianity - herself a convert to Christ during her own personal crisis which was similar to his own conversion experience. She was a brazen, intelligent, dynamic, faithful woman who was also an author of poetry and nonfiction. Her writings were influenced by her own vibrant faith.
Lewis was a lifelong bachelor, yet he quickly agreed to marry Joy out of pity in a civil ceremony so she could stay in England. Joy soon contracted bone-marrow cancer, and as Lewis took care of her, he realized that he was very much in love with her. Their marriage was made official in a church ceremony. The two were known for their passion for each other and their common faith.
Nowhere was Lewis' faith more challenged than in his relationship to his beloved wife. When Joy Lewis died of cancer in 1960, her death destroyed him emotionally. And for over a year, Lewis literally fought with God, arguing with Him for taking his wife away. But he emerged from this wilderness of grief and despair to a restored and invigorated faith that energized his last book and perhaps his most reassuring piece of writing, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.
Lewis died on Nov. 22, 1963 but his legacy lives on. Many who work in evangelism still use his book Mere Christianity as an evangelizing tool. Even those the language is now dated, no one has yet to write about Christianity in such an inviting, logical and sound way, as C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis - one of Christianity's great men and someone we can look to for inspiration because of his faith and the work he created that reflected his faith. May we all lead a life that is a reflection of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, our liberator. Amen.
