What C. S. Lewis Means to Me

I spent a significant portion of my short life reading and studying the greatest Christian advocate of recent times. If there is any pastime to make one a serious believer, surely this is it. Did it have that effect on me, then? Has C. S. Lewis convinced me that “mere Christianity” is the truth?

He has certainly convinced others with much higher profiles than I can boast of. Charles Colson, a former Nixon advisor, became a Christian by reading Lewis. Francis Collins, one of the leading scientists today, turned his back on atheism and embraced the Christian faith due to C. S. Lewis.

On me, however, C. S. Lewis had the opposite effect. I grew up as a Christian. I therefore did not turn to Lewis from a world of unbelief and discovered, to my surprise and delight, that the Christian faith can actually be a champion of Reason, articulated with clarity and beauty, cutting to the very core of human identity. No. I was already a believer and began to read more of C. S. Lewis because I had liked the Chronicles of Narnia and frequently ran into quotes by him.

And, like millions of other readers, I quickly became a great admirer. But his writings also made me aware of many questions that my sheltered Christian upbringing had kept me from asking. It was through Lewis that I began my own Classical Education, studying philosophy, Greek and Roman poetry, Medieval and Renaissance thought. It was he who inflamed me with a passion for history. I no longer approached it as a dry list of dates, but as a way of getting to know humanity on a level that transcended my own immediate experience. For this I am deeply grateful. C. S. Lewis has been, without question, the best of my teachers.

As such, however, he has not primarily confirmed the faith of my upbringing, but introduced me to doubt. He has expanded my narrow Christian horizon, causing me to leave my Fundamentalist home behind and meeting people from all kinds of persuasions. In a way, C. S. Lewis has even caused me to leave him behind, too.

I still like to read him. He is still a great source of inspiration for me. But I would be lying if I said that I am completely convinced of his position. I am of a less old-fashioned temperament than he, and I am not sure what the future will bring. But I look back at this teacher with great fondness. There he is, standing at the door of faith, keeping it open for me.

C. S. Lewis is one of the most diverse writers I know. He causes people who would otherwise not have done so to consider the claims of the Bible. He is an entryway to faith. But his broadness can also be an exit that leads away from the safety of simple-minded faith to the frightening and wonderful world of doubt, a world in which faith and the Bible are not black-and-white, a world that is not always easy, but that is passionate about engaging reality.

(Read more about C. S. Lewis in my upcoming book The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought about the Greatest Book.)