Last week I started doing something I hardly ever do – I started reading a non-fiction book. Even more amazingly, it’s an auto-biography. That’s a genre I almost never delve into. In fact, I can’t even remember the last non-fiction book I read cover to cover. It’s not even a recent book. I ran across it literally by providence, and decided to bring it home.
The book is Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, among others. It’s not a standard auto-biography, though. The short description on the cover summarizes it as Lewis’ “search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity.”
While his writing is frequently either outside my experience or above my head (in the first few chapters he discusses his very early life, including English and Irish boarding schools and social circles, and manages to write in a few Latin phrases and references to other works that he apparently thinks are common knowledge), I do get the drift. He had a tough childhood, emotionally and intellectually. The cruelty of his first boarding school headmaster was random and violent, and the academic lessons for the most part without merit. I get more of a sense of the atmosphere of the orphanage from “Oliver Twist” (or in my case, Oliver! the movie), than I do of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, which is patterned after an English boarding school, as I understand it.
But at the end of the description of this time in his life he says this:
Life at a vile boarding school is in this way a good preparation for the Christian life, that it teaches one to live by hope. Even, in a sense, by faith; for at the beginning of each term, home and the holidays are so far off that it is as hard to realize them as to realize heaven. They have the same pitiful unreality when confronted with immediate horrors. Tomorrow’s geometry blots out the distant end of term as tomorrow’s operation may blot out the hope of Paradise. And yet, term after term, the unbelievable happened. Fantastical and astronomical figures like “this time six weeks” shrank into practicable figures like “this time next week,” and then “this time tomorrow,” and the almost supernatural bliss of the Last Day punctually appeared.
He continued to describe the deep, nearly breathtaking delight that that day held. He also went on to acknowledge the other side of the same equation: that at the beginning of each time at home, the next school term was as unrecognized as a young man in good health would recognize his own mortality. It may be acknowledged, but never truly realized, until time moves forward and the inevitable occurs.
In all seriousness I think that the life of faith is easier to me because of these memories. To think, in sunny and confident times, that I shall die and rot, or to think that one day this universe will slip away and become memory . . . is easier to us if we have seen just that sort of thing happening before. We have learned not to take present things at their face value.
I haven’t had the same kind of circumstances in my life that he had, but I can come up with a few situations (though laughably smaller in intensity) that help me draw that same parallel. It’s helpful to have a new frame of reference for living in hope of a new world to come—to be able to work through the day to day grind of life while keeping one eye on the prize.
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Sounds like an interesting read, I’ll have to look for it.
liv in greensboros last blog post..Pinch me, Greensboring just outranked the News & Record?
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It is pretty interesting. I’m still not sure I’ll get all the way through it, honestly… I have a hard time keeping my interest in these types of books. But it’s been good through the first 4 chapters, anyway…
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[...] public links >> cslewis CS Lewis on belief Saved by jgraup on Sun 14-12-2008 CS Lewis on living by hope Saved by sasukeheart11 on Tue 09-12-2008 CS Lewis and the Contemporary Church Saved by tpechmann [...]
Hello, please visit my page and listen to the sermons of Scott about Lewis “In His Own
Words”, they are eye-opening! He quotes him from his own books (and so on), showing who
he really was. Its very important, you should listen to!
Peter
http://www.4shared.com/dir/NqMKaOV_/Scott_A_Johnson.html
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Jeff says:
June 24th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Thanks for the link, Peter, though I have to say that what I’ve been able to find about Scott A Johnson worries me, and his disappearance from SermonAudio and the demise of his web site do nothing to encourage me. The lack of a bio or public statement of faith raise questions for me. He also seems to have a habit of jumping around pulling verses and quotes out of context, which is never a good idea. In short, he worries me.
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Peter says:
July 4th, 2010 at 6:29 am
hello Jeff, donst start right away running to some webpages and looking for info on him. there are many lies out there and yes he was stoped at sermonaudio because he is brave and he is speaking out on very important issues! these guys at sermon audio are just afraid that they might loose their status becuase of his teachings. Scott did mention it also couple of times that they will probably shut him down soon (in my words) and now they did. i dont know what time ago but he has his own webpage now. im listening to his teachings and they are very good!! very helpful!
you should listen to all of them too, it doesnt matter if you like his style or not. its important what he is saying. and i dont think that he is quoting scriptures out of context. i will upload some more taday and you should listen to them. On CS Lewis there are two more. also tolkien. there are a lot of sleeping christains out there and if they listen to his sermons they get a shock and its because they are sleeping already. this is how you can test yourself. im from germany and i like his teachings so far. dont forget that right now already people dont want to hear sound doctrin anymore! this is happening right now because people get hypnotised and brainwashed by the media,movies,games, tv and so on! lies lies lies and unsaved people do laught about the so-called christians doday. in their eyes there are a bunch of clowns! they try to live like the world, are in bed with cs lewis whom many satanista and witches do praise!! why? because he was one of them! just read his own books carefully. Scott is doing a great job exposng him! he was not a christian! never!! all this “christian” books he wrote were a hook to decieve christains who dont study the bible, the real one, KJV.
http://www.4shared.com/audio/pOMK4lq5/Scott_A_Johnson_Tolkien_Lewis_.html
http://www.4shared.com/audio/GLFtw37W/Scott_A_Johnson_Tolkien_Lewis_.html
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Jeff says:
July 4th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Hi Peter,
A. What’s his new website? The only one I found has been under maintenance for a very long time. Where can I find unbiased information about the man?
B. I did listen to most of that CS Lewis audio, and while I haven’t deeply studied the subject, what he’s saying doesn’t track with any other source I’ve found, which makes it suspect at best. Is it possible he’s the only person on the planet that has seen through the web of lies? Yeah, I guess, but it’s certainly not likely. I’ve got no problem with questioning prevailing knowledge, but a single, dubious, source is not gonna get my vote.
C. Why is KJV the only “real” bible?
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Peter says:
July 20th, 2010 at 8:43 am
A. its ContendingForTruth.com
B. “i did listen to most” is not enouth. it is interesting to me that Scott is quoting from HIS OWN BOOKS and YOU dont get the picture?! ne he is not the only person on this planet who knows that Lewis was a follower of the devil.
C. YES! go here and listen to Al Neal:
http://www.4shared.com/dir/LkCVxrsv/Al_Neal.html
listen to his teachings AND TAKE SOME TIME PLEASE!!
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