UNIVERSITY PARKS, OXFORD
Jack (C.S.) Lewis was a 32 year old professor at Oxford, walking across campus with two friends – 39 year old Ronald (J.R.R.) Tolkien and 35 year old Hugo Dyson. Lewis was an atheist, Tolkien a devout Catholic and Dyson a committed Christian. Their stroll became an extended conversation that moved from the beauty of nature to thoughts on poetry to fundamental ideas about God and religion. Dyson and Tolkien were trying to persuade their colleague and friend of the rationality of faith in God. Conversations like this one were instrumental in helping Lewis overcome his struggle to believe in a good and loving God.
Three ideas eventually prevailed on the reluctant Jack.
1. Our feelings about the injustice of God (in allowing evil and suffering) are actually an argument for God, not against Him. Where, after all, does the whole idea of right and wrong come from?
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. Just how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.” (Mere Christianity, 45-46)
“There is something above and beyond ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet definitely real – a real Law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.”(Mere Christianity, 30)
“There is a difficulty with disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.” (Mere Christianity, 53)
2. We all have an inescapable sense of what is right and we know, deep down, we don’t live up to it.
“Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.” (Mere Christianity, 21)
“The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking that God is ‘good’ in the sense of being indulgent, or soft, or sympathetic. There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.”(Mere Christianity, 37)
3. We all have desires and longings that point to a spiritual source of fulfillment.
“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…
“I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death… I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.” (Mere Christianity, 120)
For more on the spiritual journey of C.S. Lewis, read this post.
For more on his relationship with Tolkien and Dyson, read this one.