Letters to Spiritual Seekers
To an inquirer the day after Lewis had given a lecture on Christian faith
To Patricia Thomson December 8, 1941
I was saying nothing in that sermon about the destiny of the “virtuous unbeliever.” The parable of the sheep & the goats* suggests that they have a very pleasant surprise coming to them. But in the main, we are not told God’s plans about them in any detail. If the Church is Christ’s body—the thing he works through—then the more worried one is about the people outside, the more reason to get inside oneself where one can help—you are giving Him, as it were, a new finger. . . .
Fear isn’t repentance—but it’s alright as a beginning—much better at that stage than not being afraid. How interested are you? If you care to come and talk about it I expect we could arrange a date. Let me know.
*Matthew 25:31–46
(CL 2, 499–500)
Letters to Rhona Bodle
(Lewis’s letters to one inquirer, Rhona Bodle, are given in sequence here, to show how her spiritual journey was clearly reflected in the letters she received from C. S. Lewis. Bodle was a New Zealander who came to England to study. After reading Lewis’s books based on his BBC broadcast talks, she wrote to him directly concerning her doubts about the divinity of Christ.)
On approaching matters of faith with cheerful curiosity
December 31, 1947
Dear Miss Bodle—
I think it possible that what is keeping you from belief in Christ’s Divinity is your apparently strong desire to believe. If you don’t think it true why do you want to believe it? If you do think it true, then you believe it already. So I would recommend less anxiety about the whole question. You believe in God and trust Him. Well, you can trust Him about this. If you go on steadily praying and attempting to obey the best light He had given you, can you not rely on Him to guide you into any further truth He wishes you to know? Or even if He leaves you all your life in doubt, can’t you believe that He sees that to be the best state for you?
I don’t mean by this that you should cease to study and make enquiries: but that you should make them not with frantic desire but with cheerful curiosity and a humble readiness to accept whatever conclusions God may lead you to. (But always, all depends on the steady attempt to obey God all the time. “He who does the will of the Father shall know of the doctrine”).
As for books, the very best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man. Mascall The God-Man might also help.
It is only fair to tell you that my impression is that you are in fact very much nearer to belief in Christ than you suppose: and that if you really face the opposite view tranquilly (and why be afraid of it unless you already know in your bones that the Christian view is true) you will find you don’t really believe it—i.e. don’t really believe that all you have got out of the books you mention is based on an illusion—which, if an allusion at all, must be a most blasphemous and horrible one. Conversions happen in all sorts of different ways: some sharp & catastrophic (like St. Paul, St. Augustine, or Bunyan) some very gradual and intellectual (like my own). No good predicting how God will deal with one: He has His own way with each of us. So don’t worry. Continue all your efforts. You are being steered by Another: you’ve only got to row—and therefore the future journey is behind your back.
I’m pretty sure where you’ll land, myself, and you will then wonder how you ever doubted it. But you needn’t keep looking over your shoulder too often. Keep your eye on the Helmsman, keep your conscience bright and your brain clear and believe that you are in good hands. (No one can make himself believe anything and the effort does harm. Nor make himself feel anything, and that effort also does harm. What is under our own control is action and intellectual inquiry. Stick to that). All good wishes.
(CL 2, 823–824)
It is not you who are holding fast to Him but Him to you
June 22, 1948
Dear Miss Bodle
Splendid! As long as you keep in your present way—holding fast to God, whether the Incarnation can be accepted or not—you can’t go wrong. Because, you see, it is not really you who are holding fast to Him but He to you: and He will bring you to wherever He wants.
I should try St. John’s Gospel and the non-Pauline epistles if the first three gospels are deadened with familiarity. But why worry? (I don’t mean “Why read & think?”: that’s obviously right). You are wondering if the Incarnation is true. Well, if it’s not true God doesn’t want you to believe it. If you are worried by not (or not yet) believing it, then you must in your heart of hearts believe it to be true, for who could be so worried at not believing an error!
Your own argument, that you at any rate have come to know God only through Christ is a very strong one: and I don’t mind betting you will come to the Christian belief in the end. But don’t read with a determination to do so. Take the books naturally as you would any other serious books. And get out of your head expressions like “theological problem,” “dogma” etc. You are an adult student reading some very interesting ancient records, with God to guide you. Let them and Him work. And don’t get fussed and don’t demand quick returns. All is obviously going pretty well.
(CL 2, 857)
It is pretty clear that you are being conducted
February 10, 1949
Dear Miss Bodle
I doubt whether I, or anyone else, needs to interfere. The route you are following at present seems to be the right one. Adding to Pascal’s “if you had not found me you would not seek me” (a sentence I have long loved), the very obvious further step “And if I had not drawn you, you would not have found me,” and seeing both in the light of Our Lord’s words “No man cometh to me unless the Father have drawn him”—well, it is pretty clear that you are being conducted. “Follow-my-leader” is a good enough guide now. Thinking as you now do of Christ you will not be able for long to set aside the sayings which proclaim Him to be more than man (“Before Abraham was I AM”—“I AM and hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man etc.”—“Thy sins are forgiven thee”—“I am the Vine”). . . .
I quite agree that people are far too concerned about the “modern” man and this-that-and-the-other man. Why not, as you say, just man? You are always in my prayers.
(CL 2, 915–916)
Welcome home!
June 24, 1949
Dear Miss Bodle
Welcome home! And thank you for writing to tell me: this has been a wonderful week, for I have just heard that my oldest friend* is to be baptized on Saturday.
No, one can’t put these experiences into words: though all writing is a continual attempt to do so. Indeed, in a sense, one can hardly put anything into words: only the simplest colors have names, and hardly any of the smells. The simple physical pains and (still more) the pleasures can’t be expressed in language. I labor the point lest the devil should hereafter try to make you believe that what was wordless was therefore vague and nebulous. But in reality it is just the clearest, the most concrete, and the most indubitable realities which escape language: not because they are vague but because language is. What goes easily into words is precisely the abstract—thought about “matter” (not apples or snuff) about “population” (not actual babies), and so on. Poetry I take to be the continual effort to bring language back to the actual.
God bless you: mention me sometimes in your prayers.
*Owen Barfield
(CL 2, 947)
The intention, the obedience is what matters
November 9, 1949
Dear Miss Bodle
Congratulations. You are daily in my prayers.
Caveat—don’t count on any remarkable sensations, either at this or your first (or fifty-first) Communion. God gives these or not as He pleases. Their presence does not prove that things are especially well, nor their absence that things are wrong. The intention, the obedience, is what matters.
(CL 2, 994)
Short answers to a whole series of odd questions
To Mrs. Frank L. Jones February 7, 1950
Now for an attempt at answering some of your questions:
Since all we know of his teachings is derived from the disciples and St. Paul, we are not in a position to say that they did finally misunderstand Him. With what other account of His teaching can we check theirs? That He was temporarily over their heads, I agree. That is the way to get a class on, as every teacher knows.
I’m afraid I can’t add to what I said about this in the Problem of Pain.
Have you evidence that He did? Some people are stupid through their own choice—laziness, and even fear of the truth—so have made themselves stupid. Others, through bad education etc., which is the fault of other humans, not of God.
My dictionary defines neurotic as one “having disordered nerves.” This would often mean in effect that the patient, with little or no moral guilt, does as the result of his disease the same things which would imply great guilt if a person in health did them—e.g. acts of cowardice, ill temper etc. (We all make the distinction in ordinary life when we excuse someone for being peevish because he is very tired, and therefore temporarily in bad nervous health). But no doubt friends and even doctors often flatter healthy but wicked people by attributing to neurosis what is really just wickedness. There is a great temptation to excuse oneself on the same grounds!
I am. (This is the only possible answer: or expanded, “A soul is that which can say I am”).
(CL 3, 10)
Differing definitions of “Christian”
To Genia Goelz March 18, 1952
Don’t bother at all about that question of a person being “made a Christian” by baptism. It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man “became a soldier” the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later “I think we have made a soldier of him”. Both usages are quite definable, only one wants to know which is being used in a given sentence. The Bible itself gives us one short prayer which is suitable for all who are struggling with the beliefs and doctrines. It is: “Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” Would something of this sort be any good?: Almighty God, who art the father of lights and who has promised by thy dear Son that all who do thy will shall know thy doctrine: give me grace so to live that by daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in the understanding of thy Holy Word, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(CL 3, 172)
Excerpts from Letters to Sheldon Vanauken
(These letters trace Sheldon Vanauken’s journey to faith, partly due to his correspondence with Lewis. When Vanauken traveled to Oxford to study, he and his wife Jean became personal friends with Lewis. The correspondence continued after Jean became gravely ill and died at the age of 40. Vanauken’s memoir, which includes his friendship with Lewis, is A Severe Mercy (1977).)
December 14, 1950
Dear Mr. Van Awten [Vanauken],
My own position at the threshold of Christianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You wish it were true; I strongly hoped it was not. At least, that was my conscious wish: you may suspect that I had unconscious wishes of quite a different sort and that it was these which finally shoved me in. True: but then I may equally suspect that under your conscious wish that it were true, there lurks a strong unconscious wish that it were not. What this works out to is that all that modern stuff about concealed wishes and wishful thinking, however useful it may be for explaining the origin of an error which you already know to be an error, is perfectly useless in deciding which of two beliefs is the error and which is the truth. For (a.) One never knows all one’s wishes, (b.) In very big questions, such as this, even one’s conscious wishes are nearly always engaged on both sides.
What I think one can say with certainty is this: the notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and that therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense. Do you think people like Stalin, Hitler, Haldane, Stapledon (a corking good writer, by the way) would be pleased on waking up one morning to find that they were not their own masters, that they had a Master and a Judge, that there was nothing even in the deepest recesses of their thoughts about which they could say to Him “Keep out! Private. This is my business?” Do you? Rats! Their first reaction would be (as mine was) rage and terror. And I very much doubt whether even you would find it simply pleasant. Isn’t the truth this: that it would gratify some of our desires (ones we feel in fact pretty seldom) and outrage a great many others? So let’s wash out all the wish business. It never helped anyone to solve any problem yet.
I don’t agree with your picture of the history of religion—Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and others elaborating an original simplicity. I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Christianity. Clear, lucid, transparent, simple religion (Tao plus a shadowy, ethical god in the background) is a late development, usually arising among highly educated people in great cities. What you really start with is ritual, myth, and mystery, the death & return of Balder or Osiris, the dances, the initiations, the sacrifices, the divine kings. Over against that are the Philosophers, Aristotle or Confucius, hardly religious at all.
The only two systems in which the mysteries and the philosophies come together are Hinduism and Christianity: there you get both Metaphysics and Cult (continuous with the primeval cults). That is why my first step was to be sure that one or the other of these had the answer. For the reality can’t be one that appeals either only to savages or only to high brows. Real things aren’t like that (e.g. matter is the first most obvious thing you meet—milk, chocolates, apples, and also the object of quantum physics).
There is no question of just a crowd of disconnected religions. The choice is between (a.) The materialist world picture: which I can’t believe. (b.) The real archaic primitive religions: which are not moral enough. (c.) The (claimed) fulfillment of these in Hinduism. (d.) The claimed fulfillment of these in Christianity. But the weakness of Hinduism is that it doesn’t really join the two strands. Unredeemably savage religion goes on in the village; the Hermit philosophizes in the forest: and neither really interferes with the other. It is only Christianity which compels a high brow like me to partake in a ritual blood feast, and also compels a central African convert to attempt an enlightened universal code of ethics.
Have you tried Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man? The best popular apologetic I know.
Meanwhile, the attempt to practice the Tao is certainly the right line. Have you read the Analects of Confucius? He ends up by saying “This is the Tao. I do not know if any one has ever kept it.” That’s significant: one can really go direct from there to the Epistle to the Romans.
I don’t know if any of this is the least use. Be sure to write again, or call, if you think I can be of any help.
(CL 3, 70–72)
December 23, 1950
Dear Mr. Vanauken
The contradiction “We must have faith to believe and must believe to have faith” belongs to the same class as those by which the Eleatic philosophers proved that all motion was impossible. And there are many others. You can’t swim unless you can support yourself in water & you can’t support yourself in water unless you can swim. Or again, in an act of volition (e.g. getting up in the morning) is the very beginning of the act itself voluntary or involuntary? If voluntary then you must have willed it, therefore you were willing already, therefore it was not really the beginning. If involuntary, then the continuation of the act (being determined by the first moment) is involuntary too. But in spite of this we do swim, & we do get out of bed.
I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will & honesty of my best & oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Christianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks.
As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which would be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late. “His praise is lost who stays till all commend.” The magnanimity, the generosity which will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you would have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error would even so be more interesting & important than the reality. And yet how could that be? How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?
Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and, blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine’s love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What would be a bribe if it came first had better come last.
It is quite clear from what you say that you have conscious wishes on both sides. And now, another point about wishes. A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold’s line “Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.” But surely, tho’ it doesn’t prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food? i.e. if we were a species that didn’t normally eat, wasn’t designed to eat, would we feel hungry?
You say the Materialist universe is “ugly.” I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married? I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.
Total Humility is not in the Tao because the Tao (as such) says nothing about the Object to which it would be the right response: just as there is no law about railways in the acts of Q. Elizabeth. But from the degree of respect which the Tao demands for ancestors, parents, elders, & teachers, it is quite clear what the Tao would prescribe towards an object such as God.
But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you’ll get away!
(CL 3, 74–76)
April 17, 1947
Dear Vanauken
My prayers are answered. No: a glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon. And there must perhaps always be just enough lack of demonstrative certainty to make free choice possible: for what could we do but accept if the faith were like the multiplication table?
There will be a counter attack on you, you know, so don’t be too alarmed when it comes. The enemy will not see you vanish into God’s company without an effort to reclaim you. Be busy learning to pray and (if you have made up your mind on the denominational question) get confirmed.
Blessings on you and a hundred thousand welcomes. Make use of me in any way you please: and let us pray for each other always.
(CL 3, 106)
April 22, 1953
Dear Mr. Vanauken
It was very nice to hear from you. I hope my interest in you both is something less blasphemous than that of a Creator in a creature (it would anyway be begetting not creating, see Philemon 10). My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder and lightning which follow is alarming. And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself. By writing the things I write, you see, one especially qualifies for being hereafter “condemned out of one’s mouth.” Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice.
The semi-Christians (in dog-collars) that you speak of are a great trial. Our College chaplain is rather of that kind. I’m glad you have something better in your own church.
I feel an amused recognition when you describe those moments at which one feels “How could I—I, of all people—ever have come to believe this cock & bull story.” I think they will do us no harm. Aren’t they just the reverse side of one’s just recognition that the truth is amazing? Our fathers were more familiar with the opposite danger of taking it all for granted: which is probably just as bad.
God bless you both: you are always in my prayers. I hope we may meet again one day.
(CL 3, 324–325)
November 23, 1954
My dear Vanauken—
It is a long time since you wrote and told me of your wife’s grave illness. You asked my prayers and of course have had them: not only daily, for I never wake in the night without remembering you both before God. I have sometimes tried, by sophistical arguments, to persuade myself that your silence might somehow be interpreted as a good omen . . . but how could it?
If you can bear, will you tell me your news. If she has gone where we can feel no anxiety about her, then I must feel anxious about you. I liked you both so well: never two young people more. And to like is to fear. Whatever has happened and in whatever state you are (I have horrid pictures in my mind) all blessings on you.
(CL 3, 531)
February 10, 1955
My dear Vanauken—
I heard from your friend about 2 days ago, and today I have got your letter of Feb. 5. I am most distressed to find that my answer to your previous letter has never reached you; particularly since its miscarriage has left you in doubt whether I would have accepted the very sacred office of scattering the ashes. I would have liked to do (if you can understand) for the very reason that I would not have liked doing it, since a deep spiritual gaucherie makes [me] uneasy in any ceremonial act; and I would have wished in that way to be honored with a share, however tiny, in this Cross. All you told me in your previous letter and all you tell me in this moves me deeply and it is a high privilege to be admitted to such a beautiful death, an act which consummates (not, as so often, an event which merely stops) the earthly life. And how you reassure me when, to describe your own state, you use the simple, obvious, yet now so rare, word sad. Neither more nor less nor other than sad. It suggests a clean wound—much here for tears, but “nothing but good and fair.”
And I am sure it is never sadness—a proper, straight natural response to loss—that does people harm, but all the other things, all the resentment, dismay, doubt and self-pity with which it is usually complicated. I feel (indeed I tried to say something about it in that lost letter) very strongly what you say about the “curious consolation” that “nothing now can mar” your joint lives. I sometimes wonder whether bereavement is not, at bottom, the easiest and least perilous of the ways in which men lose the happiness of youthful love. For I believe it must always be lost in some way: every merely natural love has to be crucified before it can achieve resurrection and the happy old couples have come through a difficult death and rebirth. But far more have missed the rebirth. Your MS, as you well say, has now gone safe to the Printer.
It is remarkable (I have experienced it), that sense that the dead person is. And also, I have felt, is active: can sometimes do more for you now than before—as if God gave them, as a kind of birthday present on arrival, some great blessing to the beloved they have left behind.
Be careful of your own bodily health. You must be, physically, very tired, much more tired than you know. Above all, don’t yield to the feeling that such things “don’t matter now.” You must remain, as she wishes, a good instrument for all heavenly impulses to work on, and the body is part of the instrument.
I shall be nervous about all letters now that one (and at such a moment) has gone astray. If this reaches you, a line in answer will reassure me.
You are always in my prayers, even whenever I wake in the night. Keep me in yours.
(CL 3, 560–561)
February 20, 1955
My dear Vanauken
I was very glad to get your letter of Feb. 14. And here “luck” worked the other way. It had come unstuck and the envelope was open, but the letter inside, intact.
Your real or supposed change of luck since your conversion (whatever it may really mean) is an old story: read Jeremiah 44:15–18. And I have seen it laid down by a modern spiritual author (whose name I forget) that the experience is to be expected. You remember the vision of Our Lord that said to St. Theresa on some frightful occasion “This is how I always treat my friends.” (I must not conceal her answer, “Then, Lord, it is not surprising that You have so few.”)
What you say about the total Jean being apprehensible since the moment-by-moment Jean has been withdrawn (backed by the very good analogy of the novel page-by-page and the novel after you’ve read it) is most true and important. I see no reason why we should not regard it as what St. Paul calls an arrabon or earnest of the mode in which all can reveal themselves to all in heaven.*
*2 Corinthians 1:21–22
(CL 3, 565–566)
April 6, 1955
My dear Vanauken
I can’t now remember what I said in my lost letter about the “Signs.” My general view is that, once we have accepted an omniscient & providential God, the distinction we used to draw between the significant and the fortuitous must either break down or be restated in some very much subtler form. If an event coming about in the ordinary course of nature becomes to me the occasion of hope and faith and love or increased efforts after virtue, do we suppose that this result was unforeseen by, or is indifferent to, God? Obviously not. What we should have called its fortuitous effects must have been present to Him for all eternity. And indeed, we can’t suppose God saying (as a human artist might) “That effect, though it has turned out rather well, was, I must admit, no part of my original design.” Then the total act of creation, including our own creation (which is going on all the time) meets us, doesn’t it? in every event at every moment: the act of a Person dealing with persons and knowing what He does. Thus I wouldn’t now be bothered by a man who said to me “This, which you mistake for grace, is really the good functioning of your digestion.” Does my digestion fall outside God’s act? He made and allowed to me my colon as much as my guardian angel . . .
I give no advice about the thesis, and I think you ought to be guided by ordinary academic considerations. Forgive me for suggesting that the form “what Jean would have liked” could come to have its dangers. The real question is what she wills now; and you may be sure her will is now one with God’s. . . . The danger is that of confusing your love for her (gradually—as the years pass) with your love for a period in your own past; and of trying to preserve the past in a way in which it can’t be preserved. Death—corruption—resurrection is the true rhythm: not the pathetic, horrible practice of mummification. Sad you must be at present. You can’t develop a false sense of a duty to cling to sadness if—and when, for nature will not preserve any psychological state forever—sadness begins to vanish? There is great good in bearing sorrow patiently: I don’t know that there is any virtue in sorrow just as such. It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can. But you know all this already.
All love.
(CL 3, 592–593)
May 8, 1955
My dear Vanauken
Your letter is a wonderfully clear and beautiful expression of an experience often desired but not often achieved to the degree you and Jean achieved it. My reason for sending it back is my belief that if you reread it often, till you can look at it as if it were someone else’s story, you will in the end think as I do (but of course far more deeply & fruitfully than I can, because it will cost you so much more) about a life so wholly (at first) devoted to US. Not only as I do, but as the whole “sense” of the human family would on their various levels . . .
One way or another the thing had to die. Perpetual springtime is not allowed. You were not cutting the wood of life according to the grain. There are various possible ways in which it could have died tho’ both the parties went on living. You have been treated with a severe mercy. You have been brought to see (how true & how very frequent this is!) that you were jealous of God. So from US you have been led back to US AND GOD; it remains to go on to GOD AND US . . .
God bless you. Pray for me.
(CL 3, 605–606)
Advice to a new convert about not getting overly excited
To Genia Goelz May 15, 1952
Thanks for your letter of the 9th. All our prayers are being answered and I thank God for it. The only (possibly, not necessarily) unfavorable symptom is that you are just a trifle too excited. It is quite right that you should feel that “something terrific” has happened to you (it has) and be “all glowy.” Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean that it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be operative when you can feel it least.
Don’t imagine it is all “going to be an exciting adventure from now on”. It won’t. Excitement of whatever sort, never lasts. This is the push to start you off on your first bicycle: you’ll be left to lots of dogged pedaling later on. And no need to feel depressed about it either. It will be good for your spiritual leg muscles. So enjoy the push while it lasts, but enjoy it as a treat, not as something normal.
Of course none of us have “any right” at the altar. You might as well talk of a non-existent person “having a right” to be created. It is not our right but God’s free bounty. An English peer said, “I like the order of the Garter because it has no dam’ nonsense about merit.” Nor has Grace. And we must keep on remembering that as a cure for Pride.
Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head but don’t be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud one is safe from the worst form of pride.
(CL 3, 191)
Short answers to a whole series of questions
To Mrs. Johnson November 8, 1952
(Mrs. Johnson wrote Lewis to pose thirteen questions, some of them personal. For example, she asked, “Are you handsome?” to which Lewis replied, “Not that I know of: but I’m the last person who would know.” Lewis patiently answered all thirteen questions; the ones included here concern theological and ethical issues of general interest.)
What would happen if I died an atheist?
We are never given any knowledge of “What would have happened if . . .”
What happens to Jews who are still waiting for the Messiah?
I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow.
In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31 and following) those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ. But of course our anxiety about unbelievers is most usefully employed when it leads us not to speculation but to earnest prayer for them and the attempt to be in our own lives such good advertisements for Christianity as will make it attractive.
Is the Bible infallible?
It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read with attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.
How can Moses preach “Thou shalt not kill” when David and Samson then slew thousands in God’s name?
Kill means murder. I don’t know Hebrew: but when Our Lord quotes this commandment he uses the Greek phoneuseis (murder) not apokteinein (kill). [Lewis uses the Greek letters found in Matthew 19:18 and John 8:37.]
If a thief killed Eileen [her daughter] would I be wrong to want him to die?
The question of what you would “want” is off the point. Capital punishment might be wrong though the relations of the murdered man wanted him killed: it might be right though they did not want this. The question is whether a Christian nation ought or ought not to put murderers to death: not what passions interested individuals may feel.
Is killing in self-defense all right?
There is no doubt at all that the natural impulse to “hit back” must be fought against by the Christian whenever it arises. If one I love is tortured or murdered my desire to avenge him must be given no quarter. So far as nothing but this question of retaliation comes in “turn the other cheek” is the Christian law. It is, however, quite another matter when the neutral, public authority (not the aggrieved person) may order killing of either private murderers or public enemies in mass. It is quite clear that our earliest Christian writer, St. Paul, approved of capital punishment—he says the “magistrate” bears the sword and should bear “the sword.” It is recorded that the soldiers who came to St. John Baptist asking, “What should we do?” were not told to leave the army. When Our Lord Himself praised the Centurion He never hinted that the military profession was in itself sinful. This has been the general view of Christendom. Pacificism is a very recent and local variation. We must of course respect and tolerate Pacifists, but I think their view erroneous.
Will we recognize our loved ones in heaven?
The symbols under which Heaven is presented to us are (a) a dinner party, (b) a wedding, (c) a city, and (d) a concert. It would be grotesque to suppose that the guests or citizens or members of the choir didn’t know one another. And how can love of one another be commanded in this life if it is to be cut short at death?
If Wayne didn’t go to heaven I wouldn’t want to either. Would his name be erased from my brain?
Whatever the answer is, I’m sure it is not that (“erased from the brain”). When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. If you and I ever come to love God perfectly, the answer to this tormenting question will then become clear and will be far more beautiful than we could ever imagine. We can’t have it now.
(CL 3, 245–247)
On being raised in a nonreligious home
To Mary Willis Shelburne September 19, 1954
About the lack of religious education: of course you must be grieved, but remember how much religious education has exactly the opposite effect to that which was intended, how many hard atheists come from pious homes. May we not hope, with God’s mercy, that a similarly opposite effect may be produced in her case? Parents are not Providence: their bad intentions may be frustrated as their good ones. Perhaps prayers as a secret indulgence which Father disapproves may have a charm they lacked in houses where they were commanded.
(CL 3, 507)
The “plain called Ease”
To Betty T. Balke July 20, 1962
You are obviously very happy and much to be congratulated at present. But don’t count on its lasting like that. In The Pilgrim’s Progress “the plain called Ease” lasted for only a short bit of the journey. So when you get into rougher or duller country again, you mustn’t think this proves that your conversion was all imagination.
(CL 3, 1357)
On being more in Christ, less in ourselves
To Keith Manship September 13, 1962
The whole problem of our life was neatly expressed by John the Baptist when he said (John, chap. 3, verse 30) “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This you have realized. But you are expecting it to happen suddenly: and also expecting that you should be clearly aware when it does. But neither of these is usual. We are doing well enough if the slow process of being more in Christ and less in ourselves has made a decent beginning in a long life (it will be completed only in the next world). Nor can we observe it happening. All our reports on ourselves are unbelievable, even in worldly matters (no one really hears his own voice as others do, or sees his own face). Much more in spiritual matters. God sees us, and we don’t see ourselves. And by trying too hard to do so, we only get the fidgets and become either too complacent or too much the other way.
Your question what to do is already answered. Go on (as you apparently are going on) doing all your duties. And, in all lawful ways, go on enjoying all that can be enjoyed—your friends, your music, your books. Remember we are told to “rejoice.” Sometimes when you are wondering what God wants you to do, He really wants to give you something.
As to your spiritual state, try my plan. I pray “Lord, show me just so much (neither more nor less) about myself as I need for doing thy will now.”
Don’t worry. All is going quite nicely.
(CL 3, 1368–1369)