There is perhaps no more beloved Christian author than
C.S. Lewis. His ability to speak to the average man is astonishing. He has
intellectual capability to go head to head with the most elite and erudite, yet
his conversation style was approachable and even loveable. I truly believe
Lewis knew no enemy because of the way he spoke to Christian, atheist, Deist,
Philosopher; it did not matter the persuasion they were of because he was
confident that a social interaction where both sides would remain open minded
and conversational would lead to the feet of Christ.
One of his best and most revered fictional works is The Screwtape Letters. I believe this
book delineates today, just as much
as it did 60 years ago, the craftiness of our enemy. C.S. Lewis’s magnum opus of non-fiction is Mere Christianity where hearts are laid
bare. I believe these two works are similar and worth comparison because both
are hearts laid bare. The heart of man; and the heart of our soul’s enemy, the
devil.
An argument could be made that C.S. Lewis is a product of
the time in which he lived. We know that “World War II brought many things to
the United Kingdom; a one was a new openness to religion. The complacency
toward organized religion, often found in the time of peace, was shattered, as
were the foundations of many lives.” (Shepherd's Notes Christian Classics, 1999) A secular reader of
his work would undoubtedly point this out as a fact, and it is that; a fact.
However, Lewis struck a nerve because in an intellectually honest household,
most members would have told you back then that they knew the world war was
really an outworking of the bigger problem. That problem is the war within
ourselves. The world was horrified at the atrocities of Hitler and his evil.
However, each person was coming to grips with the fact that given the right
tools and environment that they might also do such cruel and inhumane things.
In Screwtape
Letters we see Screwtape telling his nephew how to control the human he has
been given charge over. He is reminding Wormwood, his nephew, to “Keep his mind
on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him…Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by
directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones.” (Lewis, 1996) Screwtape is
employing to his advantage the fact that in our own minds we are all geniuses.
We spend so much time in our own head growing and learning that we justify our
own actions to ourselves, but not often to those outside our mind.
Lewis starts out in Mere
Christianity by discussing the law of nature. I am going to call it the law
of human nature so it does not get confused with discussions of nature and
science. He points out from the beginning that we all call upon some higher
law, especially when it is advantageous to defend that which was in our heads and
is played out in public. Lewis says of the man who transgresses a social norm
or an unwritten rule “Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been
doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some
special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular
case…” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952) what I observe of
Screwtape and his advice to Wormwood is that it almost always comes back to this
one fundamental law of nature and of fair play.
Screwtape takes great pains to remind Wormwood to work on
the feelings of the individual he is charge of. His advice, succinctly put is
“Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to
ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable
feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing.” (Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 1996) Screwtape knows the
fickleness of feelings and how they come and go based not just on our life
circumstances, but on how we physically feel, what we ate for lunch and if the
birds outside are chirping to loud or not-at-all. In Mere Christianity, Lewis takes great pains to show that God is God
in all circumstances whether we feel Him or not.
Lewis goes on in Mere
Christianity to talk about the feeling of love. He says when speaking of
love “You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but
it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full
intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last,
habits can last; but feelings come and go.” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952) An outside observer
of Lewis might say that he is being negative towards love because he has not
yet experienced the Eros love, the
love between a wife and a husband. I believe what he is pointing out here is
that feelings are a bad basis for service. If I got up and prayed only on the
days I felt good, felt loved and got a good night of sleep, I would not pray
very much. If, by habit, I get up in the morning and get on my knees and spend
even a few moments before God, it is a habit and it is not based on feelings
and fleeting things. Screwtape, being eternal (until God decides otherwise) has
seen feelings and emotions and uses them to muddy the waters of the Christian
life. He also knows that the most virtue filled lives in history can almost
always be traced back to the formation of good habits early in life. I believe
Lewis is a testament to this fact just as much as any other historical figure
of note.
I mentioned in the introduction the way Lewis can
converse with people of so many different persuasions, religious or otherwise.
In my research I found an interesting article written by a humanist. It is he
says “Scholars tell us that religion (or irreligion) is more often a matter of
the heart than of the head; this is why religious beliefs are usually not amenable
to rational argument. Yet Lewis, to his credit, isn't content to rest with the
"convictions" of the heart, which can be dangerously wayward without
the guiding rudder of reason. Instead, he takes a thoroughly rationalist
approach to religion, arguing that "the weight of the evidence" for
mere Christianity-Christianity's core doctrines-is on the side of the
Christian.” (Johnson, 2003) One of the reasons I
believe that the work of C.S. Lewis has endured so long is that it avails
itself of knowledge of the holy and not just feelings of the holy. We may, at
times, appeal to feelings and how we “feel God”; we are made to have feelings
by an emotive God. However, they are only meant to be a piece of the picture of
who we are in relation to our God. Screwtape echoes this when he tells Wormwood
“It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are, there embodied in habits
that the virtues are really fatal to us.” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952)
Another issue that takes up much of Screwtapes thoughts
is that of eternity. We are eternal beings. Lewis makes it clear; on several
occasions that eternity is worth contemplation and action. Screwtape hates this
because when we truly contemplate our structure as eternal beings, we usually
come to humility of mind and heart, and that is where God can begin.
“The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to
eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things,
to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For
the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” (Lewis,
Screwtape Letters, 1996) This echoes the Biblical statement in
Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet
no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”(NIV) When we
contemplate eternity, we contemplate the divine mind. We will never fully
understand the mind of God. Some people have said that since we cannot, we
should not even try. While I applaud their humility and honesty in the matter,
I do not endorse this idea what-so-ever. God put eternity in our heart and mind
so that we will spend time living the virtuous life of humility before the
maker of the universe.
Towards the end of Mere
Christianity Lewis succinctly sums up what his book has been about. “Give
up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save
it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and
death of your whole body in the end; submit with every fiber of your being, and
you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given
away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised
from the dead.” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952)
Screwtape is a wise and cunning serpent. He knows that
man likes to take credit for that which he has. He points out “all the time the
joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by
a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father of the Enemy will
say “Mine” of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.” (Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 1996)
In both of these books there is illustrated the daily
battle each person has against the flesh and blood and principalities of this
world. Screwtape Letters shows, in a
most fanciful way, the actions that Satan would love to take, and does take, to
take us off course in our Christian life. As great as the book is, it is just a
scratch on the surface of what Satan can, and does, do. Mere Christianity is a hope filled call to the believer, and to the
non-believer, that the Christian life is possible, and it is worth the effort to
pursue it. This paper is just a scratch at the surface of a few basic ideas
that are presented, in contrast, in both books. It is proof though, that no
matter what your proclivity in reading is, Lewis is readable by all. As one who
is comfortable in the world of fiction and non-fiction I see great parallels
shared in both books. I hope that it encourages you to dig in deeper into the
writing and thinking of the most imaginative man, C.S. Lewis.
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