Fantasy Friday – Remembering C. S. Lewis

While many news outlets look back fifty years and recall President John F. Kennedy’s life and assassination, some are joining a host of book industry professionals and readers to commemorate C. S. Lewis who also died November 22, 1963.

One particularly interesting article compares Lewis, Kennedy, and a third notable man who died that day, Aldous Huxley, particularly looking at the differences in their religious beliefs: “50 years ago today, Kennedy, Huxley and Lewis followed different paths to the grave” (Desert News). Another excellent article, this one from the Religion News Service, interviews James Houston (who turned 91 yesterday), founder of the C. S. Lewis Institute, and a colleague of his at Oxford–“Why C.S. Lewis remains popular: a friend reflects.”

Over at Patheos, the Christ and Pop Culture contributors did something similar to what I did this week–they highlighted the books that meant a great deal to them. One writer chose The Problem of Pain, another A Grief Observed.

In “Why C. S. Lewis Matters Today,” agent Steve Laube commemorated Lewis with a video documentary which includes a five minute segment about “Rediscovering Christian Imagination” about which Mr. Laube says, “We in the publishing industry should have this reminder placed before us on a regular basis.”

Another significant video is that from the UK showing the ceremony held today honoring Lewis in which he was given a memorial in the Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Meanwhile, Moody Radio aired Dr. Alister McGrath, former atheist and now Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education at King’s College London, talking about his research into C. S. Lewis’s life.

Another great resource is a free e-book, C.S. Lewis – A Profile in Faith, made available by the C. S. Lewis Institute.

For those who love the many quotes from Lewis’s books, one site posted an accumulation of lesser know lines from his books or articles, including a wonderful paragraph on Lewis’s thoughts on death.

Still a different site gave a rundown on his “seven lesser known books.” They opened with Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s spiritual autobiography, which happens to be on my list of favorites of his books, and follows it with Till We Have Faces, my all time favorite Lewis book. Check out the other five rated as lesser known.

As for me, I was also impacted by Lewis’s better known books–his stories. The Great Divorce was especially significant because I had been afraid of dying as a child.

Back in those days people didn’t talk about dying and preachers didn’t preach much about dying. Or Heaven. Or Hell. At best, I had a fuzzy understanding of the afterlife. Then I found The Great Divorce. I suddenly grasped the fact that the eternal is what’s real, what’s solid, and this temporal life, as James so clearly says, is just a vapor that passes away. All my previous ideas had the two reversed.

Narnia impacted me in so many ways, not the least being inspiration to write fantasy. I loved the inventiveness of the world Lewis build from his imagination, but I also loved the way he brought truth to life in those stories. I wanted to write like that!

Till We Have Faces is such a great book, showing the effects of sin and the change yielding to the Master can bring. It’s steeped in mythology, but the end is such a beautiful picture of Christ clothing the repentant believer in His robes of righteousness. Again, for me, this story brought to life the reality of the spiritual.

While I appreciate Lewis’s nonfiction, one particular book had a lasting impact. I’ve already mentioned it: Surprised by Joy. Lewis expresses better than I’ve ever heard before the longing I’ve felt when I am at peace, happy, content, sometimes a condition induced by a piece of music or a rainbow amid a bank of pink sunset clouds or . . . a list of awe-inspiring things. But behind the beauty and the glory and the joy is that one moment of longing–that the beauty and glory and joy could stay and be that way always, only deeper (or, as I’ve since learned, a longing that I might be able to go further up and further in). This is what Lewis identified and what played a big part in his becoming a Christian. For me it crystallized something about my faith.

Perhaps others have said this before, but Ravi Zacharias just tweeted what I think best encapsulates C. S. Lewis’s writing: “C.S. Lewis had the ability to take people to the front door of reason through the back door of imagination.”

I don’t think I can overstate the influence that one man, that one apologist, writer, storyteller, thinker, child of God, brother in Christ, has had on my life. May God continue to use his words to impact the next generation and the next, as long as Christ should tarry.