C.S. Lewis – A Serious Student of the Word

There have been several biographies of the life of C.S. Lewis, as well as numerous books analyzing his philosophies, his beliefs, and his writings. There are works like The World According to Narnia devoted solely to understanding what the Chronicles of Narnia have to say about life on the fallen earth. So I’m not going to delve into Lewis’s life or philosophy or cover all his theology here.

The fact is that many Christians who love and adore Lewis’s writings would still likely find somewhere in his thinking a bone of contention. He did not hold a degree in divinity, nor was he thoroughly trained in the Biblical languages, in dogmatics or hermeneutics. He was an Anglican, and fairly devoted to the traditions and doctrines of the Church of England.

Yet, he was a serious student of the Word of God, and an eager disciple of Jesus. His passion was to know and understand his Lord and what his Lord wanted him to know. While I may not agree with all of his conclusions, he sets an example of what it means to be fully invested in the study of Scripture.

In his essay “On the Reading of Old Books” which is in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, Lewis writes:

“For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hands.”

This statement from Lewis was striking for me because it put words to a problem I often found in my own personal devotional life. Whenever I would look for something to do for “devotional reading” I would turn to books identified as “devotionals,” and while these would be encouraging for a time, eventually I’d just become bored. And I’d wonder, “Is there something wrong with me? Is my faith or my passion for the Gospel lacking? Am I just too worldly to appreciate this?”
When you consider that only a 1oC increase may result from some sympathetic dysfunctions, without Veterinary Thermal Imaging, problems could viagra uk Read More Here be overlooked rather than promptly treated, which saves money, time, distress and gives better prognoses. It dissolvers faster into the blood levitra pills streams, starts working in ED patients within half an hour and better to take it before an hour of intercourse. Thus, if ejaculatory amount is less than 1ml every time, it is called few amount of semen: Generally speaking, normal ejaculatory amount is about cialis prescription 2 ~ 6ml. Primus hospital is one of the Best sildenafil cheap Hospital for Cosmetic and Facial Surgery in India: One can find a large number of Hospitals for skin problems in order to consult for their skin related issues.
But Lewis’s words ring true. When I delve into something that takes me deeper into what the Word says and how it applies to my life, when it challenges my apathy or my legalism or my lack of commitment or my shallowness, when I come to grips with the ineffable power of God’s grace, far beyond the platitudes often relied upon by devotionals… that is when I feel my heart swelling in my chest and by breath caught short by the wonder of who God is and what he has done.

This isn’t to say that devotionals have no meaning or place in the life of a Christian. Sometimes a simple, sweet remark on the Gospel is just what is needed. But when they don’t satisfy, it might not be so much a problem with my faith as a need for something deeper. A need to go beyond wading in the shallows, to strike out to where the current of God’s grace is deep and wide and overwhelms me. A need to wrestle with God in the night, demanding blessing from the hard truths with which he confronts me.

This is what Lewis discovered, and I think it was this drive to go deeper that led him to the place where he discovered in his own imagination the stories that so richly express God’s Word. From Narnia to Perelandra to the great questions of Till We Have Faces, Lewis showed us through rich story what a few devotional paragraphs could never fully express.

I’ve written before about how important stories are for expressing truth, and how sometimes they do so with far more clarity than a lecture or an essay can. But in order for a story to do so, it must come from an imagination well fed on the deeper truths. I think that’s what made Lewis the master that he was – he was familiar with tough theology, and while we might not all need to take up pipe smoking, we would all do well to emulate his example of being serious students of God’s Word.