I’m a non-fiction person. Which leads me to believe I like evidence. I like the tangible. I scoff at fantasy and sci-fi, especially on TV, because sometimes it stretches my realist imagination too far. I’ve never been into vampires, werewolves, monsters in the closet, hauntings, the supernatural, because my logic keeps my mind from believing or as it reasons, wasting time on it.
I like facts. I like biographies and autobiographies and learning about people who seem to have a deeper understanding of life, especially a rational understanding of life whilst incorporating the supernatural nature of faith. Since I cannot see God and have never met Jesus, I am wanting to know more about Him through humans.
Some people seem to have had personal encounters with Jesus, like “I felt God telling me I needed to move to Nicaragua.” I’ve never felt that. And since I’ve never heard/felt that, I get a tingly, cringe-worthy feeling when people talk about such personal encounters with the Divine. It’s my elitist consciousness telling me they’re lying. They are fabricating this reason to either justify an action or lead people to believe in their god. And their god cannot be my God because my God never tells me what to do or where to go. I wish He’d be so direct!
I’m reading a biography on Joy Davidman, best know as C.S. Lewis’s wife. Joy grew up in a Jewish household, both of her parents were proud educators. Joy’s IQ was through the roof. She finished college and joined the Communist Party in the 1940s and readily declared herself an atheist; As Marx wrote, “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.” She was a gifted poet and author and was published alongside familiar names like Langston Hughes.
She was far more overt than was proper for a lady in the 1950s, and surprised her company with her transparency. She married a writer names Bill Gresham, had two boys, and together they began to read the work of famed British theologian C.S. Lewis. They both became huge Lewis fans, and both wrote him letters. Joy became a pen pal to Lewis and rapidly started to fall in love with the man. From what I’ve read, Joy seems wildly intelligent, but also throws her commitments to beliefs around without restraint. She is an avid communist, then risks family relations by allowing an editorial to be written about her time as a communist- prior to her conversion to Christianity. I’m 50 percent through the book, and Joy has just left her husband and two boys for three months to visit England “for research” but really to track down C.S. Lewis and try to get him to fall in love with her.
If you’ve ever read any books by Lewis, you know he’s fundamental in his beliefs and adamant that they are well reasoned. He takes the Bible very literally and would assume he takes the oath of marriage very seriously as well. He knew Joy was married, and drank with her and his chummies at his favorite pub. They discussed politics, philosophy, theology, everything over beers. She was treated like one of the guys. When her husband wrote her to declare his affections for Joy’s cousin (who had been playing mom and house wife in Joy’s absence) Joy was stricken with sadness…which confused me.
She seemed very selfish and forthright in her mission to seduce Lewis, yet wanted to still keep her husband locked down and the family intact State-side? I’m writing all this because Joy and “Jack” (or C.S. Lewis) always seemed like very righteous, intelligent, godly people to me. The more I learn about them, the more I realize they’re as fallen as the next human. They were tempted, promiscuous, drank booze, yet still have brought many people to God. Even God’s most famed instruments can be off key. But when we hear (or read) their performances, we see their best.
It’s like the quote about social media goes, “stop comparing your life to someone else’s highlight reel.”
To circle back to my nonfiction person problems– I’m realizing I’m searching for a person who represents God. C.S. Lewis. Joy Davidman. Timothy Keller. Taylor Swift (seriously…that’s basically how we view her, right? No? Just me?).
C.S. Lewis was known to respond to every letter he received. One such respond consisted of:
“I don’t like to hear that your friends think of following me. I wanted them to follow Christ.”
I could not agree more with biographer Abigail Santamaria‘s explanation–
But tangible and modern, Lewis became an unwitting casualty in the battle between the human axiom that seeing is believing, and the biblical definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The Lewis-ism which has played up my desire to become more well-rounded in my faith is this:
The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.
Mere Christianity
How true is this? I need, need, need repetition in my life to remind me of routine, to refine, to expand my knowledge of anything and everything in and of this world. Turns out, the same is necessary to expand knowledge of He who is not of this world.
Comments
Agree with your Lewisism, Annie!