The Reluctant Convert and Master of Christian Imagination

1898–1963

C.S. Lewis was a scholar, novelist, and apologist who made faith intellectually respectable for modern audiences. From the chronicles of Narnia to rigorous philosophical arguments, Lewis possessed a rare gift: the ability to make complex ideas accessible without diminishing their depth. His conversion from atheism to Christianity gave him unique insight into both skepticism and belief.

Loss, War, and the Death of Faith

Born in Belfast, Lewis's childhood was shattered by his mother's death when he was nine—an event that turned him against God. "Not that I believed in God," he later wrote, "but I was angry at Him for not existing." The trenches of World War I deepened his atheism. He saw religion as wishful thinking, mythology as beautiful lies, and the universe as a cold, meaningless machine.

Yet something gnawed at him. The very desire for meaning, his love of myth and story, his sense that the universe pointed beyond itself—these seemed to contradict his materialism. He called it "Joy," a piercing longing that nothing earthly could satisfy, suggesting reality was more than atoms in motion.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

The Most Reluctant Convert

Lewis's conversion came slowly, through argument and imagination. Conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson helped him see that the Christian story might be "true myth"—mythology that actually happened. The resurrection wasn't wish fulfillment but historical claim requiring response. In 1931, during a late-night walk, Lewis surrendered.

He described himself as "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England," dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom. This reluctance gave his faith credibility. He hadn't reasoned himself into comfortable belief but confronted arguments he couldn't refute and experiences he couldn't explain away.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Mere Christianity — Faith for Skeptics

During World War II, Lewis gave radio broadcasts explaining Christianity to a nation in crisis. Published as Mere Christianity, these talks presented faith as rational without being rationalistic. He avoided denominational disputes to focus on core doctrines shared across traditions—what he called "mere" Christianity.

His arguments were disarmingly simple yet profound. The moral law points to a Lawgiver. Jesus's claims leave only three options: lunatic, liar, or Lord. Pride is the great sin because it sets self against God. Lewis made these points not as a preacher but as a fellow seeker who had wrestled with doubt and emerged convinced.

You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

The Problem of Pain and the God of Love

Lewis never offered easy answers to suffering. In The Problem of Pain, he argued that a loving God allows pain because genuine love requires freedom, and freedom makes evil possible. God whispers in our pleasures but shouts in our pain—it's His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Later, when his wife Joy died of cancer, intellectual arguments crumbled. A Grief Observed documented his raw anguish, doubts about God's goodness, and gradual return to faith—not through answers but through presence. Pain remained mysterious, but Lewis found that faith survives not by solving the problem but by sustaining relationship through it.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Narnia — Theology Through Story

Lewis understood that argument convinces the mind but story transforms the imagination. The Chronicles of Narnia smuggle theology past "watchful dragons" of intellectual resistance. Aslan's sacrifice isn't a sermon about atonement but a lion laying down his life for a traitor. The resurrection isn't doctrine but stone table cracking, death working backward.

Children grasp truths in Narnia they might resist in church. The books reveal Lewis's conviction that myth, fantasy, and fairy tale access realities that prosaic language cannot reach. Fiction doesn't escape truth—it illuminates truth from angles mere assertion cannot achieve.

We read to know we are not alone.

The Screwtape Letters — Evil from the Inside

The Screwtape Letters brilliantly inverts perspective: a senior demon instructs his nephew on corrupting a human soul. Lewis's genius was showing how evil works—not through obvious wickedness but through gradual drift, small compromises, the replacement of real concerns with anxieties about concerns.

Screwtape reveals truths about human psychology: how pride disguises itself as humility, how distraction is more effective than direct attack, how the mundane can be spiritually deadly. The book succeeds because Lewis takes evil seriously without making it attractive, exposing its banality and ultimate self-defeat.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

The Great Divorce — Heaven, Hell, and Human Choice

In The Great Divorce, Lewis imagined hell as a dreary town where people drift infinitely apart, each nursing grievances, unwilling to relinquish pride. Heaven's invitation remains perpetually open, but many refuse—they prefer being right to being happy, prefer their sins to joy.

This vision reflects Lewis's conviction that hell is locked from the inside. God doesn't send people there; they choose it by choosing themselves over everything else. The damned aren't victims but volunteers who, given every chance, insist on autonomy even if it means misery.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'

Legacy — The Christian Imagination

Lewis died on November 22, 1963—the same day as Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy—but his influence has only grown. He demonstrated that faith need not mean intellectual suicide, that Christianity can engage modern thought without capitulation or retreat. His apologetics remain influential because he argued as a former skeptic who knew doubt from the inside.

More profoundly, Lewis showed how imagination serves truth. His fiction, essays, and autobiography work together, each illuminating aspects of reality that others cannot reach. He proved that rigorous thought and creative vision need not conflict but can work together, each strengthening what the other reveals about the human condition and our hunger for transcendence.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.