The Meaning of Life: According to C.S. Lewis

 Alister McGrath holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University. That was a mouthful, and with such high accolades, you might expect Reverend Dr. Mcgrath to gab about his accomplishments. 

On the contrary, Dr. McGrath prefers to talk about another subject, or I should say another person. Instead of talking about himself, Dr. McGrath has a mouthful of praise for C.S. Lewis.

When asked to describe C.S. Lewis, Dr. McGrath responds with a title, “travel companion”. C.S. Lewis, in person or in spirit, is the person that walks with Dr. McGrath through the troubles of the mind and life.

If we're honest, we all envision C.S. Lewis in this light. He himself is famous for saying, “a good author doesn’t say, look at me but look at what I see”, and what he saw, we so clearly imagine. 

He has riveted our imaginations and filled us with inspiration. This makes me believe, there is no one better to explain the meaning of life.

Meaningless to Meaningful

C.S. Lewis didn’t become the inspiration he was overnight, neither did he walk through a wardrobe and find a new land (literally), C.S. Lewis has a similar story to a lot of folks. 

C.S. Lewis grew up in the humble abode of Northern Ireland. During his youth, he was not raised with religious fervor even though he went to church. From his own accounting, he did not display a ‘Christian conversion’. You could describe C.S. Lewis as lukewarm.

What was lukewarm in the beginning, turned into hot smoldering lava in the middle. The only problem is that C.S. Lewis became an arrogant, enraged, and outspoken atheist. Too bad he didn’t turn into an on-fire Christ follower. But that would change in due time.

The first beam of light

All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’. — C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)

Two things began to change in C.S. Lewis that led to him being, “surprised by joy”. 

Firstly, in the 1920s when he was a dean at Oxford, he began to sense the dullness of atheism. If atheism were true, it could not account for his intuitions or imagination. He began to think, “atheism is probably true, but it’s not very interesting” (observation by McGrath). Although C.S. Lewis was still an atheist at this moment, he became receptive to other viewpoints.

Secondly, C.S. Lewis began to be influenced by a man named George Herbert. George Herbert was a poet (life span: 1593–1633) that C.S. Lewis studied at Oxford. Herbert, a priest in the Church of England, frequently wrote larger-than-life pieces that drew C.S. Lewis in. It was in his study of Herbert, that C.S. Lewis sought out the reasons for Herbert’s grandiose worldview. What he found is that Herbert’s grandiose worldview was illumined by “Christian mythology” (the term used by McGrath). It wouldn’t be long until the myth became real to C.S. Lewis.

Surprised by the light

Dr. McGrath, when asked, “what is the most surprising thing you’ve learned from studying Lewis?”, responded by saying, “the most surprising thing, was how important his Irish background was”. 

Before we understand C.S. Lewis’s answer to life’s meaning, we have to understand the lens through which C.S. Lewis saw the world. We all have lenses, and through their filters, is how we perceive reality, to begin with. 

Not only was C.S. Lewis Irish, but he was modern. We live in a postmodern world, which means we are seeking different perspectives. 

We need to understand two things that drove C.S. Lewis that very few people search for anymore. 

Firstly, since he was modern, he believed in transcendental objective truth. He was a rationalist, not a relativist, he didn’t adhere to the commonly held slogan of today, “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me”. C.S. Lewis, like many moderns, knew the truth was not inside him. C.S. Lewis knew he was going to have to seek truth, not create his own.

Secondly, C.S. Lewis knew how to live in the middle. What I mean by that, is he held in tension reason and faith. He wasn’t all for a reason or all for faith, he had a reasonable faith. He knew that reason was important and he knew faith was important. This is contrary to the postmodern world we live in; the world is experiencing dramatic polarization. You either are atheist and faithless, or faith-filled and anti-rational. C.S. Lewis avoided the extremes. 

The meaning of life 

Dr. McGrath, when hard-pressed to give a simplistic answer concerning C.S. Lewis’s view of the meaning of life, offered a metaphor. He says, “C.S. Lewis was hesitant to give an answer to this question because it’s such a complex question, what C.S. Lewis was trying to show is that Christianity illuminates' our world, that without Christianity we don’t know who we are, where we are, and what we should be doing”.

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. — C.S. Lewis

Dr. McGrath explains how C.S. Lewis used the metaphor of light to explain his viewpoints. The light was what each person needed to awaken and see life’s meaning. Without the light, life would be a meaningless and dark place.

We can think about C.S. Lewis’s metaphor like this, C.S. Lewis never asked the question, “what is the meaning of life?”, he was dumbfounded, awestruck, and amazed that life did in fact, have meaning. He didn’t find the meaning in life, the meaning found him, and it lit up the proverbial lightbulb in his heart and mind.

For C.S. Lewis the meaning of life wasn’t found in a book, or in philosophical inquiry, it was plain as day right before his eyes. Obviously, C.S. Lewis loved books, but he didn’t write from a place of searching, but a place of illumination or knowledge. The Chronicles of Narnia is a perfect example, C.S. Lewis wants to tell a story about the light he’s found.

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.” — C.S. Lewis

He talks about Christianity as being the sun that illuminates everything else. Quite simply, before C.S. Lewis was a Christian nothing made sense, he didn’t have direction, and life was darkness. After he became a Christian, everything made sense, he had a direction, and life was illuminated by the light on the path homeward.

Until County Down

Dr. McGrath concludes by saying, “in a nutshell, that is a good summary of what C.S. Lewis believed; this world is dark, gloomy, fuzzy, and shadowed. But when Christianity comes into play, this dark, gloomy, shadowy, and fuzzy world gets illuminated and you see who you are, where you are, and you see the path you need to be following.”

When C.S. Lewis was asked about what heaven would be like, he offered an analogy. He said, “when I think of heaven, I think of Oxford transferred to County Down”.

When you think of Oxford, what comes to mind? I think of scholasticism, intellectualism, old buildings, tradition, heritage, prestige, and riches. Oxford has been transferred from a place of religious higher learning into a secular Bootcamp of vain glory.

You’ve probably never heard of County Down. County Down was C.S. Lewis’s childhood home. It has lush green plains, sirenic natural beauty, rolling hills, and even mountainous peaks, it’s a stunning place.

I say this to conclude and to summarize C.S. Lewis’s meaning of life. Often, by looking at someone's envisioned final destination, we can see what gives them meaning now.

The answer to C.S Lewis’s, concerning the meaning of life is, “the meaning of life is to be illumined by the triune Christian God to see who you are, where you are, and the path to follow. The path leads you out of the shadowy and fuzzy dark world onto an illumined path that is leading you to a beautifully lush, sirenic, and life invigorating home”.