Today brings me to a simple confession:
I wouldn’t be writing this if it wasn’t for C.S. Lewis.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), was a British writer, scholar and theologian. Perhaps you’ve heard of his most famous work - The Chronicles of Narnia. Lesser known amongst the secular crowd, Lewis was a juggernaut of a theologian. He was an apologist (someone who speaks or writes in defense of someone or something that is typically controversial, unpopular, or subject to criticism) for the Christian faith - and a very successful one at that.
In my journey back towards spirituality, Lewis was the first step.
In my journey towards sobriety, Lewis was the first step.
I don’t care much for glorifying men from the past, but Lewis is an exception. Everything I have today is in no small part due to his influence on my life. I wish I could meet him face to face and thank him for everything he has unwittingly done for me. I’m sure I’m not the only one in this age with similar sentiments.
If you wish to know more about his life and backstory, there are scores of material online. The purpose of this segment is not to analyze the life of Lewis, but rather to explain how he has had such a tremendous impact on me, my spirituality and my writing. In order to do that we must start from the beginning, sometime during the spring of 2018…
I had recently returned home from one of the worst - and scariest - trips of my life. I was deeper into addiction to drugs and alcohol than I ever been, and during a trip to Savannah and Charleston with a friend, my helplessness was on full display. The entire trip was a blacked-out blur, and in the course of a few short days I managed to nearly get both catfished and raped in two completely separate instances. The worst part was I couldn’t quite remember the details, so I was left wondering what really happened (thankfully - by the grace of God I put the pieces together enough to conclude that I avoided both). I was at the lowest point of my life, and I couldn’t control my desire for drugs and alcohol. I needed them. Willpower, fortitude, discipline - these were well gone by that point. I had resigned to the fact that I would follow this path to an early grave, be it by my own hand or some outside influence.
Then one seemingly-innocuous day, my grandmother brought over a bin of books she had stashed in her basement. They had been sitting there for years, and she thought I might be interested in some of them. I didn’t read much at the time, and although. I appreciated the sentiment I figured it was unlikely I would read anything from the bin. Out of the corner of my eye, one volume caught my eye - C.S. Lewis’ The Grand Miracle. I had read The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid and loved it, so it piqued my interest. I placed it in my backpack, but I’d be lying if I said I had any real intention of reading it.
Over the course of the next few weeks, things continued to get worse. I was so stuck in my ways, so sure of the impossibility of change that I accepted my dismal fate. I was stuck in a dead-end job and living on my mother’s couch because I had no other options. I was an alcoholic and a drug addict, through and through. It was during this time I took the Long Island railroad to work every morning, most days sleeping off the hangover from the previous night’s debauch. One of these morning’s I reached into my backpack looking for something, and I came across that book by C.S. Lewis. I normally would have just put it back, but for some reason I decided to open it and see what it was all about. I had no idea how that one decision would change the trajectory of my entire life.
Over the course of a few mornings, I read The Grand Miracle in it’s entirety. True to form for Lewis, it was an apology for Christianity - but it was different than anything else I’d ever read. It was thoughtful and humble, and I could tell it was written by a man who was both very educated and extraordinarily intelligent. It just made sense. For the first time in my life I had the thought that maybe all of my supposed knowledge of how the world worked wasn’t as accurate as I had thought. Maybe, just maybe, I was wrong. After all, who was I to make judgements about anything? I’ll never forget the moment that thought germinated in my mind - I felt a chill run down my spine and the lights in the train all of a sudden got brighter. It was as if an enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders in a mere moment.
From here, many of you know the story. It took a few more weeks of living in depravity before I reached my true bottom (at my five year college reunion), but the words of Lewis had buried themselves in my soul. I subsequently entered recovered with the same spirit I had received on that train ride - who was I to know anything? Everything I tried up to that point failed, so it was about time I tried something else. By some grand miracle (pun-intended), I have not had a sip of alcohol since. I’ve sure had my fair share of Lewis, though.
In my first year of sobriety, I read nearly everything that Lewis ever wrote. It was as if I was engaged in a year long conversation with the man, with him teaching me how to approach Christianity in a new way. It wasn’t even what he was saying, it was how he was saying it that so appealed to me. He never missed an opportunity to humble himself, even though it was abundantly clear from his writing he had a holy soul and an honest heart. He spoke with, to use his own terminology, philia - the kind of love you would share with a dear friend. In a world surrounded by egos and pleasures, he was a much welcome voice of peace and charity.
To my regret, that beautiful year with Lewis ended just as quickly as it came, although I’m only realizing now that his words have always stayed with me. I met a girl, encountered evil and subsequently crumbled. For a year, my heart was filled with peace and love and joy, and I wasn’t prepared for what I was to encounter. Before I knew it, I had tucked Lewis away in the back of my mind, and those old voices decrying Christianity as a childish fairy-tale came back. I exchanged the love of Christ for the love of women and orgasm and yet again convinced myself that my ego was sufficient enough to get me everything I desired. I stay sober, but not without a tremendous amount of suffering, pain and betrayal.
What’s interesting to me is that during this period, I wasn’t able to read anything Lewis wrote on Christianity. I tried many times, but the words fell flat as my heart was filled with lust, desire and darkness. I didn’t want to hear anything that contradicted the pleasures I sought. I kept returning to the desires that hurt me the most, convinced that if I just approached it a little differently it would eventually work out for me. Looking back, that sounds exactly like what I would tell myself during the darkest hour of my addiction. I spent many nights in pain and many nights in fear.
Slowly, I started to come out of that comatose state. One by one, I ripped out the hooks that I let the world sink into me. I changed everything about the life I was living, one day at a time, and that hardened perspective once again started to soften. I let go of the people, places and things that kept me stuck in that place, and new people and new things started showing up in my life. All the while, the seeds that Lewis sowed in my life remained in the depths of my heart, slowly guiding me out of the darkness. They brought here, to this project and this segment. It was the desire to return to that beautiful year with Lewis that was catalyst for all of this.
Granted, I am nowhere near “out of the water”. My body and mind are still dominated by the same lusts I let run rampant for so many years. I still have resistance to reading Lewis again, as my ego, pride and intellect still refuse to submit and surrender. This hundred-day project for me is nothing short of a battle, of a fight against myself and my own demons. For the first time in a long time, I think Lewis would be proud of me. I am doing everything in my power, answering my own call the same way he answered his. I’ll never be as well-read, well-educated, eloquent or humble as he was, but I like to think of myself as a part of his lineage. Whenever I’m writing, his voice always comes to mind. “I wonder how C.S. Lewis would say this” is a question I find myself asking quite often.
The last thing I have to say is perhaps the most important. I know that Lewis would not want the praise, admiration or glorification given to himself. While he was the finger pointing at the moon, Christ was the moon itself. At the end of the day, the message of Lewis is the message of Christ, and that is where the glory and the praise should be directed. I don’t think I understood that until now. C.S. Lewis was an example of a man who submitted himself to Christ, and in doing so changed the lives of countless others for the better. At the end of the day, however, he was just a man, with his own flaws and his own idiosyncrasies.
When I think about Lewis now, I can’t help but use him as an example. If a man with such a powerful intellect could submit himself fully to the love of Christ, what’s stopping me? I’ve again found myself at of realization that my own way and my own will have stopped working.
Maybe it’s time I try His.
“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”
-C.S. Lewis