C.S. Lewis became an atheist at age 15. He "was very angry with God for not existing." (This is an Irish attitude which I understand completely.) He was unable to avoid God forever, though he gave it his utmost effort until:
"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." (Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis)
He converted from Theism to Christianity 2 years later.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Mere Christianity, Lewis)
I love it when people see this side of C.S. Lewis! It's amazing that he ended up becoming what many consider the greatest Christian Writer of all time.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where I saw it - but I saw two quotes. One was from Lenin - one of the founders of Communism, and one was from C.S. Lewis. They came across completely differently than you would think. It was like a quiz - who said this. And the one I was sure was Lenin's was Lewis's and visa versa. Lewis was as outspokenly against God at one point in his life, as he became outspokenly in favor of for the majority of his life.
Great quotes. Thanks.