Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

"In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God...""I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did...it was...like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake."For a long time I've been fascinated by the person, C.S. Lewis. What caused him to be the way he is?...to write the Chronicles of Narnia, a best-selling children's fantasy; The Screw-tape Letters, a dialogue; Mere Christianity, a layman's apologetic; The Space Trilogy, a science-fiction; The Abolition of Man, a short treatise; Till We Have Faces, a mythology; Reflections on the Psalms, a commentary; The Pilgrim's Regress, an allegory; The Great Divorce, a novella; and now--Surprised by Joy, an autobiography!Can you say "prolific"? I haven't even scratched the surface. If we complied C.S. Lewis' diary, letters, poems, and essays, not to mention his scholarly work on Medieval Renaissance literature, and his reflections on love, evil, pain, and theology than we've got a truck load of sheer writing masterpieces. Few Christian authors are more well read than C.S. Lewis.Thus, I'd almost forgotten that C.S. Lewis at one time in his life, was not a Christian, and for a long duration he even professed to be--yes--an atheist.Not an atheist like the New Atheists of today, but like an Old Atheist. The difference is that the Old Atheist simply believed Theism was false, but the New Atheist, today, believes that Theism is not only false, but evil, even supremely the cause of evil. He respectfully denied God's existence.While reading Surprised By Joy I was, needless to say--surprised. C.S. Lewis' life was rather simple, even common. He was terrible at sports, read a great deal, and thought many of the same things I have thought in my child-hood. He went to a "normal" preparatory school, went to a common College, and joined the army to fight in WWI. Most of our great grandfather's have done that.The one thing that sets C.S. Lewis apart from the common character is that he was, more than any person I've heard of--extensively well-read. He read books like a 3-week starved lion in front of a freshly killed antelope. He devoured them. Not Christian books. In fact, some notable influences in his life were Norse Myths like Thor, Odin, and Loki, fantasy tales, ancient literature from the likes of Virgil, Euripides, Dante, Homer... He read basically the entire western canon, and was influenced by agnostics like George Orwell (author of 1984), other famous authors like Faust, Wordsworth, Shelley... And in all honesty, if you were to mention a notable book from history, everything from Voltaire's Candide, to Darwin's Origin of Species, to the Wizard of Oz, he read it.And from the man who has read, been exposed too, dabbled in, and even believed for a short time, most ideas and human philosophies man has come up with, said this about his own reading:"A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."In short, it was C.S. Lewis' reading of books that pushed him from Atheism to Theism and then from Theism to Christianity. We as Christians, for the past how ever many decades have been afraid of reading books that ought not to make us afraid. It is not the Christian that ought to be afraid of reading the Great Books of the past, it is the Atheist. The overwhelming testimony of the greatest of human philosophies give testament to the book that stands above them all--the Bible. Like a truth that rings so loudly on the hearts of men and women throughout history, you would have to plug your ears, and ignore your reason, selectively choose your literature, and shut your eyes to human experience to retain a sound belief against a truth that so tugs on each of our hearts.After reading the books confirming his Atheism for most of his higher education, C.S. Lewis interestingly makes the comment that it was not that the books and philosophies he began suddenly seemed so blatantly wrong, he remarked that they we simply boring, "Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores." Atheism was boring. In short, he maintains that he was unsatisfied with the explanation of Atheism. Somewhere he calls Atheism, "too simple". It does not provide to complex explanation for the world we live in; pain, evil, love, joy, hardship, friendship, beauty... You cannot maintain any of those fundamental human experiences with a consistent belief that the Universe was an accident of evolutionary processes.Notably, as the title is called Surprised by Joy, it was when C.S. Lewis realized joy was much more than an "aesthetic experience" that he began to search for a truth that was comprehensive enough to fit the human experience. He found that in a person--Jesus Christ.Surprised by Joy was an excellent read! It is not like Augustine's Confessions, with beautiful confessions of sin and testimony of struggle, or like John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners with an astonishing pilgrimage to repentance. It is a book of pure honesty to how C.S. Lewis lived his early child-hood and what shaped his testimony of conversion.I highly recommend reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis! It's one of the best autobiographies I've ever read, and even though I've not read many, it is probably better than many other autobiographies I'll read in the future.

Surprised by Joy is a prerequisite if one is to experience the maximum benefit of C.S. Lewis' apologetic works. That is, while one might not actually, and perhaps should not, read Surprised by Joy before some of his other titles it will certainly provide the reader with a new appreciation of Lewis' perspective. Throughout his life, as it is evident in his writing, Lewis returns time and again to face his own struggles, those questions born of his own thoughts, to explain and defend Christianity. As it might be imagined, some of the toughest questions that he ever presented were first shaped into a fit argument while he was confident that Christianity could not possibly be reality. Within this work, Lewis brings these difficulties to light, as well as his experiences which justified his thoughts at any given time and the thoughts which accompanied these experiences.The education, thoughts, and experiences of Lewis' early life are valuable enough in themselves with regard to an understanding of his adult conviction. However, it is also seen, after reading this work, that it was not only the Christian conviction which became finely tuned in his adulthood. Those difficulties which, at one time, prevented Lewis from accepting Christianity also matured over time into well developed arguments, positioning themselves contrary to his Christian faith. This, some believe, is what makes Lewis such a valuable asset; not only in terms of his ability to make converts out of secular society, but as an educator of Christians seeking clarification. He did not convert and completely forget his previous beliefs, rather his beliefs from any time grew in their ability to persuade and he continuously applied that which he understood to be greater truth to effectively demonstrate why, even the most persuasive and articulate, counter arguments and philosophical alternatives simply fell short of Truth itself. It is for this reason; the fact that much of Lewis' reoccurring subject material stems from difficulties made aware to him in his youth, that Surprised by Joy will provide the reader with a greater appreciation for C.S. Lewis' life's work.By the title alone, one might be led to believe that this is an autobiography portraying the time before Lewis embraced Christianity, and his path to conversion. It is true that this work is a revealing look into Lewis' early life and, what appear to be, most private thoughts. It is less about Lewis, however, than it is about the human struggle to achieve or even possess joy. Lewis seems to feel that any detail of his life, regardless of what the reader might want to know about him as a person, is willingly sacrificed if it does not somehow tie into his pursuit of joy. What might surprise the reader even more is that Lewis actually ends this work at a period of his life prior to his conversion to Christianity. Nevertheless, Lewis conveys the most trying obstacles in his journey, leading him to theism, while presenting the reader with enough information to bridge some of the, albeit few, personal gaps found in his presentations elsewhere. For a student of C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy is a must.