September 25. CS Lewis. Lewis wrote more than thirty books, which have sold millions of copies. They run the literary gamut: fantasy, sci-fi, speculative fiction, apologetics, autobiography, and now-classic Christian non-fiction. The Chronicles of Narnia have also appeared on stage, TV, radio, and in films.
Lewis taught English at both Oxford and Cambridge, and during World War 2, he bolstered the courage of many young military people with special BBC broadcasts, which later became the text of Mere Christianity. Though he was a highly-esteemed professor, today’s story shows that Lewis remained teachable. Here’s the story.
Watch out for the poison of conceit. It can sneak up on a guy.
When CS Lewis walked into the sanctuary that Sunday morning, the local butcher welcomed him by name, smiled with genuine warmth, and held out a hymnal.
Lewis nodded and accepted the book from the butcher’s blood-stained fingers. Made his way down the aisle.
Hot and claustrophobic-ish, Lewis sidled into a pew, sat, and loosened his collar. Another service of wretched organ music, badly-written hymns, and barely-biblical sermons. A jarring assortment of local people surrounded him, and he tried to ignore the too-much perfume, the too-loud nose whistle, and the too-close bad breath. Church services could be “wearisome affairs.”
Lewis thought about the stimulating meeting he had had the night before—a deep theological discussion with friends like fellow-author JRR Tolkien. Surely that was what church should be like—two or three learned men gathered for a serious discussion.
But in the pew next to Lewis, generous old Mrs. Green belted out, “All praise and glory!” She sang hopelessly off-key.
Lewis refused to grimace. With proper harmony and pitch, the music might be tolerable.
Now boots squealed on the waxed floor and came tromping down the aisle; Mr. Green, home from his latest gambling adventure, climbed over some more-punctual parishioners to sit next to his generous old wife.
Lewis mourned that he had nothing in common with these people. He looked around at them. Some of them led quite “un-Christian” lives—except on Sunday morning. And the vicar’s main job seemed to be to help his flock develop patience—by means of sermons, long and rambling and pointless.
Just then a new idea struck Lewis: Here I am at a gathering of the body of Christ, and every thought and feeling I have is smug and conceited. Wouldn’t the devil be quite pleased?
Lewis looked at the motley collection of people again. This assembly wasn’t a group of people with shared interests. They didn’t have the same tastes in music or similar jobs. They didn’t all agree on every point in a particular theology.
Mr. and Mrs. Green, the smiling butcher, the dignified physician—no this wasn’t a club. It was the Body of Christ, a living organism, “spread throughout all time and space and rooted in Eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”
What had Lewis expected the Body of Christ to look like? If it should look like a bunch of well-behaved saints in white clothing singing praises like a world-famous choir, then he wouldn’t have been allowed to join.
“If I, being what I am,” Lewis said, “can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of these people in the next pew prove their religion is hypocrisy and convention?
“The idea of allowing myself to be put off by mere inadequacy—an ugly church, a gawky server, a badly turned-out celebrant—is horrible.”
Lewis thought seriously about how he had given in to the temptation to think that he was better than these other people, and idea for a story formed—a story of one devil advising another devil how to keep a believer from growing in his faith.
Here’s one way to “treat your patient” the devil teaches: cause him to look around at the people around him, but don’t let him see the persons. Get him to focus on the little things that bug him. Make him feel superior. Before long, he would be put off by the Body of Christ. He would be cut off from the rest of the body and unable to worship God. Lewis had given in to that temptation, and he knew others had, too.
Two years later, Lewis published The Screwtape Letters, a bestseller full of letters from a senior devil named Screwtape to his nephew devil, Wormwood. Wormwood had been assigned to corrupt the “Patient.” In one of the letters old Screwtape describes a church scene starring attendees who were neighbors the “Patient” otherwise would go to lengths to avoid. Lewis hoped the book would be “useful and entertaining.”
Though the “wearisome” aspect of the church service never changed for Lewis, he did learn not to use it as an excuse for pride, grouchiness, and withdrawal. He said about himself, “you realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:1-11 ESV).
Do you ever find church services wearisome? Is something going on under the surface?
Watch out for the poison of conceit. It can sneak up on a guy.
Lewis, C.S. God in the Dock. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970.
Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. Uhrichsville OH: Barbour and Company Inc, 1990.
Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1956.
Lewis, C.S. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. New York: Harper Collins, 1964.
Dickieson, Brenton. “How C.S. Lewis Conceived of ‘The Screwtape Letters.’” Posted on January 15, 2014. https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2014/01/15/conception/.
Story read by: Daniel Carpenter
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
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