C.S. Lewis Comes to Therapy

 

Pistol Pete:  Mr. Lewis, first let me thank you for coming to Necessary Therapy.  As I think you know, I sometimes take liberties with those I interview to produce a little humor.

C.S. Lewis:  A little comic relief in a discussion does no harm, however serious the topic may be.  In my own experience the funniest things have occured in the gravest and most sincere conversations.

PP:  I’m glad to hear you say that.  Not everyone would be so gracious.

CSL:  Humor involves a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.

PP:   Interesting.   Well now, Mr. Lewis, I understand you were at one time an Atheist.   How did you come to faith?

 CSL:   I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions.  I maintained that God did not exist.  I was also very angry that God did not exist.  I was also very angry with God for not existing.  I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

PP:   Some of my readers are Atheists.  What would you say to them?

CSL:   A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.  There are traps everywhere — “Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,” as Herbert says, “fine nets and stratagems.”  God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous. 

PP:    What if they lack much background in the Christian faith?

CSL:  In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question.

PP:   Many people believe Jesus existed, but that he was merely a great moral teacher.

CSL:  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 a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit on 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

PP:   On to a more social issue.  I’ve been writing a reflecting lately on the topic of homosexuality.  What are your views on the subject?

CSL:    I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homosexual desires is sin.  This leaves the homosexual no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying.  The homosexual has to accept sexual abstinence just as the poor man has to forgo otherwise lawful pleasures because he would be unjust to his wife and children if he took them.

PP:  Is it possible, or fair, for a homosexual person to live without physical intimacy? 

CSL:   Perhaps any homosexual who humbly accepts his cross and puts himself under Divine guidance will be shown the way.  I am sure that any attempt to evade it by mock- or quasi-marriage with a member of one’s own sex… is the wrong way.

PP:   Mr. Lewis, you were known as someone who was intimate with pain - physical and emotional.  Should faithful people still have doubts about God?

 

CSL:    We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

PP:   One final topic - Hell.  A lot of my readers have trouble with Hell.  What is your view?

CSL:   I can understand Hell in its aspect of privation.  All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness.  The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

PP:  What a great perspective.  Mr. Lewis, I hesitate to ask, but my daughters are big fans of yours.  Would you stop by my house just to meet them?

 

CSL:   I theoretically hold that one ought to like children, but am shy with them in practice.

PP:   Oh, that’s no trouble.  I’m shy myself.  They’ll draw you out.

CSL:  I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: … I recognize this as a defect in myself.

PP:   I see.  Well, nobody’s perfect.  Thanks again for your time.  Enjoy eternity - especially with all those children up there.

{quotes taken from The Quotable Lewis}