Joy and Truth: The Spiritual Journey of C.S. Lewis

"Father in Heaven thank you for your gift to us of CS Lewis. I want to be faithful first to you second I want to be faithful to your word third I want to be faithful to tell the truth about cus Lewis and not get him wrong and I want to tell the story of his influence on me and so would you take all of that attempt and make it really profitable for those who hear so that their faith would be strong and their Joy would go deep and their sense of your absolute truth would be unshaken and they would be mightily influential for the glory of Christ in this world I ask this in Jesus name amen." [00:01:02]

"His value is not in biblical exegesis Lewis is not the kind of writer who provides substance for pastor sermons if a pastor treats Lewis as a substance Giver his sermons will be quickly exhausted of biblical content so why don't I put Lewis in the category say with liberal theologians and with the emergent writers at at one level the mistakes he makes are very similar to the mistakes that emergent writers make but there was something about the way he read scripture that made my own Embrace of inherency tighter not looser." [00:03:56]

"Lewis devoted his whole life to what he called Mere Christianity to defending and adorning the Christian religion quote as understood Ubi at OB Omnibus as everywhere and by everyone believed so he didn't want to write about any denomination or any branch he wanted to talk about Mere Christianity now there's a price to pay when you set yourself that kind of agenda you will almost certainly omit things essential to the gospel not that you don't believe them I think he was a Christian a very profound deeply true Christian." [00:06:01]

"However if I focus on what he said instead of what he didn't say even for me who consider some of the doctrines absolutely crucial that he passed over I find that the blessings of CS Lewis in my life are incalculable and so you can see the problem that I'm facing as I take this up having said all of those misgivings about the way he approached Doctrine and the Bible I find myself in massive debt to him and so I speak out of that struggle to make plain to you how those two things can be." [00:09:25]

"I think the answer lies in the way that Lewis brought the experience of Joy it's a technical term for him that we'll get at the experience of Joy together with a defense of absolute objective truth that puts him in another world from the emergent writers the world where I love to be it is a world I feel totally at home in when he talks about it the way Lewis deals with these two things joy and Truth joy and Truth is so radically different from Liberal theology or from the postmodern slipperiness of emergent writers." [00:10:41]

"Lewis wrote an autobiography that covers the first 30 years of his life called surprised by Joy he wrote it 20 years after that and so it Bears the marks of of his ripe assessment of what God was doing in his first 30 years he tells of three instances as a child when there was awakened in him something that he has now chosen at a distance of about 50 years to call Joy with a capital J this term in Lewis is not synonymous with pleasure or happiness according to him the experience of This Joy is the most important theme of his life." [00:12:48]

"Here's the closest thing he gives to a definition of Joy it is the experience quote of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction close quote this is why he chose to call it joy and not desire or longing or the German Zen when right writing his autobiography because those words do not convey the desirability of the longing itself the desirability of the unsatisfied nature of the desire." [00:14:23]

"Joy in my sense has indeed one characteristic and one only in common with them the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again apart from that and considered only in its quality it might almost equally be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief but then it is the kind we want I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever if both were in his power exchange it for all the pleasures in the world but then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is." [00:15:27]

"Perhaps what sealed its significance for Lewis is that it brought him to Christ he was an atheist in his his 20s but relentlessly God was pursuing him through the experience of what he called sometimes joy and sometimes an inconsolable longing that he loved to experience and had no control over and he was increasingly finding in his literary studies that it was the Christian writers from centuries ago where it happened most often one decisive influence as he was coming to the Lord was JRR Tolen the writer of The Lord of the Rings." [00:16:47]

"Lewis now began to look back on these 30 plus years and all of his experiences of joy and his reading and in the stories and in the myths and in the Attic of his old childhood home and in the walks in the woods wherever it would be stabbing him he began to look back and and now things began to look different it was still inconsolable it was still pleasant but now it was a desire for God and it was evidence that he was made for God." [00:21:03]

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them it was not in them it only came through through them for they are not the thing itself they are only the scent of a flower we have not found the echo of the tune we have not heard the news from a country we have never yet visited all Lewis life he said quote an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just above the grasp of my Consciousness the sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty comes from." [00:21:44]

"On the last page of his autobiography surprised by Joy I recommend it at least if you're a literary type on the last page of his autobiography he explained the difference between the joy now and the joy then while that other that other was in doubt when he didn't know what it was all pointing to while it was in doubt the the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts when we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter he who first sees it cries look the whole party gathers around and stares at the sign but when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles we shall not stop and stare they will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up but we shall not stop and stare or not much love it not on this road though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold we would be at Jerusalem." [00:22:59]