Proclaimer Blog
Summer reading review #1
Back here I explained some of my summer reading habits and have already reviewed Katherine Boo's book which was on my summer list. I find it a good discipline to think about the books I read in a Christian way, even though many (most) of them are not explicitly Christian. So here goes for a few I devoured this summer.
First up (and this will get the most comprehensive review) is Alister McGrath's new biography of CS Lewis. This has got some startling commendations, so I delved into it eagerly. I have to say, however, that I found it all a bit underwhelming. There are a number of reasons for this:
- first, I'm not one of those who owes a great debt in my Christian life to the writing of CS Lewis. I just don't. I was given his The Pilgrim's Regress (McGrath: his most difficult book) as a confirmation gift (I know, I know – but I later saw the light) by the Bishop of Bradwell. It did very little for me. Unlike, say, Tim Keller, who publicly confesses a great debt to the man, I have no such account.
- second, although I like trivia, I get unexcited about the fact that we may have dated Lewis' conversion wrongly by six months or so. This, perhaps, is linked to point 1 above. But you would need to be a Lewis scholar to appreciate this point.
- third, he can hardly be described to have lived a wholesome life, even post conversion. I found all that deeply unsettling, although I knew much of it already and was aware that the Shadowlands story was something of a gloss.
- there were times when the book didn't feel quite that well edited – one or two stories that recurred, quite a lot built on speculation…
Nevertheless, there were a few golden insights.
- First, it was a good reminder that Lewis is not the evangelical hero we often make him. As much as someone like Lewis belongs to any tribe, it most certainly is not ours. Like Bonhoeffer, we must be careful into making him into something he never was.
- Second, I was reminded of the great usefulness of writing things down. This is often a great discipline in times of crisis. Indeed, there have been times in the last twelve months where keeping a journal has been a more regular and helpful discipline than at any time in my Christian life.
Faced with these unsettling and disquieting challenges, Lewis coped using the method he had recommended to his confidant Arthur Greeves in 1916: "Whenever you feel you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago." In the days following Davidman's death in July 1960, Lewis began to write down his thoughts, not troubling to conceal his own doubts and spiritual agony….he found liberty and release in being able to write what he actually thought, rather than what his friends and admirers believed he ought to think. (p342)
- Third, I was particularly struck by Lewis' hermeneutical method – in his case, as it related to English Literature. But what struck me about it was that is essentially an evangelical hermenutical method.
Lewis insists that to understand the literature of the classical or Renaissance periods, it is necessary to "suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits" that result in reading modern literature – such as an unquestioning assumption of the innate superiority of our own situation. Lewis uses a familiar cultural stereotype to help make his point – the English tourist abroad, so heavily pilloried in works such as EM Forster's Room with a view (1908). Lewis asks us to imagine an Englishman travelling abroad, fully persuaded of the English cultural values to those of the savages of the Western Europe. Instead of seeking out the local culture, enjoying the local food and allowing his own presuppositions to be challenged, he mixes only with with other English tourists, insists on seeking out English food, and sees his Englishness as something to be preserved at all costs. He thus takes his Englishness that he brought with him and "brings it home unchanged."
There is another way of visiting a foreign country and a correspondingly different way of reading an older text. Here, the tourist eats the local food and drinks the local wine, seeing "the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but the inhabitants." As a result, Lewis argues, the English tourist comes home "modified, thinking and feeling" in different ways. (p188).
This is a good metaphor for how we should read the Bible today!
This book was relatively easy to read, it gave a useful introduction to some of Lewis' books. But though I would class it as "good" the problem was that it was just not that good. Probably ideal for Lewis fans.