Ideas for blog posts often seem to come when I start praying in the morning. As has been my habit for almost seven years, every morning I wrestle my way through a text of Scripture and write my thoughts in my uncreatively named Walk Through the Bible blog. Contemplating the word of the living God, the Creator of all things, can’t help but inspire, so thoughts bubble up as I pray. Then I stop, say to myself, I have to write that down! Such is the subject of this post. I’ll explain why that may have happened with this specific thought at this specific time, but it goes back to a quote from C.S. Lewis I put on the cover of my book, and one of the most powerful apologetic (defense of the truth claims of Christianity) sentences I’ve ever encountered. It’s no surprise it came from the pen and mind of Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
The ex-atheist Lewis who once saw the universe as mere matter, a chance happening of colliding atoms, at some point realized a God-less universe explained absolutely nothing. It could not explain life or death, good or evil, beauty or ugly, truth or lies. Lewis became a theist before he became a Christian because he had a hard time with a dying and rising God. As a scholar of medieval literature he was well acquainted with ancient literature, and was aware of the many myths of dying gods. He wasn’t sure what made Christianity so different until he realized that Christianity was the true myth from which all others were echos. Here was the difference:
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. . . . God is more than a god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “Pagan Christs”: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.
If Christianity is the truth about the ultimate nature of reality we should not be surprised that there are echos of that truth in every religion of every culture in every place and time. The difference is that Christianity stands upon the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Elsewhere speaking of the gospels Lewis wrote, “I have been reading poems, romances, vision‑literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.”
Lewis and the explanatory power of Christianity came to mind when I recently listened to an interview on the Unbelievable podcast that included a young man who was a Christian, and decided he could no longer be one. His reasoning was of interest because it seemed exactly like the pre-Christian Lewis. From what I can tell, he believes that since all religions and peoples of all times gave meaning to life, then just one of these meanings can’t be the sole Truth about the nature of reality. Or something like that. It’s slippery trying to pin down exactly what his objection to Christianity is, but he has given up the only thing that can explain anything. All truth is God’s truth, so it makes sense that it can be found in some form in some way in many different disguises. The young man, Sam Devis, is thoughtful and honest, and seems an honest seeker. We can pray that eventually he makes his way back to the Son that has risen.
(Having gone a bit long, I will write my next post on why it is specifically the gospel that is the only thing that makes sense of everything.)
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