From Atheism to Christianity: The Search for Joy

C.S. Lewis may be one of the greatest Christian philosophers to ever contribute to the critical thought of the Christian faith. He is considered the father of modern Christian Apologetics. Lewis’ writings and systematic breakdowns of the Christian faith are presented from a very logical perspective that is often missed by outsiders looking into Christianity. For any person that deems Christianity as an inferior and ignorant religion that would quit worshiping an imaginary god if they simply became more educated would be surprisingly challenged by the work of C.S. Lewis.

Lewis’s story is loosely depicted in his book Surprised by Joy. He does not give an exhaustive account of his life but instead chooses to hit the “highlights,” as he called the. Lewis was not simply writing an account of his life and his conversion to Christianity but instead trying to map his search for happiness.

Lewis starts with his childhood and speaks of how his love of reading and writing came from a simple abnormality that prevented him from playing sports like the other children; the joints in his thumbs would not bend. Lewis would later suggest that the whole course of his life had been directed by a small deformation. He would even use it as an illustration in some of his other works to show how God can alter things in a major way by a small and simple tuning of something as small as a knuckle. He also implies that if he had been able to use his thumbs to play sports, he most likely would have never taken the time to read and write as a child and consequently would never have developed into the writer that he was. From this point the earliest memories of happiness in his life were from reading fantasy novels and writing stories. He calls this his first season of happiness.

In the later portion of his childhood Lewis was drawn to the beauty and ceremony of the Christian faith. He decided at this time to become a practicing Christian but found that his season of happiness faltered. He was unable to keep the simplest rules and unable to retain the awe that had original inspired him. He attempted to keep up his Christian practices but by the time he arrived at boarding school he had begun to develop doubts about his new found faith. Under the somewhat cruel treatment of his teacher and the ideas and theories that were presented to him he decided that there was no God. He became an atheist of the “snobbiest” degree.

Thus his next season of happiness had started. The next stage of his education only solidified his now atheistic worldview. With the help of his professor, Lewis began see life through a lens of criticism. Every sentence that came from a person’s mouth was dissected and corrected if fallible. In accordance with this the ceremonies of religion were also deemed as distasteful and “merely an emotional sensation.” It was looked at as being beneath “such a learned man.” Lewis eventually would become a Professor himself.

Later on in life, Lewis developed a relationship with the now well known author J.R.R. Tolkien. Through a long series of conversations, debates, and comparisons between the two experts of literature Lewis eventually made the conversion from atheism to theism. This was, while only based on what Lewis would call logical deduction, only the beginning of Lewis’s path to happiness. Eventually with the study of the bible and the influence of Tolkien Lewis “gave in and admitted that God was indeed God.”

I think that the most important thing that Lewis was attempting to get across was the distinction of what it is we are actually searching for. We are not searching for happiness but rather joy. At first it is easy for us to get the two mixed up because they are things of the same essence. They are so closely related yet so distinct from each other that the mistake of putting them in the wrong place is a danger of the highest degree.

As defined by Lewis, happiness is an emotion. It is a thing that comes and goes based not on intrinsic qualities but rather outside circumstances. Here lies the danger in happiness. If one tries to shape the intrinsic qualities of the heart in an attempt to find a consistent state of happiness we will waste away in frustration. Our lives will be spent chasing our tails instead of being lived out.

So the tendency now is to say that we must focus on our outside circumstances, but this must be avoided because this to will lead to constant frustration. After all, how much of our circumstances do we actually control? Can we control the death of a loved one, the crashing of the economy, or the cancer that blindsides us? This too is a fleeting endeavor. Lewis says that we must enjoy the moments of happiness presented to us and accept them as temporary.
Is this it though? By no means! The gaping hole in our being that urges to be filled is the hole that is meant to be filled by joy. Joy is the state of being that we all search for. The state which says this life, situation, circumstance, and season is enough. It is contentment in the highest purity, and in moments of happiness it is merely intensified. But the question remains…..how do we achieve this?

God is Lewis’ answer to this riddle. A common saying of Lewis was this; “if we search for joy apart from God, both will slip through our fingers. But if we search for God and God alone, we will find that He is the infinite source of joy that we were created to exist in.” Lewis is saying here that the very reason that all of us have a need to search for something that defines us, fulfills us, and gives us something to live for is there because God has created us with a need for it. A need that is so big that our lives are consumed with the search for it.

The problem with humanity however is that we try to fulfill this God sized hole without God. We try to fill the hole with the fleeting fulfillment of minute desires. Sex, power, money, stability, health, sports, meditation, knowledge, the list could go on and on. All of these things are a cheap substitute for what we are really meant for. They are finite pleasures that cannot fulfill the infinite hole that we were purposely created with. Lewis says that “one of the biggest showings of the wrath of God is the torture, turmoil, and lack of satisfaction we have in life apart from Him. He has created us to only be content in Him. We are children attempting to replace the ocean with a mud puddle in the back yard.”