Surprised By Joy: The Shape Of My Early Life
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Average rating4.1
A repackaged edition of the revered author’s spiritual memoir, in which he recounts the story of his divine journey and eventual conversion to Christianity. C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—takes readers on a spiritual journey through his early life and eventual embrace of the Christian faith. Lewis begins with his childhood in Belfast, surveys his boarding school years and his youthful atheism in England, reflects on his experience in World War I, and ends at Oxford, where he became "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." As he recounts his lifelong search for joy, Lewis demonstrates its role in guiding him to find God.
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I had a wish to reread this after the first stage in Narniathon, to understand better the spiritual process behind Lewis's writing. I found it frustratingly evasive in many ways, even as it was unusually articulate in others. Although Lewis tries his best to describe his elusive experience of “Joy” and how he was led from atheism to theism to Christianity, I was left uncertain as to what he really experiences and believes in the fullness of his soul. I suspect at the point of this writing, there was much he was unable to admit to himself, let alone to an audience. There is no wonder at Lewis being an emotionally wounded man, considering the many traumas he went through in his early years; like most of us, he covered these up and endured them as best he could, but that left him with some strange disjunctions in his inner life. It's only now that a fuller understanding of trauma is being unfolded and that new healing methods are being discovered. But even if he was unable to benefit from these, he was a seeker of healing in his own way. I still feel gratitude to him for all that he shared.
An additional note on the e-book edition I read: the proofreading was terrible and there were many mistakes left in from the scanning process (e.g. “Fie” for “He,” extraneous apostrophes, etc.) This is a disgrace for an edition of the work of a man who was meticulous with words. E-book publishers must be more careful about these errors.
This memoir of C.S. Lewis's life before he became a Christian is fine but not anything that really gripped me. I think because he studied languages and philosophy, so much of his reference points are to the perspectives of various ancient writers and thinkers, few of whom I was familiar with. And in the end, his adoption of a Christian faith was very much a philosophical shift, which is interesting to think about in apologetics but not a very compelling read. I'm glad to know this background of Lewis, but I look forward to reading his more thought-provoking works.
I appreciate how honest Lewis is. “...the most dejected, reluctant convert in all of England . . . drug into the kingdom kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape...” It reminds me of St. Paul. We are the worst of sinners, and God STILL fights for us.
