A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis by Devin Brown (2013)

Although I have not quite finished the final novel in our Siblings Book Club for this year, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, I began this final biography, A Life Observed, and couldn’t put it down. I may not be C.S. Lewis‘ biggest fan and I’ve read only a handful of his works, but Devin Brown so expertly defined the progressive details of Lewis’ spiritual biography that I now understand the Narnian author a great deal more.

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From the beginning, Brown acknowledges that there’s no dearth of Lewis biographies, so he may just be adding floors to an already-completed skyscraper. Still, his perspective is unique, and I for one was fascinated with his approach and am totally satisfied with the addition.

Because Lewis had once written his own spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955) eight years before his death,  Brown was able to use that text as a model for his own, often quoting Surprised and adding details from Lewis’ other works or family letters to fill in the gaps. We readers then get to watch Lewis grow up through the loss of his mother and troubled experiences at boarding schools, not just reading the facts but hearing his thoughts as well. Brown then traces the final eight years through Lewis’ other works, specifically A Grief Observed and his letters.

This book is best understood by someone at least moderately familiar with Lewis’ writing, though it’s not necessary to have read them all. I for example have only read about a dozen of his books: The Chronicles of Narnia, his Space Trilogy, Reflections on the Psalms, and Screwtape Letters (or at least those are the ones I’ve reviewed). Everything else that Brown quotes came as wonderful news to me as I read, and it actually stirs me to read more. Specifically, I’d like to read A Grief Observed (now that I better know the context) and Letters to Malcolm, his final layman’s book on prayer.

There are too many things to quote from this book, so I’ll limit myself to just a few points. Of course, one major theme of Lewis’ life was Joy, specifically his recognition that its spurts in childhood and young-adulthood hinted at God’s existence and goodness and this Joy would be God’s gift finally received at salvation. Although his search for Joy was rarely intentional, he eventually recognized that its flashes depended in part upon the types of books he read.

There was also a great decline in my imaginative life. For many years Joy (as I have defined it) was not only absent but forgotten. My reading was now mainly rubbish. …When one goes from nursery literature to school stories he is going down not up. (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 34-35) Lewis implies that there was something he could do to hinder the coming of Joy or to foster it—and it had to do with the kind of book her read. …In his famous essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” [p.38], Lewis asks us to lay two types of books side by side for comparison. The first type he calls a Boy’s Book or a Girl’s Book [or “twaddling school stories”]. … Here, Lewis comments, we find “the immensely popular and successful schoolboy or schoolgirl” who “discovers the spy’s plot or rides the horse that none of the cowboys could manage. … It is all flattery to the ego. The pleasure consists in picturing oneself the object of admiration.” Next in the essay, Lewis switches from the school story to the fairy tale. …Using words similar to his description of his experience of Joy, Lewis they goes on in the essay to describe the special kind of longing a fairy tale evokes in the reader. “It would be truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense that something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise the real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.” (Brown, A Life Observed, 55-57)

In this same vein of what books he should and shouldn’t read, Lewis also described how he viewed those same fairy tales and fantastical writings through the lens of his Christian faith:

Lewis wrote…how “the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there” and how the story of Christ is “a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened” (CLI, 977). (Brown, A Life Observed, 66)

“Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Father thought) or priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.” (C.S. Lewis, Miracles, 134)

He expressed a similar recognition of God in the ordinary in his Reflections on the Psalms:

“To say that God created Nature, while it brings God and Nature into relation, also separates them. What makes and what is made must be two, not one. Thus the doctrine of Creating in one sense empties Nature of divinity. …But in another sense the same doctrine which empties Nature of her divinity also makes her an index, a symbol, a manifestation, of the Divine. …It is surely just because the natural objects are no longer taken to be themselves Divine that they can now be magnificent symbols of Divinity. …The doctrine of Creation leaves Nature full of manifestations which show the presence of God, and created energies which serve Him.” (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 80-81)

Lewis’ conversion story is so unique, so philosophical, and yet this is how God, Lewis’ own “Great Adversary,” chose to reach him. Following alongside his two-year trek from theism to Christianity (beginning on page 144), I suddenly gained further insight into the mystery of the Trinity. We know that “the devils believe [in God] and tremble” (James 2:19), and yet theirs isn’t a saving belief. Many theists there are who reject Jesus Christ as the Son of God, yet where does their theism get them? Ultimately Hell, saying to the Father, “But God, didn’t we serve you with our lives? Didn’t we worship you throughout?” He will have to say to those who rejected Jesus, “Depart from me, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23). While belief that God exists (theism) might be a step in the right direction for lost souls, it’s ultimately useless if it doesn’t then lead a person to faith in the work of Christ. We believers need to recognize this truth and not be satisfied that our friends acknowledge God and go no further.

Lewis shares another important piece of advice that I think is fitting for any context, whether for the lost soul or the child of God who’s wandering. It’s about swallowing one’s pride, admitting mistakes, and turning back to the path we know we should be walking, the path of progress:

 “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 28)

I could go on but won’t. If you’re familiar at all with C.S. Lewis, I highly recommend you get this spiritual biography and be encouraged by the this giant’s wanderings and writings and his final confidence in Jesus as Lord. It’s the best biography I’ve read in a long time.

©2021 E.T.

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For further discussion of this book, see my book review of Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno (2013).