Lastnight we watched "The most reluctant convert" a short (90 minute) movie about CS Lewis's life and conversion - written-by and starring the excellent Bible Gateway performer Max McLean.
It is a meaty and uncompromising piece, which managed to interest me and hold my attention; even though I have read the contributing texts, especially Surprised by Joy; and indeed I've seen several earlier movies that covered much the same ground.
Like many adult converts to Christianity over the past seventy years - CS Lewis's writings played a significant role in this process.
Looking back, I can see several respects in which Lewis's experiences, and his answers, seem wrong to me now - including his experience of having to resist being-converted, his orthodox-traditional-classical theology, and the way he equates being-a-Christian with joining a (mainstream) church.
Nonetheless, CSL (and a few others) got me over the line, which is What Matters!
(The rest was, necessarily, Up To Me.)
I was pleased that the movie's take-home message, spoken by Lewis during in the last few minutes, focused on what was, for me, the most effective of the "arguments" that Lewis made (with Tolkien) - the argument from desire, as it is called:
The final step was taken... It was like a man who, after a long sleep, has become aware that he is now awake.
My conversion shed new light on my search for Joy. The overwhelming longings that emerged from reading MacDonald's Phantastes, and seeing my brother's toy garden when a child; were merely signposts to what I truly desired. They were not the thing itself.
I concluded that; if I find in myself a desire that no experience in this world could satisfy the most probable explanation? I was made for another world.
At present we are on the outside of that world, the wrong side of the door. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the news that it will not always be so; that one day, God willing, we shall get in.
Meanwhile: the cross comes before the crown. And tomorrow is another morning.
A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of this world. And we have been invited to follow our great Captain inside.
Following Him is, of course, the essential point.
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