The Spiritual Formation of C.S. Lewis

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look to yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look to Christ and you find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. — C.S. Lewis
I’m still being challenged by Lyle Dorsett’s book, Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C.S. Lewis. In many ways, Dorsett unpacks a practical model for spiritual growth. Rooted in C.S. Lewis’ own journey, this model challenges in some ways my “typically evangelical, low-church American” approach.

As I read and re-read sections of this book, I’m face to face with serious gaps in “how I ought to walk with Christ.” Since I hate feeling guilty alone, I thought I’d share my gaps with you–in hopes that you’ll feel guilty as well. Actually, I share them in hopes that all of us might become more and more like Jesus.

C.S. Lewis had a no-nonsense approach to spiritual formation. As he wrote one person: the important thing is to obey Jesus, even if you don’t understand why He asks you to do it. Here are several ways that Lewis obeyed–that have particularly revealed some of my growth gaps. (Pls read the rest of Dorsett’s book to capture other growth gaps.)

Lewis practiced a “sustained and regular habit of prayer.” Lewis gave others what he assumed was the best advice in helping people grow: be busy learning to pray. Prayer was a discipline that must be learned by practice. Lewis set about early in his Christian life to learn how to pray. As he learned to pray, Lewis came to believe that “God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality”–that God literally invites us to be partakers in the execution of His will.

Lewis embraced a sacramental mystery. While embraced for his reasoned defense of mere Christianity, Lewis still relished in the mystery of it all. He saw both the universal and local expression of the church as “membership in the mystical body.” For his part, he spent little time studying, analyzing, or criticizing the factions in the Anglican Church, but simply lived in the church and loved it.

Of the sacrament of Holy Communion, he wrote, “I have no difficulty in believing that the veil between the worlds, nowhere else (for me) so opaque to the intellect, is nowhere else so thin and permeable to divine operations. Here a hand from the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body.” Sadly, for me, it’s often just a taste of saltine and cheap grape juice.

Lewis had a spiritual director. In 1940, Lewis found himself hiding behind a cloak of privacy especially when it came to deep personal matters. To counter that, he searched and found an experienced physician of souls in Father Walter Frederick Adams. He described Adams as his “confessor and . . . Father in Christ–a man of ripe spiritual wisdom, noble minded but of an almost childlike simplicity and innocence.”

Lewis argued that all of us need a “confessor who as representative of our Lord, declares His forgiveness.” This spiritual director also gives “his advice or understanding of what is happening with your soul.” For twelve years, Lewis met with Adams, from whom he received a passion for holiness, love for the Scriptures, evangelism, appreciation for the writings of early church fathers, and a desire for meeting the Lord Jesus in prayer and through Communion.