Christianity,  Essays

The Weight of Glory

The Weight of Glory is a collection of speeches C.S. Lewis gave on different topics, for different occasions. It was my first experience of reading Lewis this way, rather than in a sustained story or argument, and I got a sense of how he must have been as a speaker — very erudite, very entertaining, and very witty. I pretty much devoured the book and thought I’d give a brief rundown of the contents.

“The Weight of Glory” is a sermon Lewis delivered in 1941 to the largest assembled crowd in modern times at the Oxford church where it was preached. In his intro, Walter Hooper calls it “magnificent.” It captures some of Lewis’s main themes in condensed form, such as life as a sacrament, transcendence and longing. Here’s a taste:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

“Learning in War-Time” is a 1939 speech I read an excerpt from earlier this year at a friend’s blog. What’s the point of cultivating the life of the mind when World War II — or any war for that matter — is going on? If you’ve ever wondered, this is a must-read. Excerpt:

Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities… [The insects] have sought first the material welfare and security of of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

(Lewis’s main argument isn’t simply that it’s our nature, though. Read it and see!)

“Why I Am Not a Pacifist” is required reading for anyone who, like me, has been trying to work out their own stance on the issue of war — not this war, or that war, but war. It’s something I’ve muddled over before. Lewis provides an astringent dose of logic to this emotional issue, and I found it bracing and satisfying (more convincing by far than Berry’s piece, in my opinion — I may write more about that later). Is war really the ultimate evil? Does it always do more harm than good? What practical outcome might might pacifism yield? These and other questions Lewis works through systematically, evaluating pacifism according to the tests of fact, reasoning, and authority.

“Transposition” considers how spiritual reality might manifest itself in physical reality, and argues against materialism. This is a moving essay that uses the analogy of a drawing, where pencilled lines in a landscape are a translation of 3-dimensional reality into 2-dimensional space:

Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like pencilled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape, not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.

“Is Theology Poetry?” was to me the least interesting. It takes up the question of whether theology is nothing more than poetry, and has appeal on that basis. My mind wandered some while reading this one, but it seemed to come down not to whether Christianity was poetically appealing, but whether it was true.

“The Inner Ring” was C.S. Lewis’s advice to students, but it could just as easily be his advice to Mark Studdock, the protagonist of That Hideous Strength. It’s about the lure of any exclusive group, and how we can warp our souls in our drivenness to belong to it. It’s very practical, wise, and funny, as this passage from Lewis’s introductory remarks indicates in its allusions to The Screwtape Letters:

And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish; in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not identification… As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.

“Membership” examines the idea of belonging to “the body of Christ,” and points out the ways it differs from the collectivism we tend to think of as “social life,” and from isolation. I liked the way Lewis emphasized the importance of solitude and quietness, though they’re assaulted in modern life. I felt challenged by his interpretation of democratic equality.

“On Forgiveness” and “A Slip of the Tongue” focus on what I would call personal spiritual disciplines. I liked Lewis’s distinction between forgiveness and excusing, and also his description of self-protectiveness toward God growing “all over me like a new shell each night.”

I’ve given pretty short schrift to these, but I was trying to avoid a marathon post. This is a book I’m glad to own, and that offered itself willingly to my pen for note-scribbling and underlining. I’ll look forward to revisiting it in the future — especially the title essay, which was packed densely enough to need a second read sometime soon.