Today I finished reading C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. I first read it a few years ago and was almost completely bewildered by it. Yet I have no doubt it helped make me Orthodox.  Now it provides endless material for cogent, deep thought.

It’s funny. You don’t really understand something; but it makes you more Orthodox. Then you become Orthodox, and you go back and the thing begins to make sense.

Till We Have Faces is food for tears.

I think it contains clues, or start-up ideas, for the answers to all the important questions, only a few of which I will inadequately mention.

First of all, the holy Mr. Lewis provides a few antitheses for our benefit. First, and most obviously, there is the antithesis between true love of one’s own soul vs. a possessive love of one’s own soul. Then, true desire to be made divine in union with God, vs. a foolish, proud desire to be made divine as mere arrogation. And, finally, the true sacrifice which God requires of human beings - that he may have them all so that they may be fitted to have Him - contrasted with the terror and ugliness of the ravening appetite of death and our constant confusions between the two. This last contrast leads deeps into winding ways in which death and appetite actually become ways and means for life and love…but I will not speak further of what I barely grasp, if at all, myself.

Making distinctions is an important art. It’s one door to understanding.

I think Mr. Lewis shows us things far more mysterious as well, which I struggle to paraphrase. Why did the human fall happen at all? If we insist on asking the question as a why, there’s no answer unless it is the face of the Lord. But if you learn to ask the question a little differently - what is the meaning of it, for instance, he seems to have some things to say.

Apparently for him, as for other orthodox thinkers, the story of mankind’s salvation is not merely one of a height, a fall, then a return to that same height. In the story, Psyche undergoes the same journey she would have had she not turned on the light too soon. Mankind follows the same basic path to God’s Purpose as we would have had we not eaten of that tree of moral knowledge too soon. Now the journey goes down deeper before it rises to the originally intended heights. But still the soul (Psyche) starts out mortal, and is eventually “godded” - yes, Mr. Lewis uses that very word - through a journey in which she has nothing to do really but confirm her love to her god through obedience. The outward or reasoning or self-conscious ”I” - as I interpret Orual - now suffers tortures of confusion and loss and anguish. But even that is saved through a mysterious, usually unconscious interchange of duties and motives between the steady, unswerving Psyche and the anguished self.

Finally, some words here lead me to contemplate once again the series of ideas by which we are led to think about our relationship to God.

At first one thinks that God is implacable. He is like a stone that cannot be moved or entreated or petitioned. He is wholly Other, wholly dangerous, wholly a source of destruction and loss.

Then one recieves like a child the saying that God repents the evil he means to do to man, and that when man himself repents of his own evil, God returns to him. When we draw near to God, God reciprocates by drawing near to us, we are told, and we learn to trust the saying. When we run from him he is angry and punishes us - perhaps forever, we hear.

But you cannot stay there forever. For it is necessary to return to the knowledge that God is changless, passionless.

At some point it strikes you that the same Will says yes or no to you depending on what you ask of it.  The same Food is lovely or hateful depending on what you can stomach. The same God is good to all - that is the deepest truth (unless you want to go deeper and say that God is beyond even good.) Ranged beneath that are the truths that we receive reward or punishment, praise or blame from God as we ourselves are worthy or unworthy. But prove him - probe the boundless with all humility - and the light dawns clearer and clearer that he is with you when you know him not, that everything is God’s mercy.

This is the point at which you want to go and write hymns to Christ - or at least to study the art of hymnwriting.

I realize that few figures lend themselves visually to thoughts of intrigue and mystery more than the hood of a monk. Nevertheless this trend in which exciting fictional stories feature a church as arch-villian is distressing to me mainly because of the church’s identification with Christ, whom I love beyond anything. Still, I’m not ready to say that there is no reason for this spate of Gibbon-esque religion-bashing that’s been going on recently, and I’m even less ready to say that the reason is none of the church’s responsibility. Just maybe, my fellow Christians, the disintegration of Western cultures on the Church’s watch is part of the problem here? Weren’t we supposed to be the guardians of everything good? 

That said, I don’t see these novels as serious participants in the pressing cultural issue of what to do with (or without) religion. Yesterday I looked at a small rack of bestsellers in a book store and at least five of them were of this Church=Villian type. I glanced at the final sentence in one of them and it said something to this effect: In the final analysis, you have three religions, each of which believes that it is right and the other is wrong. This is the real problem. (I assume it was referring to the three great monotheistic religions.)

When you are writing for money (not something I have a problem with in itself by the way) it can be tempting to pretend to address a problem only to end by dismissing it altogether.  As if I were to say, “Look at all these Presidential nominees. You want to know which one I’m going to vote for? Confusing, isn’t it. Well have you noticed all think they should be President? In my opinion that’s their problem. Since they can’t agree on which of them is right, the Presidency must be a pointless office. If it were as important as everyone pretends, it would surely be easier to make a decision about! Down with civil service!”

Not that there isn’t a problem in modern religion. Far too many evil things have been done and are still being done in its name. If it weren’t for the warning of our dear Fr. B— about bad-mouthing other religions, I could tell some ugly stories from first-hand experience. Nothing, in fact, is uglier than religion gone bad.

There are two opposing explanations offered for this fact. One is that religion is incapable of being a good, helpful factor in human life. The other is that religion is the best part of human life, and therefore when it does go sour, it has farther to fall and becomes a greater evil than any other evil. Then of course there’s the middle road which says that whenever society becomes multi-cultural, a new generation has to learn to get along and be tolerant and we are still just in the middle of that process. Havn’t quite figure it out yet.

I tend to the second view, with a nod to the third. The fact is, religion is the only thing that makes my life worth living.

So now, Mr. Author whose name I have forgotten - allow me to say that the problem is not us religious people thinking we are right. It’s impossible to be human and not think you are right about some things. In fact, the hope of being or becoming right is what keeps most of us who are remotely serious about life - probably including you - going.

I think the problem is our historic construct in Western Christianity, and far more so in the larger part of Islam, about how to act when we think we are right. What to do about being right. How much room to make for being somewhat wrong in the midst of being mostly right. And the value of human beings, even when they are wrong.

But aren’t these things precisely what religion is supposed to teach us? Well, yes. And this is where I decline to jump too harshly on Philip Pullman and his like, however little interest I have in reading his Church-bashing. That our religion is failing more and more to teach us these and other things is … well, a large part of the reason I am turning to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

About that: popular culture seems to associate Christianity with the West, and yet it originated in the East and in the East it has largely remained healthy and fostered healthy societies. The Orthodox Church simply features far less abuses, frivolities, and fakery. One is inclined to suspect that there is a counter-abusive force deep in the heart of the thing - whatever the mediocrity, jurisdictional battles, or occasional abuses floating on its periphery.

Thankfully, as I get deeper into Orthodox Christianity I can attest that experience confirms that suspicion of a Love-Force at the heart. I know the calming of my own soul since I’ve come here. I know the love that has been poured out on me and that, rather than blame and abuse and scorn, is what I’d rather pour out on other people in return.

So maybe some novelist wanting a new twist on all of this should tell a story in which someone abused by some of the darker corners of religion finds peace in Eastern Orthodoxy only to emerge a hero with new-found answers to tired old problems. It wouldn’t be that hard for a lot of us to believe. 

Face it, some literary trends are pretty shallow. Exploring new worlds (Fantasy/SciFi) is a bottomless well of delightful stories. Being anti-something, on the other hand, only takes you so far before leaving you high and dry, because it has no reality of its own, finding necessity to draw on that which it opposes for its own existance and substance. Wealthy the geniuses, like Pullman, who learn to make the latter lean on the former - but even his story, I hear, loses steam once it has to face the stark reality of what to do without religion, for better or worse.

No, no, I haven’t read His Dark Materials. Yes, yes, I’m going to get to it; I am not without natural curiosity. (Exits with dignity.)