Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1483386
Nighty-one years ago, Lewis took a fateful ride in a motorcycle sidecar to Whipsnade Park Zoo near Dunstable, UK. The tradi onal date for Lewis' conversion is September 28, 1931. In his excellent biography, C. S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Alister McGrath does raise the possibility that it actually happened in June of 1932, but in the end, he believes the tradi onal date is s ll probably the be er op on. So, what exactly happened on September 28 that led to Lewis complete his transi on from atheists to Chris an apologist? Not much, at least on that specific date. We must move back a few days and even years to see the events that brought about the change. First, many of Lewis' literary influences unbeknownst to him at first, turned out to be Chris ans and prodding him along toward God. Poet George Herbert, one of the earliest fantasy writers George McDonald, and rhetorician G.K. Chesterton all were wri ng from a Chris an perspec ve and much more winsomely, from Lewis' perspec ve, than secular writers like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. In seeing the imagina on and "Joy," which was a major theme of Lewis' life, on the side of the Chris ans, Lewis was torn. On the one side a many- islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "ra onalism." Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless. This conflict ate away at Lewis un l he had to give in, and it was just that him resigning himself to the existence of some god. I gave in, and admi ed that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. that Jesus' resurrec on is the True Myth. It is the mythical story that really happened. Unbeknownst to him, the reason Lewis had felt such an affinity to all the pagan myths is that they had slivers of truth in them. They were an cipa ons of the truth myth that was to come later. Similari es between Chris anity and other religions don't prove Chris anity to be false, rather they give it even more credence. Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves about that night. : "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ – in Chris anity. I will try to explain this another me. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it." Nine days later, Lewis is being driven to Whipsnade Zoo by his brother Warnie on a motorcycle when everything changes for good. The line has finally been crossed. "I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did." For Lewis, this changed everything. As he would later write in the essay "Chris an Apologe cs" from God in the Dock, "One must keep on poin ng out that Chris anity is a statement, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance . The one thing it cannot be is moderately important . " It took a process for Lewis to arrive at the point where he recognized Chris anity as truth, but once that was grasped, he was never the same. The sidecar ride to Whipsnade brought everything into focus for him and Chris ans have benefited from that moment for over 90 years. C.S. Lewis' Sidecar Conversion By Aaron Earls As Lewis embraced theism, he was not ready to accept Chris anity or even the idea of a personal God. Yet, Lewis con nued to be influenced by Chris an friends, par cularly Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien. On February 3, 1930, Lewis writes to his non-Chris an spiritualist friend Owen Barfield: "Terrible things are happening to me. The "Spirit" or "Real I" is showing an alarming tendency to become much more personal and is taking the offensive and behaving just like God. You'd be er come on Monday at the latest or I may have entered a monastery." He did not want to take that final step, just as much as he did not want to take the first step. What par cularly concerned Lewis was the idea of God sending Jesus to die for our sins. What could that death thousands of years ago mean for our lives today? Lewis wasn't wrestling with whether it was true, but whether it had meaning or significance. On Saturday, September 19, 1931, Lewis had a long talk with Dyson and Tolkien as they strolled along Addison's Walk. The two Chris ans were able to demonstrate to Lewis