C.S. Lews and the Egg

“You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” This is one of the most popular quotes attributed to C.S. Lewis, but he never said it. I don’t think he’d have any problem with the sentiment; he just never actually said it.

Clive Staples Lewis died when I was four months old. Even though he’s been gone for sixty years, he’s still considered the most important Christian apologist in the English Language—but he almost wasn’t a Christian at all.

Born in 1898, Lewis was an atheist for the first part of his life. Atheism was and is very common among English-speaking intellectuals. Humanism, born in Italy in the fifteenth century, found its greatest expression among English philosophers who began questioning the class system they lived in.

When he became an atheist at fifteen, Lewis said he was “very angry with God for not existing." He found himself fascinated by mythology, first Greek and Norse mythology, but after meeting W.B. Yeats, he became a serious student of Celtic Mythology. Celtic mythology is difficult to study because, as the Romans took over the British Isles, they destroyed as much cultural evidence for the Celtic people as they could find.

Lewis justified his lack of belief by quoting Lucretius in saying,”

“Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa”

Which he translated himself into:

“Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.”

In 1929, Lewis began reading a Scottish Christian apologist named George MacDonald. Lewis compared him to Dante’s Beatrice. In a way very fitting with Lewis, reading MacDonald made him return again to the idea that there must be a God.

Lewis began discussing his beliefs with his friends, now willing to admit there was a God. One day in 1931, on a long walk with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, founding members of the famous Oxford Inklings, The trio began discussing comparative mythology and the possibility that Christianity might be the one “true” myth.” Lewis had an epiphany and welcomed Christ back into his life.

Lewis’s first “Christian” book, The Pilgrim's Regress, was published in 1933. It draws parallels between Lewis's own experience and Pilgrim’s Progress. Lewis wrote over thirty books, most dealing with Christianity. His skill as a writer masked the fact that he was experiencing a purely intellectual conversion; he had yet to feel true Christian love.

In 1952, Lewis met Joy Davidman, an American Jew, an atheist, and a Communist; she came to England to complete a book she was writing on the Ten Commandments and escape her abusive and alcoholic husband. Interested in how Lewis wrote apologetics, Davidman began meeting with him over lunch, and his long walks with the Inklings became long walks with Joy.

Their relationship remained purely intellectual and platonic, even when, in 1956, Davidman’s visa ran out. In desperation to escape her husband, she obtained a divorce and entered into a civil marriage with Lewis so she and her two sons could remain in England.

Married in April of 1956, there would be no marital bliss for Lewis. In October, Joy broke her leg. In the hospital, they discovered she had cancer. Lewis and Joy would have one glorious trip to Greece together, but in 1960, she succumbed to her illness.

Joy wanted her sons, David and Douglas, to remain with Lewis. He legally adopted them and began raising them.

Lewis began questioning what use he had, if any, for any Christian faith when it would take Joy from him. Douglas converted to Christianity, and David retained his Judaism. Raising these boys through his grief taught Lewis the one thing he was missing: true and pure christian love. He dedicated “The Horse and His Boy” to David and Douglas when he married Joy in 1956, but the influence of living with them had a huge impact on the remaining four books in the Narnia series.

Like Lewis, my own life has been a tapestry weaving in and out of atheism. Like Lewis, the concept of Justice poses the greatest threat to my faith. I’ve come up with the idea that, from the perspective of eternity, what happens in these brief moments on Earth doesn’t alter the greater scope of justice. Injustice here means nothing to eternal beings.

Returning to the question of bodies and spirits, there are two ways to explain an eternal spirit. The first is that, like quarks and other subatomic particles, our spirits were born with the universe. We existed forever before we were born on Earth, and after our time on Earth, we will exist until the universe collapses in on itself again. Antoine Lavoisier believed that matter and energy are never created or destroyed but convert to other forms of being. Perhaps that is so of the spirit as well. When we’re not on Earth, our spirits become the stuff stars are made of.

The other possibility is that our spirits are created when we’re born and stretch out forever after our death in a Universe that never ends after the Kingdom of God. There are a number of physics problems with that scenario, but it’s mentioned in some scriptures, so I have to include it in the discussion at least.

For just myself, I compare my spirituality to a fresh, clean, boiled hens egg. The outside is white, blank, and fleshy with a springy touch to it. I like to dress it with salt and pepper and hot sauce. For me, this is all the books I read, all the sermons I hear, all the songs I listen to, and all the art I experience that helps me understand God. This is Lewis’s life before Joy. All intellectual, brilliant, and visible, this is what most of us think about when we consider Christianity.

Inside the egg’s fleshy white is its smaller, rounder, meaty center. There’s no spring to its texture. It’s tender and breaks if you touch it. We eat the yellow yolk without salt or pepper but in its pure form.

Inside the heart of the spiritual egg is Christian love. That which asks not for logical discourse or even the hint of returned favor. The yolk is the true Christianity, not the fleshy outside that we have to season to be palatable. It is the love God has for us and the love we return to the universe.

In many cultures, the egg is a metaphor for the soul. Maybe this is what they mean.