How to Avoid God
C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167:
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
Posted by William F. Vallicella on
Monday November 21, 2005 at 9:49am
Thanks for the Morris reference. I'll see if I can scare it up. Your active/passive distinction is a good one. As you know, the undisputed master in this genre is Blaise Pascal in his Pensees.
Context of the Lewis quote: he did indeed preface the description by saying that this was how to avoid God; but I suspect he was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when he said it.
The impetus of the article, originally published in the Feb '63 issue of the American journal _Show_, (under the horrid editor-chosen title of "Onward, Christian Spacemen!"--never let editors title your work if you can help it!), was a propaganda announcement by the Soviets, in celebration of their recent achievements in sending cosmonauts into orbit, that they had "not found God in space". Lewis turns this staggeringly banal claim into a very good discussion of several principles.
So, early in the article (about two paperback-book pages in {g}), he writes:
"If God--such a God as any adult religion believes in--exists, mere movement in space will never bring you any nearer to Him or any farther from Him than you are at this very moment. You can neither reach Him nor avoid Him by travelling to Alpha Centauri or even to other galaxies. A fish is no more, and no less, in the sea after it has swum a thousand miles, than it was when it set out.
"How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid Him?
"The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place, it is extremely easy."
And that is where the quote Bill provided comes in. {s}
After which, Lewis continues: "About the reaching, I am a far less reliable guide. That is because I never had the experience of looking for God. It was the other way around."
Notably, this essay was written very near the end of Lewis' life (and may have been published a few months after he died--I know he died the same day as JFK; but I forget whether that was that Nov 62, or 63. And I'm too lazy to look it up right now... {g})
Jason
Oh-- {slapping forehead} _today_ (Nov 23rd) is the anniversary of his (and JFK's) death. 42nd anniversary, according to Victor (hat tip there!); so that makes it 1963.
Jason
Lewis's discussion in "The Seeing Eye" could be a little tongue-in-cheek, I suppose. But to me it closely resembles what I take to be a serious point he made about love in <i>The Four Loves</i>:
<blockquote>
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
</blockquote>
I think the appearance of tongue-in-cheek in "The Seeing Eye" could be just a matter of Lewis's style and of his telling habit of turning arguments back on themselves. In each case, I think, Lewis at bottom argues that to keep the profound at bay, we have no choice but to embrace the trivial. The whole essay is a study of what's important and what's not as important. "Space-travel really has nothing to do with the matter."
It comes as no surprise, then, when he puts the "space race" itself in its place: "Good luck to it! It is an excellent way of letting off steam"--the superpower-sized equivalent of a Sunday afternoon game of touch football. (That was a pretty bold statement at the time, I'm sure!)
Lewis's discussion in "The Seeing Eye" could be a little tongue-in-cheek, I suppose. But to me it closely resembles what I take to be a serious point he made about love in The Four Loves:
I think the appearance of tongue-in-cheek in "The Seeing Eye" could be just a matter of Lewis's style and of his telling habit of turning arguments back on themselves. In each case, I think, Lewis at bottom argues that to keep the profound at bay, we have no choice but to embrace the trivial. The whole essay is a study of what's important and what's not as important. "Space-travel really has nothing to do with the matter."
It comes as no surprise, then, when he puts the "space race" itself in its place: "Good luck to it! It is an excellent way of letting off steam"--the superpower-sized equivalent of a Sunday afternoon game of touch football. (That was a pretty bold statement at the time, I'm sure!)
I apologize for the double post--not at all sure what I did there, but I messed up somehow.
I agree, that's all quite true--I didn't mean to imply that Lewis didn't mean what he said. Though neither was he turning an argument back on itself, there; not in "The Seeing Eye" (Hooper's better title for the piece), and not in that part of _The Four Loves_, either, (so far as I recall--writing from home tonight, don't have the text handy to be sure. {s!})
I also happen to know, however, that Lewis (at least partly) believed that no one would ever actually be able to succeed in so isolating themselves--even, thanks to God's enduring grace and efforts, in Hell. Thus I read the tone in "The Seeing Eye" as being a bit daringly wry--go ahead and try! (Screwtape would say that the person could succeed in getting away from God that way, though certainly not from the devils. But then, Screwtape works rather hard at ignoring the fact that neither he nor any other rebel angel has _really_ gotten away from God, either... {g})
Lewis' similar point from _T4L_, I take to be more illustratively serious in tone--though he still would believe this condition would not be completely immune from God's efforts to render our hearts contrite. (A word, that as Lewis points out elsewhere, means _pulverized_...)
As a bit of an aside, I have woven many of the various thematics Lewis is using here (and borrowing, to some degree, from millennia of Christian authors before him, of course), directly into the plot of the series of novels I am writing (the first of which I am in negotiations to publish). That paragraph from _T4L_ in particular, was often on my mind in creating the central protagonist of the first couple of story arcs. (She herself, reflecting back on the main story from years in the future, occasionally criticises herself using much the same figures as Lewis here.)
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