I'm slowly making my way through every C.S. Lewis book. So of course I had to read Surprised by Joy. It's a book about his early life, that Lewis felt compelled to write by so many people simply wanting to know.
I can't say I loved it.
I feel like I know most of the stories already. Maybe from a movie or other books?
I also felt way out of my league intellectually. He discusses the different philosophers and ideas he wrestled with over the years, and he lost me every time.
I loved his framing, however.
He discusses moments, early in his life, when he felt what he calls "joy." It's an extreme longing for something just out of reach and it produces a sublimity he continues to chase. Unfortunately, he can never quite figure out what, exactly, causes those fleeting moments.
At the same time, he details his faith in God, such as it was. He begins with an immature faith in a God who should do what he wants him to do (heal Lewis' mother). He then moves into materialism and denies there is a God. Yet he remains drawn to mysticism. Finally the contradiction is too much for his brilliant mind to handle.
Inexorably, almost against his will, he is forced to admit that the God he rejected is the God he's been searching for his whole life. He can't even remember the exact moment of surrender except to say that when he started driving down the road he was not a Christian and when he arrived he was.
In the end, he abandons his pursuit of joy. It's not so much that God become that source of joy as much as he just didn't need the glimpses anymore.
Because his conversion is so unsatisfying -- it just kinda happened -- the book is as disappointing as he promised it would be in the beginning.
I like how he wrestled with ideas, even if I am unfamiliar with them in their entirety. The conflict between his delight in imagination and his rational mind makes sense to me. His discovery that only God, through Jesus Christ, squares this circle is delightful. I like that part.
*note bene - I did NOT like his stories of boarding school. Claude probably thinks there is something wrong with me because of all the questions I was asking. I wish those images were not in my mind...
