The Great Knock

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” — Proverbs 27:17 (KJV)

Jack's letters home from Malvern were so wretched that even Albert could see something had to change. In September 1914, a month after the First World War broke out, fifteen-year-old Jack arrived in the village of Great Bookham, in Surrey, to be tutored for university by William Kirkpatrick, Albert's own old headmaster. The family called him the Great Knock. He was tall, lean and ruthless in argument, with side whiskers and a voice like a bell. He had been brought up a Presbyterian and had become a convinced atheist. He didn't talk about religion much. He simply assumed no intelligent person could believe it.

On the walk from the station, Jack tried some polite conversation: the Surrey countryside, he said, was wilder than he had expected. Kirkpatrick stopped him. What did he mean by wild? What grounds did he have for expecting anything else? Within minutes the boy had been shown that he had no clear idea what he meant, no evidence, and so no right to an opinion at all. Many boys would have been crushed. Jack loved it. For the first time in his life a grown man was taking him seriously.

He learned to define his words, look for evidence, spot a bad argument from a long way off, and say exactly what he meant. Kirkpatrick taught languages just as directly. On the first morning he opened Homer in Greek, read and translated a passage aloud, and left Jack to carry on with a dictionary. Soon Jack was reading Homer at speed. Before he left, he had added French, Italian and some German. Those two and a half years were among the happiest of his life, and the clear, sharp way he wrote for the rest of his life was learned in that house.

He also settled into his unbelief. By sixteen he was writing to Arthur, with all the confidence of youth, that every religion was a mythology invented by human beings, and that he believed in none of them.

Then came something he regretted for the rest of his life. In December 1914 he was confirmed at his home church in Belfast and took his first Communion. He didn't believe a word of it. He did it to please his father, and because he couldn't face the argument if he refused. Years later he counted it among the worst things he had ever done: a solemn act before God, made out of cowardice.

In March 1916, waiting for a train at Leatherhead station, he bought a cheap book from the bookstall: Phantastes, a fairy-tale romance by George MacDonald, a Scottish minister turned writer. He read it that night and was overwhelmed. He had no idea MacDonald was a Christian, and the book didn't argue him into anything. But he felt that a new kind of goodness had touched his old longing, as if it had been washed clean. He later said, in effect, that the book had begun to work on his imagination, and that the rest of him took much longer to follow. It took fifteen years. MacDonald became the writer Lewis loved above all others, and he called him his master.

Proverbs says iron sharpens iron. Here an old atheist sharpened a young one, and the edge he put on Jack's mind would one day be used to defend everything Kirkpatrick rejected. God can use people who don't believe in him to get you ready. A tough teacher, a hard question, a friend who disagrees with you: none of it has to be wasted.

And notice that confirmation. Pretending to believe to keep the peace is easy, and it's common. Lewis didn't shrug it off. Being honest with God matters more than looking right in front of people.

One thing to do this week: the next time someone challenges something you say, don't get defensive. Ask yourself Kirkpatrick's two questions: what exactly do I mean, and what are my reasons? Then write down one thing you believe and your honest reasons for it.