The Most Reluctant Convert

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” — Psalm 139:7 (KJV)

In May 1926, at a faculty meeting, Lewis met a new professor named J. R. R. Tolkien. His first impression wasn't warm. But Tolkien loved the same northern myths Lewis had loved since boyhood, and soon the two were sitting up late in Lewis's rooms talking about gods and heroes. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He didn't argue people into faith. He simply took both Christianity and myth completely seriously, and couldn't see why they should be kept apart.

Other friends unsettled him too. Owen Barfield argued with him for years and taught him to question the idea that whatever is newer must be truer. Nevill Coghill astonished him by being the cleverest man in the room and a Christian. One after another, the most interesting people Lewis met seemed to be believers. He noticed, and it bothered him.

Lewis later described his conversion not as a search but as a hunt, with himself as the prey. His defences fell one by one. He began the 1920s believing that nothing existed but matter. But he came to see that if our thoughts are only the side effects of atoms moving, there is no reason to trust them, including the thought that only matter exists. So he retreated to believing in a vague Absolute Mind behind the universe, one that made no demands and couldn't be prayed to. That was comfortable. Then his reading kept betraying him. The writers he loved most, like the poet George Herbert, were Christians, and Chesterton's The Everlasting Man made Christian history make sense. And one evening in 1926 one of the toughest atheists he knew remarked that the historical evidence for the Gospels was surprisingly good. Lewis was shaken. If even this man couldn't keep the door shut, where could he hide?

In the summer of 1929 Albert fell ill with cancer. Jack went home and sat with him for weeks, and the long hours together softened some of the old bitterness. When the doctors saw no immediate danger, he went back to Oxford. Within days a telegram called him home. He arrived too late. Albert died on 25 September 1929. Jack was crushed by grief and guilt: ten years of deceiving his father and mocking him behind his back, and now nothing could be put right.

Then, alone in his college room one night, he stopped resisting. He knelt and prayed, admitting that God was God. He called himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” He dated this to the summer of 1929. But the biographer Alister McGrath read his letters in order and found no sign of a change in 1929 and clear signs of one in 1930. Most scholars now think Lewis misremembered and that it happened in 1930, after his father's death, though some still defend his date. If they are right, a son who had wronged his earthly father and could no longer make amends found himself on his knees before another Father.

Be clear about what this was. He now believed in God. He did not yet believe in Christ. He started going to church and to college chapel, because he thought that if you believe in God you should show it. He didn't enjoy it, and he disliked hymns. He went anyway, obeying before he fully believed.

Psalm 139 asks where you could go to get away from God, and answers: nowhere. Lewis tried every hiding place a brilliant mind could find, and God was already there in each one. If you feel God closing in on you, and part of you would rather he didn't, that isn't a bad sign. Some of the best stories start with a reluctant yes.

One thing to do this week: read Psalm 139 slowly. Underline every place where the writer says God is already there. Then honestly finish this sentence: “The place I've been trying to hide from God is ...”