The Narian, ch 2

Chapter Two deals with the succession of boarding (public) schools the Lewis boys attended; we learn that Warnie was a "blood," a member of the often vicious ruling class of boys who were merciless in their treatment of lesser beings like Jack (though by the time Jack came to Malvern, Warnie had moved on to another school). In this hierarchy, the boys in power could demand that the others did whatever they were told; they became servants and whipping boys. This "fagging" left a lasting negative impression on Jack and other victims of schoolboy brutality. Jacobs notes that, as a result of the fagging system, George Orwell was "energized . . . politically" and adopted a sort of socialism, while Lewis turned inward and withdrew "from the political realm" (34). He also points out that this system led to a desire in some boys to become part of the "Inner Ring," which Lewis portrays so well in Mark Studdock in That Hideous Strength (35).

Jacobs recounts Lewis's experience at Wynyard College school during his pre-teen years; here "real Christian faith became part of his life for the first time" (37). But this faith, which he admired because he saw the sincerity of those who taught it, was experienced by him as a strenuous faith of works. During this time, too, he was influenced by two views of religion that undermined his faith in the truth of Christianity. First, Jacobs tells us, as Lewis read the Classics he began to wonder if Christianity might not be just as false as the pagan religions, and then he meet a woman, Miss Cowie, who "today would be called a proponent of New Age spirituality" (38). Lewis wrote: "She was . . . floundering in the mazes of Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism, the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition" (38). In these concepts he found an expanding idea of spirituality, which made no rigorous demands on him; Jacobs says, "Freed from the burdens of prayer, by the time he left Malvern Jack had ceased to be a Christian" (40).

The chapter ends with a discussion of Lewis's intense search for "Joy," which drove him throughout his later teen years to flee from the unrewarding rigors of traditional Christianity and to search for "a world where delight was still possible" (42).

This all brings two things to mind: First, it frustrates me no end when Christianity is lived in this stultifying, barren way, and many Christians do live like this, beating themselves up all the time for their fallen nature and sinful behavior; that made me think of the film, Martin Luther, where Luther is constantly living in fear of God and bemoaning his sins--his confessor tells him that he's not so wicked as he tries to make out and that he's never confessed anything that was even interesting! The priest then tells Luther to look to Christ, to bind himself to Christ, and find mercy. It often seems to me that Christians who live this life of constant self deprecation are in fact egocentric and not looking to Christ; He is to be the focus of the Christian's life, not ourselves, not our sin, not our failings. This, to me, is liberating.

And Second, I find it interesting that later in life two of Lewis's closest friends would be Owen Barfield, a theosophist, and Charles Williams, who for a time was a member of the Golden Dawn and very interested in occult (secret) organizations and practices. Both of these men remained orthodox in faith but their Christianity allowed for the very sort of expansion the young Jack was seeking, yet he never followed that path with them.