The next point brought up in Surprised by Joy deals with paganism and myth. My friend Rachel ironically prefigured this whole question in the post she wrote today for the other blog I contribute to, While We’re Paused. This issue was the first one that Lewis says gave rise to specific, conscious doubts about his faith: If all other religions were simply rot, why should he believe Christianity to be any different?
Jack noted that in all of his classes and studies at Cherbourg, he was being presented with a slew of religious ideas from all sorts of places and times. Virgil was first among these in providing a “mass of religious ideas.” All of this was presented to him as universal rubbish–all except, conveniently, the particular belief system prevalent in England at the time. Jack wondered, and rightly so, what made Christianity so different that it shouldn’t be held to be in the same crowd as all the others? His teachers never gave him any answer to that question. Indeed, they likely didn’t know themselves. In Lewis’s words:
No one ever attempted to show in what sense Christianity fulfilled Paganism or Paganism prefigured Christianity. The accepted position seemed to be that religions were normally a mere farrago of nonsense, though our own, by a happy fortunate exception, was exactly true. […] But on what grounds could I believe this exception? It obviously was in some general sense the same kind of thing as all the rest. Why was it so differently treated? Need I, at any rate, continue to treat it differently? I was very anxious not to. (62-63)
From the perspective of history and philosopy, there are a couple of points that strike me:
First, I’ve noticed, and I teach my classes, that there is always a time lag that is evident between the time a new idea (or ideas) are thought up and the moment when people really, truly begin to believe it and act on it. Until practice catches up to theory (and indeed for quite a while afterward), people tend to act only on certain parts of an idea, while ignoring others. Put simply, they take the idea only so far as “makes sense” based on their current ideas and previous sense of morality rather than take it to its logical conclusion. We often see a few decades pass before people really begin to do what a philosophy demands. We must allow time for a new generation to be raised up with fewer of the old inhibitions intact.
Naturalism and evolution is a good example. Darwinism was in existence for decades before anyone actually tried to manage the human herd. It was a gradual process of younger people continually asking “Why not?” again and again and realizing that, if naturalistic Darwinism was correct, there was no sufficient answer that could be given. Slowly, that led us first to the eugenics movements and eventually to the Nazi purges. Each step towards the conclusion would have given pause to the ones that went before–and the ends would seem unconscionable to those at the beginning–but to someone “forward thinking” enough, it just made sense.
I think what we see in Jack’s Cherbourg is a society in the middle of such a transition. Jack is observing a period of English history were, in fact, many people have ceased to believe in Christianity in any real sense–they just haven’t all realized it yet. It is left to the younger generation (Jack, in this case) to take the older one at their word and therefore to carry their ideas to their logical conclusion.*
Second, something else that might be coming into play is the tendency for us to teach what we are taught, regardless of whether or not it is consistent with our larger belief system in any meaningful way. I know I’ve seen multiple professors who I know believe strongly in standards of right and wrong, in the truths of Christianity, stand up in class and teach philosophies that they themselves would not espouse if they really took the time to think about them. Unfortunately, they’ve compartmentalized their lives to the point that they cannot understand how one part of their life might affect the other. They teach the history that was taught to them (either by professors in person or in books) without really critiquing it from even their own perspective let alone a consistently Biblical worldview. Perhaps some of Lewis’s teachers were in similar straights. Perhaps not. Without a closer look at them (diaries, lectures, etc.) it remains speculation.
Jack’s situation also demonstrates why my wife and I choose to homeschool our daughter. Teachers exercise a tremendous amount of influence over children, and when a system clearly inculcates the idea that religion (particularly Christianity) is rot on virtually every level, it is often only by happy accident that someone emerges from it not only with their faith intact, but educated in the process. It is certainly true that few, if any, come out as educated Christians. I see no reason why we can’t have both–at least we’ll try.
_____________________________________________________
*From my own observations, this is an analogous period to American education in the 1970s, 80s, and perhaps a bit of the 90s. America is always behind the curve when compared to Europe–and in this case it isn’t a bad thing. I simply wish were weren’t trying so hard to catch up! I see no reason to rush the handbasket on its way to Hell.
Mere Lewis 