I've always thought it interesting that C.S. Lewis is so often quoted by religious leaders, many of them LDS, some of whom regard him as almost a mystical figure.
The Oxford professor has been called the 20th century's foremost Christian apologist, a writer who explored with intense personal conviction the dilemma of religious faith.He once said, "I wrote the books I should have liked to read."
To lovers of fantasy and science fiction, he is best remembered for "The Chronicles of Narnia," a series of beautiful, magical novels that have enchanted millions of children.
But he has been equally revered for such fascinating studies as "Mere Christianity" and "The Screwtape Letters."
I've been reading A.N. Wilson's brilliant biography of Lewis (1990), who is pictured as not only a multifaceted writer, but an extremely diverse human being - an aggressive debater, a heavy drinker and smoker, a man who had baffling relationships with women, a deeply troubled but marvelously gifted man.
Those who think of him as an articulate defender of Christian orthodoxy are often surprised to learn that he was not converted from atheism to Christianity until he was 30 years old.
In the summer of 1929 he had a wordless, mystical experience while riding a bus. He felt encased in a shell that he could remove when his "moment of illumination" came.
It was as if he were "a snowman at last beginning to melt."
A few weeks later he declared that "God was God," and knelt and prayed, calling himself "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." His experience was not an actual conversion to Christianity.
That only happened gradually.
It wasn't until the late summer of 1931 that he passed from a position of "rational theism" into a full acceptance of Christianity.
Even then he was always bothered by the assertion that Christ came in the flesh to the earth, and he always found Christian literalism quite unacceptable.
He continually bounced back and forth between rationality and faith.
Once he said, "I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God's existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old skeptical habits, and the spirit of the age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address."
In "Surprised by Joy," Lewis told of spending a long night with fellow writers J.R.R. Tolkien and Henry Victor Dyson, then a day at the zoo with his brother, Warnie, and others.
In spite of frayed tempers caused by the tires of the car being pumped up so hard they could only travel 15 miles per hour, Lewis had a great time.
He said, "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did."
Lewis' full conversion to Christianity inspired a literary flow for which he is still well known.
Even so, he was often criticized by other Christian scholars for such things as "undervaluing the atonement" and "failing to do justice to the Christian doctrine of Justification by Faith."
In short, the intellectual level of his faith was always questioned. Unfailingly human, he never had a natural affection for ritual, and went to church out of "obedience."
Those who knew him well remembered his distaste for hymns - he often left during the singing of the last one.
Dennis Lythgoe's column is published on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.