C.S. Lewis’s Family Values
By Duncan Rize

Clive Staple Lewis had a relatively happy childhood spending most of his days with his brother, Warnie, where storytelling and a love of art were family pursuits. He was also very close to his mother, so much so that her death left young Lewis devastated at age 10.

Lewis was raised in a Protestant family where his strong values in the belief of God and work were rooted. This was shattered after the death of his mother. He suddenly felt that God either did not exist or was harsh and without compassion.

After his mother’s death, his father, Albert Lewis, started to focus more on Home Rule debate as well as politics, and C. S. Lewis was sent to a boys boarding school in England. It was during his school days that he began to assert himself, standing up against accepted rules and regulations. His beliefs began to take a different direction, and Lewis found himself turning his back on religion – staunchly declaring that God was a mere myth. This pronouncement was later seen to be based from his past grievances, mainly the sorrow he felt in believing that God did not look after his mother. As a young man, Lewis was not without his issues, compounded with the fact that he was also angry with his father for sending him away to school.

The religious values he grew up with had indeed started to slip away during these difficult early years. Later on, Lewis changed his faith from Christianity to Idealism with no absolute idea of a personal god.

This all changed when Lewis met Nevill Coghill. Coghill introduced Lewis to his unique perspective on Christianity, which profoundly changed the way Lewis viewed life. Charged with a heightened curiosity on the subject, Lewis embarked on a theological study, and he began to read the works of Christian authors. His impassioned search for God lead him to become a Pantheist, whose beliefs declare that there is an impersonal God in everything.

In 1929 he became a theist. Theism is the belief in one or more gods and goddesses. After two years, he converted back to being a Christian and this was the start of his great writings.

Although he eventually converted back to his original Christian beliefs and values, Lewis always believed that human emotions were something uncomfortable, embarrassing and to be avoided. A belief also thought to have been rooted with the death of his mother, and the enormous pain he suffered as a child. Life took a turn for the worse for Lewis, when his wife died of cancer at a young age, causing him unbearable suffering again. Losing Joy, who was the love of his life, confirmed Lewis’s resolute on emotions.

However, instead of turning his back to God once more, Lewis dealt with his grief by writing a moving argument with God about death in his book entitled A Grief Observed and eventually made his peace with God.

One can see Lewis’s core values by looking at his work as most of these brilliant and often touching writings address ethical and Christian themes, some, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and other Chronicles of Narnia, in the context of imaginative fiction.






Duncan Rize loves the writings of C.S. Lewis and works with the marketing group at www.LearningByGrace.org. Learning by Grace manages of a number of internationally known online K-12 academies including www.TheGraceAcademy.org, www.TheJubileeAcademy.org, www.TheMorningStarAcademy.org and www.TheNarniaAcademy.org . This article is © 2005 ELRN, Inc. and may be quoted in whole or part as long as the author (Duncan Rize) and source (www.TheNarniaAcademy.org) are credited.