Opening more than Wardrobe Doors
This is the first of several entries on my thoughts about the Lakelight Institute CS Lewis study tour I joined on July 5-12, 2024.
Jerry Root had shared in one of the classes last January that Lewis opens more than wardrobe doors. I thought about that as we walked through the doors that Lewis also walked through in Oxford. What doors does Lewis open?
Doors are portals that transition from one space to another. Our doorways lead to other spaces and while they are not as important as the spaces they lead to, they have agency as we move from one space to another. Of course, the door metaphor was not lost on Lewis. I can see the idea of the doors into Narnia as voluntary and ultimately leading to The Door… Aslan. Lewis used a wardrobe door (Lion Witch & Wardrobe), an attic door (Magician’s Nephew), a hallway of doors (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) , a gate (The Silver Chair), the palace door (The Horse & His Boy), a stable door (The Last Battle) and the edge of the world/door in the air (Prince Caspian) among many others. Doorways are key to our coming and going, our movement and transition from one place to another. There are multiple stories of openings, portals and doorways to new opportunities, choices to be made, the start of new adventures and seasons.
The Bible uses doorways to point to deeper spiritual realities. God wanted his people to write on their doorframes, their gates and their hands and heads (Deut. 11:18-21). Doorways can be more than a simple threshold from one room to the next; they can change things permanently or forever as we step through them. Jesus said He is the gate or the door in John 10 and as such is the only way into the Kingdom and communion with God. And again, He stands at the door and knocks (Rev. 3:20).
Some of the other doors that perhaps Lewis opens or at least unlocks…
The Door of Generosity
Lewis, while worried most of his life about money, gave most of it away generously. He cared for the cantankerous and difficult Mrs. Moore, due to a pact made with his wartime comrade Paddy Moore in WW1, and her daughter Maureen as well as Joy’s two sons David and Douglas. Even when David chose to chase his Jewish roots, Lewis gave whatever was needed to set up a kosher home for the mentally unstable boy.
The Closed Door
While at the Kilns I saw the door that separated Lewis’ room from Mrs. Moore’s rooms. He locked it and lost the key and built an outside staircase to be able to enter his own rooms. The Bible does talk about shutting doors and I am reminded that God shut the door to the ark. Isaiah gives the Messiah the authority to exclusively open and close doors (Is. 22:22). Jesus tells us to close the door when we pray, and He told parables about closed doors. Some doors are closed because we choose not to open them. I think of Diggory’s Uncle Andrew who is called by Aslan and given the chance to refocus is life toward righteousness but he does not respond and can only hear roaring and not the song; he misses the beauty and life on the other side of the door.
The Door of Faith
Lewis the apologist understood that there is a door to salvation and that we have opportunity and a choice to open or close the doors of our lives to God. For me, Lewis creatively unlocks the door to the room where man’s joy and God’s glory live together. He clearly showed what a life on the right side of the door looks like.
The Door to the Word
Even though Lewis didn’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture he understood doctrine was a necessary roadmap to our true destination in becoming mere christians. He valued the Word, both written and the One who sang everything into existence. He gave the fireside chats at the BBC to inform regular people about the depths of God’s transcendence and His imminence, since he felt the clergy was not doing so. Though not a pastor or a theologian, Lewis spent his life defending and expanding the joyful truth of Jesus in creative ways so mere christians could understand it.
The Door to Imagination
I am not sure who said that some stories are true that never happened. If a story has life-changing impact, whether or not it actually happened, its truth changes everything and that makes it true and real by that perspective. Lewis found God’s presence all around, crowding into our lives both in obvious ways and incognito and he creatively created realms and stories to help us grasp the real story and God’s own wild imagination.
The Door to the Mind
Lewis was a professor of English Literature from 1924 to 1963, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. He was a scholar, a writer of science fiction, children’s books, poetry, essays, and apologetics. In these spheres, he chose his focus and he called it “mere Christianity.” The blessings of his work have been vast and continue to inform me and open the doors to deeper knowledge and wisdom.
The Door of Friendship
The Inklings, the vow to Paddy Moore and the lifelong companionship with his brother Warnie are indications of a value on relationship to which Lewis held.. He was fiercely loyal and kind. In The 4 Loves Lewis declares that friendship is unnecessary for survival, like art and philosophy, but that it gives value to survival. He considered friendship to be the rarest and least jealous of the loves and he profoundly lived that out. His friendship with my other favorite author makes me so glad.
The Door of Grace
When someone writes with confidence about things they haven’t experienced, it is easy to detect and difficult to keep interest. It comes across as arrogance. But when someone writes questioningly about something they’ve known firsthand, it is easy to lean in and difficult to ignore. Experience generates questions that cut through our assumptions about how a thing is supposed to work. Lewis’ experience with grace is evident in his writing. One story we were told at the Kilns was that Lewis spoke at a comparative religions class and shared that what makes Christianity unique is grace. The truth that grace distinguishes the gospel from other faiths. God’s free gift of salvation, based on Jesus’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, stands out as unparalleled in the world of religions and the logic of Lewis concurs with the truth that it is all about what what he did
But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christlife inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it. – CS Lewis
There are more doors that I am walking through but they come early tomorrow in Cambridge so I will sign off now as I hear the bells of St. Paul.