Iconic British writer and theologian Clive Staples Lewis, aka C.S. Lewis, is best known for his literary works of fiction, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” which have been adapted for radio, television, stage and cinema. However, he is also greatly revered in the academic world, having taught at Oxford and Cambridge.
For Christians and other faith-filled people, though, he is highly regarded as being one of the most influential Christian thinkers and writers on record, particularly for his non-fiction masterpieces “Mere Christianity” and “The Problem of Pain.”
Remarkably, in his early days, and for a sizable segment of his adult life, he was a committed atheist, a belittler of religion in general, and a denigrator of Christianity in particular.
His personal story of how he went from atheist to skeptic to believer is so compelling that a new film, “The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis,” has made its debut, and the movie has been so successful that both the number of screens and showings have been expanded to meet the demand.
The new C.S. Lewis movie is produced by the Fellowship for Performing Arts and distributed by Trafalgar Releasing, a specialist in event-oriented films. In what was originally scheduled to be a one-night only showing, the biopic brought in $2,863 per-screen, which quickly prompted the expansion.
The film is based upon the one-person play “C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert,” which stars Max McLean. The brilliant stage presence has been honing his portrayal of Lewis's persona for years with performances in 64 cities, on numerous college campuses, and in an extended run in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
McLean is the lead character and narrator of the movie version of Lewis’s story, a film project in which the skillfully written screen adaptation penned by McLean transforms the play into a fully cast cinematic production.
The real life Lewis was no doubt a strong-willed individual. When he was 4-years-old, his dog Jacksie was hit by a car and killed. In his grief, Lewis took his dog's name as his own and refused to answer to any other name, including his given one, Clive.
The Jacksie nickname eventually contracted to Jack, and it stuck with Lewis for the rest of his life.
After the untimely loss of his mother at the age of 9, he had to endure a strained relationship with his father. Lewis went on to attend a prep school during adolescence, where he fell away from his faith, became an atheist, and developed a fascination with European mythology and, most unfortunately, the occult.
At the impressionable age of 19, he, like many of his peers, would find himself thrust into the brutal trenches of World War I. He served in France, where atheism would sadly be firmly planted in his susceptible mind.
He himself was wounded during the war, and two of his colleagues were killed by a British shell that fell short of its target.
As he later wrote, and as his character gives testimony to in the film, he came to believe that there was either “no god behind the universe, a god who is indifferent to good and evil, or worse, an evil god.”
He nevertheless continued to be haunted by deficiencies within the philosophical reasoning of pure materialism since, within this ideological framework, free will, rational thought and/or intelligibility must be merely haphazard processes of “random atoms bouncing together in a skull.”
He also vividly recalled a book that he had read at age 16, penned by the Scottish author, poet and Christian minister George MacDonald. MacDonald's “Phantastes” is a work that Lewis mystically characterized as having “baptized my imagination.”
He developed a providential friendship with fellow Oxford faculty member and novelist J.R.R. Tolkien of “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” fame. They were both part of the informal Oxford literary group known as the “Inklings.”
Inklings founder, philosopher, author, poet and critic Owen Barfield also had a profound influence on Lewis, so much so that Lewis dedicated his book, “Allegory of Love,” to his friend. He also dedicated his first “Narnia” chronicle to Barfield's adopted daughter Lucy, and additionally dedicated “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” to Barfield's son Geoffrey.
It was Barfield, Tolkien and fellow Inkling Hugo Dyson who slowly nudged Lewis toward a theistic belief system, despite Lewis’s “kicking, struggling ... darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.”
After a fateful late night walk and conversation with Tolkien and Dyson, Lewis finally surrendered, humbling himself before the Creator.
As Lewis wrote in his book “Surprised by Joy,” “That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
Three years later Lewis moved beyond mere theism, rediscovered the Christianity of his childhood, and completely committed himself to Christ. This took place while he and his brother were on their way to the zoo, Lewis seated in the sidecar of his brother's motorbike.
“When we set out I did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did.” Lewis says in the play and the film.
The extraordinary and inspiring story of this powerful pilgrimage to God is tenderly told in “The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis.”
Tickets to the big-screen release are available at cslewismovie.com, and the play can be streamed on the Internet.
Well worth the investment of mind, heart, and soul.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A., in media psychology, is a New York Times best-selling author, media analyst, and law professor. Visit Newsmax TV Hollywood. Read James Hirsen's Reports — More Here.
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