Waiting, Not Camping Out
For many years before he became a branch manager of a paint and glass company, my father was a traveling salesman, and a good one. His byword, common among salesmen, was, “You have to make the sale.”
You can exchange small talk with your customers all you want, ask about their families, discuss the weather and the economy, talk about sports, but eventually you have to get them to buy. And it’s similar for customers. They have to decide whether to take the plunge and buy the product.
Somewhere along the road in our search for God, we have to decide for or against him/her, though the choice might be incremental. Do I believe? Is there a place for God in my life? Am I committed to God? And if I am committed, what does that mean?
In his famous book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the analogy of a hallway off of which are several doors leading to various rooms, representing belief, disbelief, and religion as a way of expressing that faith.
Not a Place to Live In
“The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. …It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at.
“I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. …But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping.”
British novelist, poet and university professor, Lewis died in 1963. He is most famous today for his fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, now a film series. He developed Mere Christianity as a series of radio broadcasts in Britain during World War II.
A baptized Christian, he became an atheist at age 15, later describing it as being “angry at God for not existing.” He returned to Christianity at age 33.
Vigorously Resisted Conversion
“Lewis vigorously resisted conversion,” according to Wikipedia, “noting that he was brought into Christianity – in his words – like a prodigal, ‘kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.’”
Lewis’ broadcasts apparently had a profound effect on many of his British countrymen. Many were bewildered and despairing of human nature after witnessing the horrors of World War II. They were open to hearing about God. Seminaries and monasteries filled after the war, it is said.
“The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless,” wrote a member of the British military. “We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that.”
Living a half century later, we may not have gone through what the wartime people endured, but the deepest realities haven’t changed.
“All of our notions of modernity and progress and all our advances in technological expertise have not brought an end to war,” writes Kathleen Norris, poet and essayist, in her forward to Mere Christianity. “Our declaring the notion of sin to be obsolete has not diminished human suffering. And the easy answers: blaming technology, or for that matter, the world’s religions, have not solved the problem.
Evil Our Only Alternative?
“The problem, C.S. Lewis insists, is us. And the crooked and perverse generation of which the psalmists and prophets spoke many thousands of years ago is our own, whenever we submit to systemic and individual evils as if doing so were our only alternative.
“Many of us hold out a hope that at some point, God will reveal himself/herself, if only in some small way,” she continues. “Or, we think we will suddenly gain some new insight, some intellectual breakthrough that will compel us to believe.”
That reminds me of what Tomas Halik, the Czech theologian I’ve often quoted in these blogs, has to say about faith: “If the signs of God’s presence lay within easy reach on the surface of the world, as some religious zealots like to think, there would be no need for real faith.”
People searching for God should not expect to camp out in the “hallway,” as Lewis describes the endless procrastination about faith some of us exhibit. Eventually, we have to decide, even if we have to accept that our faith is “as small as a mustard seed.”
