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'The Full Treatment': C. S. Lewis on Repentance, the Process Of The Dulia et Latria Journal, Vol. 3 (2010) 21 The “Full Treatment”: C. S. Lewis on Repentance, the Process of Becoming a “New-Made Man” By Chris Garrett Oklahoma City University (documentation in author’s style) The ultimate spiritual goal of most Christians is to go to heaven and live with God after death. According the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, God desires to prepare us for eternal life by making us into new creatures. Having set the standard of absolute perfection before us and knowing that humanity falls short of that standard, God has prepared a way for man to become perfected. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ and the process of repentance man can be forgiven of sins and become glorified, immortal creatures. This essay explores and examines Lewis’s ideas on this core Christian principle of repentance. Lewis defines repentance as a gradual process of transformation that will not be completed during mortality (Mere Christianity 159-161). It is a process of surrender, in essence killing a part of yourself (44-45). By that Lewis is referring to his belief that man is an amphibian—“half animal and half spirit” (Screwtape Letters 36). When man surrenders to God, he attempts to forsake the natural and carnal man (the animal part) in favor of following his spiritual self. 22 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance” An important aspect of repentance is realizing you are on the wrong track and then getting back on the right road (Mere Christianity 44). Lewis describes repentance in terms of progress: We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. (22) This recognition of sin is essential, says Lewis. Without a “recovery of the old sense of sin” and its accompanying feelings of shame and guilt a man cannot perceive his “badness” (Problem of Pain 51-52). Men need altering because “we have used our free will to become very bad” (49). According to Lewis, God regards the “nasty nature” of man as a “deplorable thing” (Mere Christianity 165). God loves man in spite of his weaknesses (A Grief Observed 84). But God is not content with man’s present condition and desires man to change: To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to make us lovable. (Problem of Pain 43) How is this transformation to occur? From Lewis’s viewpoint the beginning The Dulia et Latria Journal, Vol. 3 (2010) 23 of the repentance process is “only the little germ of desire for God” (Great Divorce 91). That desire opens the door for God to begin His work. “Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it,” declares Lewis (Mere Christianity 78). The cure has been provided by a loving God: “Christ was killed for us, His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity” (44). Furthermore, to assist man with the process of repentance, God gave him a conscience, “the sense of right and wrong” (Mere Christianity 39). When a person attempts to repent and change, he follows God’s promptings which urge him to do right and feels uncomfortable when he does wrong (20). The person who is pursuing the right direction will experience not only peace but knowledge. “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him” (73). Repentance is made possible only through Jesus Christ. According to Lewis, a good life without Christ is unthinkable. Morality can only take us so far. The atonement of Christ is what gives us “wings”: Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. That ropes and axes are done away and the rest is a matter of flying. (“Man or Rabbit?” 112- 113) Although we are required to strive for “absolute perfection,” we fall short of 24 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance” that standard (Mere Christianity 158). Because of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and intercession, sinful man can be forgiven of his sins. There is a man in Lewis’s The Great Divorce who claims he wants to get what he deserves, but he is told that he does not understand that what he actually deserves is not what he should want. An angel tells the man that he (and all of humanity) needs to ask for Christ’s “Bleeding Charity.” “Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought” (Great Divorce 34). Thus, according to Lewis, forgiveness is possible simply by asking for it, and that repentance is possible even after death. Those characters visiting the outskirts of heaven during their bus trip from hell in The Great Divorce have died and are given the opportunity to change their minds and their eternal destinations. A heavenly existence is presented to them as an option. But it is ultimately their decision as to whether or not to accept it (42). Lewis exhorts readers to choose today to repent and be on “the right side” (Mere Christianity 51). The present choices to be made have eternal consequences. Our choices determine who we are and where are going: Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge The Dulia et Latria Journal, Vol. 3 (2010) 25 and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other. (72) According to Lewis, what we are matters more than what we do. God is concerned about the type of person we are becoming because we are eternal creatures. To illustrate this idea Lewis explains: “Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years” (Mere Christianity 59). Thus improvement and heading in the “right direction” is critical (73). The process of transformation will be rigorous, demanding, and painful. There are two fatal dangers that Lewis warns against. The first is to be content with something less than perfection (79). The second is getting depressed and giving up: No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking up ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels are put out, and the clean clothes airing in the cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence. (Letters of C. S. Lewis 365) Lewis encourages Christian disciples to endure to the end; this process of repentance depends on the individual persisting in formative development. 26 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance” “After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again,” admonishes Lewis. “Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just the power of always trying again” (Mere Christianity 79). An important aspect of repentance is pretending to “put on” or “dress up” as Christ. As an individual puts on Christ, he gets a “good infection.” Jesus is doing things to interfere with the Christian disciple’s life, replacing the “old, natural self” with “the new kind of self He has” (Mere Christianity 149; Problem of Pain 48). The idea is that by pretending to be Christ one’s behavior will improve. “Very often the only way to get a quality,” asserts Lewis, “is to start behaving as if you had it already” (Mere Christianity 147). For Lewis this is where Christian theology becomes practical or “practice- able” (146-147). Hence, it is essential to exercise faith in God; there is work to do and part of it is internal. The work of transformation that needs to be done is achieved by both God and the individual. The balance between what God does and what man does is delicate and difficult to explain.
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