“What, in conclusion, of joy? For that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian. I cannot, indeed, complain, like Wordsworth, that the visionary gleam has passed away. I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the old stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. 

But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, ” Look! ” The whole party gathers round and stares. 

But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ” We would be at Jerusalem.”

CS Lewis, surprised by joy

When he made that decision, he began to feel the presence of Him whom he had desperately wanted not to meet. Finally, Lewis surrendered. “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity term . . . 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.”

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (p. 85). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

If he had all the answers, why did the question of God’s existence continue to preoccupy him? Perhaps Lewis would say we can never explain away God. Nor can we find rest until that deep-seated desire (experienced by both Freud and Lewis) is satisfied.

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (p. 51). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.


Lewis said that when he was an atheist, his life also was full of contradictions. He writes: “I was at this time living, like so many Atheists . . . in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was also equally angry with Him for creating a world . . . why should creatures have the burden of existence forced on them without their consent?” Even as an atheist, Lewis realized his ambivalence toward God—a part of him wanting desperately that God not exist, another part strongly desiring His existence.

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (pp. 51-52). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

he lists the personal experiences that led to his pessimism and that, in turn, formed the basis of his atheism: “The early loss of my mother, great unhappiness at school, and the shadow of the last war and presently the experience of it, had given me a very pessimistic view of existence. My atheism was based on it: and it still seems to me that far the strongest card in our enemies’ hand is the actual course of the world: and that, quite apart from particular evils like wars and revolutions. The inherent ‘vanity’ of the ‘creature,’ the fact that life preys on life, that all beauty and happiness is produced only to be destroyed—this was what stuck in my gullet.”

Nicholi, Armand (2002-04-03). The Question of God (p. 113). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Another metaphor for knowing the truth about God when he writes that he believes in God, "as I believe the sun has rise, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." Imagine trying to look directly as the sun in order to learn about it. You can't do it. A far better way to learn about the existence, power and quality of the sun is to look at the world it shows you, to recognize how it sustains everything you see and enables you to see it 


- The Reason for God, locations 1977-76

If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. we might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play.