I robbed C.S. Lewis

I robbed C.S. Lewis.

Every story starts somewhere.

I’m serious.

He never learned of my crime. It happened long after he had passed away.

But it left me wrestling with a troubling question:

Who am I, if I am willing to rob a dead man?

I can see some confusion beginning to show on your face.

I guess I should explain myself. After all, I do not deny the allegations:

It was January 20th of this year. Evening.

Driving sleet pounded the roof. I sat at a table, plotting. No … not plotting, ruminating.

Sticky notes crowded the whiteboard in front of me.

There had to be a solution!

Why could I not figure this out?

A quick sip of piping-hot tea.

I stood up and leaned on the table. The old pine boards groaned.

That’s it!

I threw open my laptop and started hammering away at the keyboard.

Everything is complex. There is no such thing as ‘simple’. Even a table, a structure that appears so simple, is riddled with complexity.

The heist was underway.

But wait, there’s more!

In my mind, I heard a phrase repeated so often I could not forget it: “The Gospel message is really quite simple.”

Back to typing:

Simple? No, there is NOTHING simple about the Messiah.

My crime was complete.

Back to the present, half a year later.

An August heat wave has replaced the sleet. A sweating Arnold Palmer with a paper straw has replaced the steaming cup of tea.

I flip through the pages of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and come across an oddly familiar line: “It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple.”

My pulse begins to rise. My eyes remain locked on the page; my tongue chases the soggy straw around the rim of the glass.

I take a quick sip and continue reading:

“… real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple, but ask…”

“Your table?!” I blurt out. “Mine too, Mr. Lewis! Mine too!”

The book stays silent.

The straw in my Arnold Palmer slumps to the bottom of the glass like a wet noodle.

I stare at it.

A hot drink on a cold day.

The straw begins to weaken.

Perhaps a good lawyer could defend my actions. Would the late, great Lewis really have had a cheap pine table? He strikes me as more of a man with a taste for solid oak.

I would, of course, hope this argument holds up in court, but the truth of the matter is that this was not my first time reading Mere Christianity. I had first cracked its spine in the spring of ’23.

I had read about C.S. Lewis’ complex table and his thoughts on the futility of asking for a simple religion. I read them, filed them away, and apparently forgot them.

And now I sit here at a solid oak table, with profound thoughts of a complex reality.

And I can’t remember if my table has always been oak.

And the same troubling question returns:

Who am I, if I am willing to rob a dead man?

…

Who am I?

***

Thank you for reading Chisel&Feather!

Meeting my nephews, not killing ladybugs, and American muscle: Click here to read more personal thoughts by Coren.

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