Thus the crisis of faith
in postwar Europe was multilayered. There was an erosion of what might be called
civilizational
confidence, a widespread disillusionment
with the West and its supposed cultural achievements. Liberal democracy, constitutionalism,
capitalism, progressivism—all seemed in a state of near collapse …. Since
Christianity was considered integral to Europe’s political and economic system,
the perceived failure of that system was a spiritual failure as well.
-Joseph
Loconte*
Setting
the frame for the history of Tolkien and Lewis’ friendship and the writing of
their most famous tales, Joseph Loconte points to one of the Great Illusions
leading up to the Great War: The Myth of Progress. Given the massive leaps in
technological progress, scientific discoveries, and the near unanimous
acceptance of 18th century Enlightenment thought and Darwinism, the
soul of Western civilization was anchored in the belief that progress was inevitable.
“Western civilization was marching inexorably forward, that humanity itself was
maturing, evolving, advancing—that new vistas of political, cultural, and
spiritual advancement were within reach.” (Loconte)
Of
course, to help insure this inexorable “advancement,” eugenics was all the rage
… because nothing says “Utopia” like killing off blacks, cripples, and those
whom The Powers That Be deem unfit.
“It
is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerating
offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three
generations of imbeciles are enough.” So wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme
Court Justice, upholding Virginia’s sterilization law, supported by many of the
cultural leaders of the times, including ministers. (Loconte)
When
the First War erupted, national leaders on both sides of the conflict ran
headlong into the fray, claiming the God of the Bible was on its side; that
this war-to-end-all-wars was a Holy War. In Britain, “Clergymen dressed Jesus
in khaki and had him firing machine guns.” (Loconte) When the war ended, more
than nine million soldiers lay dead and roughly thirty-seven million wounded. The
aftermath was a world awash in despair, disillusionment, and the rejection of
religion.
With
the Myth of Progress being exposed as an illusion, hundreds of novels were
published in the 20s and 30s punctuating the futility of life, depicting
existential angst as the new norm, and belief in God as “an attempt to protect
against suffering, ‘a delusional remodeling of reality.’” (Freud, cited by Loconte)
Pacifism
replaced patriotism, and the ancient virtues were scorned.
“For
the intellectual class as well as the ordinary man on the street, the Great War
had defamed the values of the Old World, along with the religious doctrines
that helped to underwrite them. Moral advancement, even the idea of morality itself,
seemed an illusion.” (Loconte)
So,
how is it that given the depth of despair, the wholesale rejection of the
values upon which Western civilization had been built, and the widespread jettisoning
of religion and belief in (any) “God,” that the books of JRR Tolkien (A Hobbit)
and CS Lewis (A Wardrobe) not only made it past editors, but went on to garner
both men worldwide acclaim? How is it that stories extolling the ancient
virtues of goodness, beauty, and faith, as well as advocating valor in battles
against evil, captured the imagination of those who were convinced that despair,
amorality, and hedonism, were the only honest responses to what the world had
just suffered during the Great War?
The Power of Stories
“It
seems that Tolkien, even in the throes of combat, consciously sought to
retrieve a martial tradition that would become a casualty alongside all the
other casualties of the First War. Already he was constructing a mythology (The Silmarillion) about England meant to
recall its long struggle for noble purposes. ‘I was from early days grieved by
the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up
with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought,’ he once
explained. Thus he set out ‘to restore to the English an epic tradition and
present them with a mythology of their own.’” (Loconte)
For
Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, myths — even Pagan ones — originated with God
and were filled with splinters of true light, revealing, however shadowed,
eternal realities. “They are his means of communicating at least a portion of
his truth to the world.” (Loconte) It would be years later that his best
friend, CSL, would begin to accept his view of myths, and a bit longer until he
embraced the True Myth of Christianity.
Years
after the war, Tolkien, while grading papers as an Oxford Don, scrawled on a
blank piece of paper, “In a hole in the ground there lives a Hobbit.”
Anyone
familiar with CS Lewis is aware of George MacDonald’s (1824-1905) influence on
his life and writings. While reading GM’s Phantasies,
Lewis wrote that his imagination had been “converted” and “baptized.” While not
yet a Christian, a new way of looking at and interpreting the world had begun.
Later, after being wounded in battle and discharged, CSL was riding a train home
to London and looking at the beautiful countryside: what he saw was that, “(T)here
is Something right outside time & place…and that Beauty is the call of the
spirit to the spirit in us.” (Loconte) While not yet a Christian, he now
accepted that there was “Something” behind the beauty of the world. He was
beginning to catch “A Glimpse of Narnia.” (Loconte)
George
MacDonald wrote, “The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing
his conscience, is – not to give him things to think about, but to wake things
up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.” Both Tolkien
and Lewis would go on to create epic stories so as to “wake up” truths that,
however vehemently denied, were, nevertheless, still laying deep in the souls
of their readers.
*
“A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis
Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918,”
Nelson Books, 2015
Copyright, Monte E Wilson,
2015
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