All language subtitles for The.Most.Reluctant.Convert.2021.720p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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(gentle music)

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- Hey, they're ready for you
Max.

- Oh, good.

- It is black. Extra strong.
- Thank you.

- Okay. We're on our way.

- Okay, one minute till we
shoot.

Thank you guys. Let's be ready.

- There we go.

- Final check-
- Is this my chair?

- Let's have a red light bell,
please.

(bell ringing)

- Where's my phone?

Who has my phone?

- Sound.

Camera.

- All right. How's my hair?

How's my hair?

- It's looking good. Looking
good.

- Nice and quiet, please.

Ready for a take.

Cameras are rolling.

Set.

- One take one.
- Mark it.

(slate clacks)

Quiet.

Stand by and...

Action.

- When I was an atheist,
if you had asked me,

why do you not believe in God?

I would've answered, look
at the universe we live in.

Mostly empty space, completely
dark.

Unimaginably cold.

Most scientists think it
improbable

that any planet in our
solar system sustains life

and Earth herself existed
without
life for millions of years

and may exist millions more

after life has once again left
her.

And what is life?

So arranged that creatures live
only by preying on another.

In the lower forms, this means
only death.

In the higher forms something
called consciousness

enables the living to experience
pain.

Creatures are born in pain,

live by inflicting pain
and mostly die in pain.

In the most complex of all
creatures, man,

another quality appears, reason.

And by reason we can foresee our
own pain.

This we call suffering.

We can foresee our own death

while keenly desiring to go on
living.

Reason enables humans to invent
hundreds of ingenious ways

of inflicting a great deal more
pain

than we could have done
as irrational creatures.

This power we have exploited to
the full.

History's our record of
crime, war, disease, terror,

with just enough happiness to
give us

an agonized fear of losing it.

And when lost, the poignant
misery

of remembering how good it felt.

Every now and then our
condition is improved

by what we call civilization.

But all civilizations pass away.

That our own civilization will
pass away is surely probable,

and even if it should not pass
away,

we're all doomed, the universe
is doomed.

The astronomers hold out no hope

that this planet is
permanently inhabitable.

The physicists hold out
no hope that organic life

is a permanent possibility in
any part

of the material universe.

Not only this earth, but the
whole show.

All the suns of space are to run
down.

Nature is a sinking ship.

So if you asked me to believe
all this I've just described

as the work of an
omnipotent, benevolent God,

I would have laughed and said

the evidence points in
the opposite direction.

Either there's no God behind the
universe,

a God indifferent to good and
evil,

or worse, an evil God,

Never dreamed of raising the
question

if the universe is so
bad, or even half so bad,

how on Earth did humans
ever come to attribute

it to the work of a wise and
good creator?

Oh men are fools!

But not so foolish as that,

to direct inference from black
to white,

from evil flower to virtuous
root,

from senseless work to a
workman infinitely wise.

Staggers belief.

No, I did not believe God
existed.

I was angry at God for not
existing.

Why should creatures have
the burden of existence

forced upon them without their
consent?

(soft pensive music)

I lost my mother to cancer.

Had an estranged
relationship with my father

that I regret even now.

Was in the trenches during the
Great War,

the hell where youth and
laughter go

only to see horribly smashed men

still moving about like crushed
beetles.

A mortar shell that wounded
me, killed the man next to me,

splattering shrapnel,

some of which I carry my body to
this day.

(car hoots)

(bicycle bell rings)

(church bell tolls)

When I returned to Oxford
after the war in 1919,

I read the minutes to my
college's last meeting in 1914,

nothing made me realize more
thoroughly

the absolute waste of those
years.

I was asked "Were you much
frightened in France?"

"All the time," I said,

"but I never sank so low as to
pray."

Some people have got the
impression from my books

that I was raised in a
strict and vivid puritanism.

This is untrue.

- Mr. Lewis.

- Roger, usual please.

You? Make that two.

I'll get these.

Edel will find us a table.

- [Edel] You can have this one.

There you go. All done.

- No, religious experience
did not occur in my family.

Was taught the usual things,
made to say my prayers,

in due time taken to church.

Can't remember feeling
much interest in it.

Cheers!

Father was a solicitor
in Belfast, Ireland.

He was Welsh by blood,
passionate, rhetorical,

laughed and cried a great deal.

Had almost no talent for
happiness.

Mother was of a cooler race.

She was tranquil, affectionate.

She had a talent for happiness.
Went straight for it.

As an experienced traveler

goes for the best seat on a
train.

(pensive music)

I lived in a large house
that to a small boy

seemed like a city.

I am a product of long
corridors,

empty sunlit rooms, attics
explored in solitude,

distant noises of gurgling
cisterns and pipes.

The noise of wind under the
tiles

and endless books.

Books readable and unreadable,

books suitable for a child
and books emphatically not.

Nothing was forbidden.

In the seemingly endless rainy
afternoons

I almost literally read
my way through the house.

- Jack.

You'll never guess what I found!

Quick!

- Hey wait for me!

Hey wait!

- Catch up.

- Hey Jack, now stop!
Don't disturb your father!

- Boys!

Boys!

- Boys.

- Happy days.

My brother Warnie and I
enjoyed them to the full.

Until the great loss
that befell our family.

(somber music)

One night, my father in
tears came into my room

to convey to my terrified mind

things I'd never conceived of.

My mother had cancer.

- [Father] The doctor said, we
can't-

- [C.S. Lewis] I don't
think children suffer

less than their elders,
they suffer differently.

- So we have to be strong.

- [C.S. Lewis] And as our
whole existence changed

into something alien and
menacing.

- Your mother loves you very
much.

- [C.S. Lewis] The house
became full of strange smells,

midnight noises and sinister
whispered conversations.

(Mother coughing)

- [Nurse] We need some
fresh bandages quickly.

- [C.S. Lewis] My brother Warnie
and I

lost our mother gradually
as she was slowly withdrawn

from our life into the hands of
nurses,

delirium and morphea.

- Oh Doctor. Thank goodness.

- The disease followed the usual
course,

an operation, they operated
in the patient's house

in those days, an apparent
recovery,

the return at the disease,
increasing pain, death.

(door closing)

When mother died, all settled
happiness

disappeared from our lives.

A great continent had sunk.

It was only sea and islands now.

(somber music continues)

(father sobbing)

My father never recovered.

Under the pressure he spoke
wildly, acted unjustly,

as this unfortunate
man was losing his sons

as well as his wife.

My brother Warnie and I had
already begun to lie to him.

We were two frightened urchins,

huddled for warmth in a bleak
world.

Mother's death occasioned, what
some might say at the time,

my first religious experience.

When my mother's case
was pronounced hopeless

I remembered what I had been
taught,

that prayers offered in
faith would be granted.

Accordingly, I set myself
to produce in prayer

a firm belief for her recovery.

When she died, I shifted ground.

I worked myself into belief
that there was to be a miracle.

Oh, I approached God.

Not as savior or as
judge, but as magician.

I simply wanted him to
restore the status quo.

And when he had done
what was required of him,

he would simply go away.

The prayer hadn't worked.

Oh, I was used to things not
working,

thought no more about it.

(pensive music)

Mother's death among other
things,

produced in me a deeply
ingrained pessimism.

Oh, I was by no means unhappy,

but I had definitely formed
the opinion that the universe

in the main was a rather
regrettable institution.

Father's melancholy was
a contributing factor.

A prosperous man who by our
present tax-ridden standards

would be described as incredibly
secure.

Expressed adult life as
one unremitting struggle.

Best one could hope for,
according to him,

was to avoid the workhouse.

This only by extreme exertion.

Never thought to check his
highly colored comments

against the obvious fact

that we were living very
uncomfortable lives.

Temperamental widower still
grieving the loss of his wife

must be very wise to raise
two noisy school boys

who reserve their confidence
only for each other.

The same scene, reenacted time
after time.

- Well?

- [C.S. Lewis] When he opened
his mouth to reprove us

he no doubt intended a
short well-chosen appeal

to our common sense.

- Have you nothing to say in
your defense?

- But alas, he had been
a public prosecutor,

long before he had become a
father.

Words came to him and
intoxicated him as they came.

- Never in all my born days

have I come across such
recalcitrant behavior.

Disobedience.

Deliberate disobedience and
willfulness,

such as would dismay the very
founders of our civilization.

- What happened was a small
boy who left the bathroom

in a pickle, found himself
attacked like Cicero on
Catiline.

Simile on simile, rhetorical
question on rhetorical

question, the flash of an
orator's eye,

the gestures, the cadences...

The pauses.

The pauses were the chief
danger.

- Well?

- [C.S. Lewis] One was so long

that my brother, assuming the
denunciation to have ended,

humbly picked up his
book and resumed reading,

a gesture which my
father, who had only made

a rhetorical miscalculation
of about a second and a half

described as-

- Cool, premeditated, insolent!

- The disproportion between the
tirades

and what prompted them was
ludicrous.

From the wilderness of words,

emerged ideas I took literally.

- Perhaps I should board up the
house.

Keep you both in school all year
round.

- And that we should be-

- Sent to the colonies to end in
misery

the career of crime on which
you have both already embarked.

- Such was the effect
of my father's rhetoric,

until I began to perceive
him as ridiculous.

(kettle whistling)

At 14, I ceased to be a
Christian.

At that age one barely notices.

At school, all the
teachers and book editors

took it for granted that
religion was some sort of
endemic

nonsense into which
humanity tended to blunder.

In the midst of a
thousand false religions,

stood our own, the thousand and
first,

labeled completely true.

On what grounds I asked, why
was it treated so differently?

I was eager not to, if Adonis
could be explained away,

then why not Christ?

So little by little, I became an
apostate

dropping my faith with no sense
of loss

and with the greatest relief.

Oh, there was no faith, hope
or charity in my religion.

I feared not God, but hell,

and heaven was only the lesser
of two intolerable evils.

Oh, I became a vigorous
debunker and argued

there's no proof for any
religion

and that Christianity
is not even the best.

Religion was invented to explain
things

that terrified primitive man,
thunder, pestilence, snakes.

What could be more natural than
to suppose

they were animated by spirits
and that by singing songs

and making sacrifices,
one might appease them.

Great men such as Hercules and
Odin were thought to be gods.

After their death, hence after
the death

of a Hebrew philosopher, Yeshua,

whose name we have corrupted
into Jesus,

a cult sprang up and
Christianity began,

just another mythology among
many.

Oh the superstitions always
held by common people,

but educated thinking was
always stood outside it,

conceding to it only out of
convenience.

And I was not prepared
to believe in a bogey man

who would torture me forever

because I failed to live up
to an impossible standard.

(school bell ringing)

(door closing)

With my deliberate withdrawal
from divine protection,

I underwent a successful
assault of sexual temptation.

Part of it was the age I had
reached.

The electric effect
was a dancing mistress.

She was the first woman
to speak to my blood

whom I looked upon to lust
after.

- Good morning, boys.

- [Boys] Good morning Miss.

- This was of no fault of her
own.

A gesture, tone of voice

has unpredictable
results in these matters.

As it happened, the school
room was decorated for dance.

She came in and said.

- (sighs) I love the smell of
bunting.

- And I was undone.

- Now, let us begin.

Follow my every move.

Thank you Elsie.

(gentle piano music)

Up.

And down.

And up.

And dainty toes.

Dainty toes, very good.

Dainty toes.

And around sway.

Sway.

- This was not a knight
devoting himself to a lady,

more like a Turk looking
at a Circassian woman

he could not afford.

I knew what I wanted.

You might think this produced
guilt.

Guilt was not a thing I knew.

- Well done boys. Well done.

- I had been a tender-hearted
boy,

but now I labored hard to
become a fop, a cad, a snob.

I was at that time as non-moral

as a human creature could be.

- Oh Lewis.

Do enjoy the holidays won't you?

- Yes, miss.

(men speaking indistinctly)

- Oh, there you are. Where have
you been?

- Sorry Father.
- Come on, come on.

It won't wait you know. Thank
you.

(expectant music)

(train whistling)

- [C.S. Lewis] I could not tell
my father

my change of belief.

He was no fool. He even
had a streak of genius.

But for a man who was formidable
in court

and I presume efficient in his
office,

he had more power for confusing
an issue

than any man I have ever known.

Oh, the first barrier to
communication

was having asked the question,

he would not stay for the
answer.

Tell him that a boy called
Churchwood had caught a mouse

and kept it as a pet.

He would ask-

- Whatever became of young
Chickweed

who was so afraid of rats?

- Who sir?

- Chickweed.

- Oh, I think you mean
Churchwood.

It was a mouse, not a rat.

And he wasn't afraid of it, at
all.

- Attempts to correct his
version produced an incredulous.

- That's not the story
you used to tell, my boy.

- All this explains,
though does not excuse,

one of the worst acts of my
life.

I allowed myself to
prepare for confirmation.

To be confirmed, make my first
communion,

all in total disbelief,

acting a part, eating and
drinking my own condemnation.

I knew I was acting a lie.

I simply could not tell
my father my real views.

Not that he would have stopped.

Let's talk the whole thing
over, he would have said.

But the thread would
have been lost at once.

His arguments.

I would not have valued a straw,

the beauty of the authorized
version,

the Christian tradition.

Oh, it was all sentiment.

And if I tried to make
by exact points clear,

there would have been thunder
from him

and a thin peevish rattle from
me,

Nor could the subject
ever have been dropped.

All this I ought to have dared

rather than the thing I did.

It seemed impossible at the
time,

cowardice drove me to hypocrisy

and hypocrisy to blasphemy.

(anticipatory music)

The years passed, then the
most fortunate thing happened.

- A bit more to the right,
please.

- [C.S. Lewis] My father had
declared

that he would send my brother to
a tutor

in Surrey, south of London.

- That's it. Thank you.

- [C.S. Lewis] In a
surprisingly short time,

this tutor had so rebuilt the
ruins of Warnie's education,

that he passed into Sandhurst

and received a prize army
cadetship.

For some time, my own schooling
had been going nowhere.

It had neither engaged
my mind nor my heart,

but seeing my brothers progress,

I finally plucked up the courage
to ask.

- Jack! Jack! Are you up there?

Come on boy. Well get your coat.

We're 10 minutes late already.

- [Jack] Papa, you know, when
you send Warnie off to Surrey

to your old tutor Mr.
Kirkpatrick.

- [Father] (chuckles) Yes.

The Great Knock we used to call
him.

- [Jack] Warnie seemed to
benefit from him greatly.

- [Father] He did.

He did. He's a fine teacher.

- I've been thinking.

Might it not be good to
send me to Surrey too?

- Well, there'll be no other
boys.

You won't be able to play your
games.

- I tried to look grave, no
other boys.

Never to play games.

I was transported.

(expectant music)

(train chuffing)

Ah yes, this is the day

the rest of my life
really began to happen.

(train whistles)

I was still in my teens when
I made my way over to England

and down to Surrey to meet my
new tutor.

I wasn't sure what to expect.

At first sight he seemed decent
enough.

- Hello, lovely to meet you.

- William T. Kirkpatrick. The
Great Knock.

- His grip was like iron
pincers.

- Follow me!

- I remember feeling the
need to make conversation

in the deplorable manner

I felt necessary to use with my
father.

- I was quite surprised by
the scenery of Surrey, sir.

It's really much wilder than I
expected.

- Stop! What do you mean by
wildness?

And on what grounds have
you based your expectations?

On the flora and geology of
Surrey?

Was it maps, photographs, books?

- Sorry, sir.

- As answer after answer
was torn to shreds

Kirk concluded that my
comment was meaningless

and that I had no right to have

any opinion whatsoever on the
subject.

It never occurred to me that my
thoughts

needed to be based on anything.

That conversation lasted three
minutes

and set the tone for
my two years in Surrey.

Kirk's ruthless dialectic
was the only way he spoke.

It was an astonishment to Kirk

that you should not want to be
corrected.

Kirk lived with his wife in a
comfortable

and secluded cottage on
the edge of the village.

It was all rather wonderful.

- Welcome! Welcome!

Now you put your case down
there.

- [C.S. Lewis] I felt welcomed
as soon as I stepped inside,

the whole place was stuffed with
books.

I had come home.

- And this is my wife, Louisa.

- Pleased to meet you Mrs.
Kirkpatrick.

- Pleasure's ours entirely.

- We'll show you up to your
room.

- I have it all prepared.

- You come down when you're
ready,

and we'll start knocking that
mind of yours into shape.

- There you are. I hope you like
it.

Oh, and by the way, don't
worry about my husband.

He likes to argue, a lot.

- Most boys would have
cowered at all this.

I loved the treat, but it
was red beef and strong beer.

After a few knockdowns,

I began to put on some
intellectual muscle

and became a bit of a sparring
partner to my new tutor.

If I could please myself, I'd
always live as I lived here.

Breakfast at eight, at my desk
by nine

to read and write to
precisely one, then lunch.

- That was absolutely delicious.

Thank you, Mrs. Kirkpatrick.

- Fine.

- Oh yes. I was encouraged
to eat, as well as to think.

Off for a walk by two, not with
a friend.

Walking and talking are
two great pleasures,

but it is a mistake to combine
them.

Our noise blocks out
the sounds and silences

of the outer world.

- Thank you.

- My return and the arrival of
tea

would coincide at exactly
four, taken in solitude.

Eating and reading are two
pleasures

that combine admirably.

Work till seven, deep into the
classics,

not sparing the horses.

Good talk all evening, all
challenging,

brain-rattling stuff.

In bed by 11, unless
you're making a night of it

at the pub with your cronies.

- Passable. You're still a
little shaky on accuracy.

And I fear you've missed my
point

about the classics entirely.

He that neither knoweth nor will
be taught

by the instruction of the wise,

this man is not Herodotus.

He knew a thing or two.

- That's not Herodotus.

It's Hesiod.

- Prove it.

- It's from his poem "Days in
work."

I have it somewhere.

Here.

- Good lad! (laughs)

- My work was mostly Latin and
Greek.

Homer first. Oh still relish
the brightness and music of it.

Then the two great bores,

Cicero and Demosthenes
could not be avoided.

Followed by Lucretius. Oh, the
glory!

Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides.

Had no taste for Virgil.

In the evening we mastered
French, Italian and German

plunging into the likes of
Voltaire, Faust in the inferno.

(sighs) Kirk was my great
teacher.

My debt remains to this day.

As for religion, he was
a Presbyterian atheist.

On Sundays, he gardened in nicer
clothes.

(pensive music)

Among the poets I was reading at
the time,

one stood apart, William Butler
Yeats.

He believed that there was a
world

beyond the material curtain

and that contact with
that world was possible.

Oh, I regarded Yeats as a
learned responsible writer.

Later when I met him, I
was awed by his personality

and he rejected the whole

materialist philosophy out of
hand.

If Yeats had been a Christian,
I would have discounted him.

I had Christians placed,
disposed of for ever.

Yeats offered something else, a
perhaps.

And through this perhaps,

a drop of disturbing doubt
fell into my materialism

and introduced me to something

I've had trouble with ever
since,

a ravenous desire for the
supernatural.

Or to put it bluntly, the
occult.

(eerie music)

I once tried to describe it in a
novel.

It's a spiritual lust and
like the lust of the flesh

has the fatal power of
making everything else

seem uninteresting while it
lasts.

Oh I loved the vagueness of it.

Circles, pentangles,
Ouija boards, seances,

all seemed able to raise a
spirit.

Oh, this magic!

No connection of my atheism
swayed me in different moods.

And that it was scorned by both
Christians and rationalists

appealed to the rebel in me.

My descent was from
eccentricity to perversity.

The world and the flesh
had made their appearance.

Now came the devil.

Had there been an elder
in the neighborhood

who dabbled in dirt,

oh they have a nose for
potential disciples,

I might now be a Satanist or a
maniac.

Then, in the super abundance of
mercy,

came that event which I have
attempted

to describe in many of my books.

I was in the habit of walking a
few miles

to Leatherhead Station and
taking the train back to Kirk's.

While waiting for the train I
rummaged in

the second hand bookstore and
picked out

an unusual title, "Phantastes"
by George MacDonald.

It looked a little unusual.

I hadn't the faintest notion
of what I'd let myself in for.

- This one please.

- A tuppence, please sir.

Thank you very much sir.
(conductors whistle blows)

- Sorry.
(man grumbles indistinctly)

- As I began to read my new
book, I was electrified.

I felt like a miner who had
struck gold.

In those pages I met
all that had charmed me

in Yeats and others.

Yet, everything was changed.

The bright shadow coming out of
this book,

transformed everything

and it would affect my
own writing forever.

It was as if I had died in the
old country

and come alive in the new,

all my occult and erotic
fantasies began to feel sordid.

Disarmed, what I really
wanted was just out of reach.

Not because of something I could
not do,

but because of something
I could not stop doing.

Oh, if I could only let go,
unmake myself.

I did not know the name
of this new quality.

Oh I do now. Holiness.

That night as I read
"Phantastes"

my imagination was baptized.

The rest of me took a little
longer.

(gentle music)

I first met it as a memory
that would arise suddenly

without warning from the depth
of not years, but centuries.

The memory was from childhood

when my brother brought
the lid of a biscuit tin

garnished with twigs and
flowers to make a toy garden.

It was the first beauty I had
ever known,

a sensation of desire.

But before I knew what I
desired, the desire was gone,

withdrawn, the world turned
common again.

Since then my constant
endeavor was to get it again,

in reading every book,
going on every walk,

listening to every piece of
music.

Occasionally the sky would turn.

Far more often, I frightened
it away by my greed to have it.

I call this desire, joy,

which must be distinguished very
sharply

from happiness or pleasure,

except that anyone who
has ever experienced joy

will want it again.

Apart from that, it might be
called

a particular kind of grief,

but then it's the kind we want.

It is the scent of a
flower we have not found,

the echo of a tune we've not
heard.

News from a country we
have not yet visited.

Oh, I doubt that anyone
who has ever tasted joy

would exchange it for all
the pleasures in the world.

But joy is never in our
path. And pleasure is.

At 18, I arrived at Oxford,

the fabled cluster of
towers and dreaming spires

had never looked more beautiful.

Less than a term later,
like most of my generation,

I enlisted in the army,

was sent to the front lines in
France,

on my 19th birthday to be exact.

First bullet I heard brought not
fear,

but the thought, this is war.

This is what Homer wrote about.

Five months later, I was
wounded and sent home.

In between, I had the good luck

to fall sick with trench fever.

(gentle music)

Compared to the trenches,

a hospital bed and a
book were heaven itself.

- And how are you
tonight Lieutenant Lewis?

- Fine. Thank you nurse.

- Well Stanley. Time for
your inspection, I think.

- Yes nurse.

- Except that the night nurse

was conducting a furious
affair with my roommate.

I was too sick to be
embarrassed,

but the sound of two lovers
whispering in the nighttime

is a tedious noise.

It was here I first read G.K
Chesterton. Never heard of him.

Had no idea what he stood for,

nor could I understand why it
made such a conquest of me.

His humor was the kind I like.

No, not jokes, still
less a tone of flippancy.

Oh that I cannot endure.

Rather his humor was the
bloom of his argument.

Strange as it seems I
liked him for his goodness.

Oh not that it had anything
to do with being good myself.

I did not have the cynics nose
for hypocrisy and smugness

so common among my peers.

(nurse giggling)

In Chesterton, as in
MacDonald, I did not know

what I was letting myself in
for.

A young man who wishes
to remain a sound atheist

cannot be too careful of his
reading.

After my convalescence, I
returned to the front lines.

- Wait.

- Turn off the light!
(gunshots blasting)

(men yelling)

(explosions booming)

The moment I was hit and
found that I was not breathing

I concluded this is death.

I felt no fear, no
courage, just the thought,

here lies a man who died.

It wasn't even interesting.

The fruit of this experience

is there appeared a fully
conscious I,

whose connection with
me was coming to an end.

And I, whoever that may be,
cared not two farthings.

Oh, it was more than an
abstraction.

I tasted it.

(somber music)

As for the rest of the war,
the cold, the fear, the fright.

The corpses.

It was a ghastly interruption
to rational life.

Now it feels like it
happened to someone else.

Except for the recurring
nightmares.

(expectant music)

When I returned to Oxford,
I put on a new look,

which meant to act with
the greatest good sense,

and to have no more flirtations
with the supernatural.

Directly after the war,
I spent a fortnight

with a man I'd dearly
loved, who was going mad.

I held him as he wallowed on the
floor

and screamed "Devils are tearing
me apart.

I'm falling into hell."

I knew this man had flirted

with all sorts of occult ideas
as I had.

Oh, perhaps there was no
connection,

but I took it as a warning
to stay on the beaten track,

the approved material center
of the road with the lights on.

The early days of my new
look were quite happy,

busy engaged in my studies
of classics, philosophy.

At that time we were all swept
up by Freud

and his new psychology.

By my mid 20s, I was elected
a fellow at Magdalen College,

hence my career as a
scholar and tutor began.

- After you dear boy.

- The answer of course,
is that (indistinct).

- They even provided rooms for
me here,

to read, to write for my
tutorials.

I had arrived.

I felt like I'd found a home

with some of the finest
scholars I would ever meet.

We were young, clear-headed,
invincible.

Then one day, my very dear
friend, Owen Barfield,

who satisfied my hunger for
debate and rational opposition

announced that he had changed
his views.

He was no longer a materialist
and had become a theist.

I was shocked. I thought
Barfield was safe.

He came from such a
free-thinking family.

He'd barely even heard of
Christianity.

Barfield bought up all the
abominations:

God, spirit, afterlife.

I said, "Dammit Owen, it's
medieval."

- [Jack] Dammit Owen, it's
medieval.

- [Owen] You may say that
Jack, but the medieval world

has a lot to teach us.

- [Jack] You mean that the world
is flat.

- Oh come on Jack, be
serious. Open your mind.

- [Jack] I have.

And as a wise man once said to
me, he that neither knoweth-

- This started our great war,

our philosophic disputation
that lasted for years.

I remember Barfield asking:

- Jack, do you believe
that logic and reason

bring forth indisputable truth?

- [Jack] I do.

- And are your moral
and aesthetic judgments

valid and meaningful?

- They are.

- Well then materialism must be
abandoned.

There is a hopeless discord
between what our minds

claim to be and what they really
must be

if materialism is true.

We claim our minds to be
reason-perceiving

universal intellectual
principles, moral laws,

and possessing free will.

But if materialism is true,
our minds must in reality,

be merely chance arrangements
of atoms in skulls.

- I of course, argued back.

- We are to accept reality
as it is revealed to us

by our senses and the findings
of science have concluded

that human reason is merely
cognitive maps

resulting from natural
selection,

with random mutations
over millions of years

to confer on humans a
reproductive advantage

over other species.

- I had to say something.

I'd been defending materialism
for years.

- Look.

If my clearest reasoning tells
me

that my mind is nothing more
than the accidental result

of atoms colliding in skulls,
there must be some mistake.

How should I trust my
mind when it tells me

that my most profound thoughts
are merely mental patterns

resulting from heredity and
physics?

- Barfield's notion that
if materialism is true

my conscious mind is nothing
more

than atoms colliding in skulls.

This was simply unbelievable to
me.

I could not force my
thought into that shape

any more than I could scratch
my ear with my big toe.

It was as final as a
physical impossibility.

Mind, reason, imagination,
consciousness

must be more than mere
biochemistry.

It must be a real participation.

Something further up, further
in.

Rock-bottom reality had to be
intelligent.

(pensive music)

It's astonishing I've
not seen this before.

Willful blindness, I suppose.

And I was careful not to attach
rock-bottom reality to God,

my skepticism would not
allow me to go that far.

Rather I attached it
to the universe itself.

Still it had immense potency.

Behind the material curtain
lay the hidden glory.

Barfield and I began to talk
religiously about an absolute.

Of course, this was a
religion that cost nothing.

It wasn't personal.

It wouldn't do anything.

It wouldn't lead to dark
places where men scream

they're being dragged into hell.

It was there.

Never come here. Make
a nuisance of itself.

Within the faculty, I
befriended Hugo Dyson

and J.R.R. Tolkien, both
Christians.

Oh these queer people were
popping up on every side.

There was a wider disturbance.

All my books were turning
against me.

I must've been as blind as a
bat,

not to have seen this before.

George McDonald had done more
to me than any other writer.

Of course he had that bee in
his bonnet about Christianity.

He was good in spite of it.

Spenser, Dante, Milton had it
too.

I thought Chesterton the
most sensible man alive,

apart from his Christianity.

I was beginning to think that
Christianity

was quite sensible apart
from its Christianity.

On the other hand, those writers
who did not suffer religion

and with whom my sympathies
ought to have been complete:

Shaw, Wells, Gibbon,
Voltaire, seemed thin, tinny.

Oh, they were all entertaining,
especially Gibbon,

but hardly more.

The roughness and density of
life

did not appear in their books.

I concluded that those with
untrained philosophic minds

could come near the notion
of an absolute being

by believing in a God.

And I distinguished my belief
very sharply

from the God of popular
religion.

Oh there was no possibility of
being

in a personal relation with him.

I could no more meet him than
Hamlet could meet Shakespeare.

And I did not call him God,
either.

I called him Spirit.

One must fight for one's
remaining comforts.

About this time one of my fellow
tutors,

the hardest boiled atheist I'd
ever known,

sat in my rooms other side
of the fireplace and remarked

"The evidence for the
historicity of the gospels,

surprisingly good.

Rum thing, all that mythology
about the dying god.

Rum thing, looks as if
it really happened once."

I was shattered.

If he the cynic of
cynics, who's never since

shown any interest in
Christianity

were not as I still would
have thought him, safe,

where can I turn?

Before God closed in on me

I was in fact offered a
moment of free choice.

I was sitting on a bus
going up Headington Hills

thinking I was wearing a suit of
armor,

trying to keep something out.

I could unbuckle the armor or,
keep it on.

The choice felt momentous.

I chose to unbuckle.

Did not seem impossible
to do the opposite.

The initiative did not lie with
me.

If Hamlet and Shakespeare could
ever meet,

it would have to be
Shakespeare's doing,

he could write himself into the
play.

What I called Spirit began to
show

an alarming tendency to become
personal.

Into my mind, crept a horrible
novelty.

I really believed something.

And now that I had blundered
into that

I knew I could play at
philosophy no longer.

It was time something should be
done.

The absolute had arrived.

Making a nuisance of
itself, issuing a command.

All my acts and desires
were to be brought in line

with this absolute spirit
that I now believed.

For the first time I examined
myself

with a serious practical
purpose.

What I found appalled me.

Depth after depth of
pride, self admiration,

a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of
ambitions,

a nursery of fears, a
harem of fondled hatred.

Oh, my name is legion.

Amiable agnostics talk
cheerfully
of man's search for God,

may as well talk of the
mouse's search for the cat.

All I ever wanted was
not be interfered with,

to call my soul my own.

Keep out, private. This is my
business.

But no one talked glibly of
the comforts of religion.

Is it a small thing to give
yourself blindly to a guide

when his own showing may very
well

be leading you to
poverty, ridicule, death?

Oh, I knew I would not allow
myself

to do anything intolerably
painful.

I would be reasonable.

Would it be reasonable?

No assurance was offered.

It was all or nothing.

As the dry bones shook in
Ezekiel's dreadful valley,

the absolute spirit
began to stir and heave

and throw off its grave clothes.

He said, "I am the Lord.

I am that I am.

I am."

(pensive music)

You must picture me alone
in my room at 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 found me.

In the Trinity term, 1929, I
gave in.

And admitted that God is God.

Knelt and prayed perhaps that
night,

the most dejected, reluctant
convert in all England.

I did not then see the divine
love

that would accept a
prodigal on such terms.

Kicking, struggling, resentful,

darting his eyes in every
direction,

looking for a chance to escape.

The hardness of God is kinder
than the softness of man.

His compulsion is my liberation.

(bells tolling)

You must understand that the
conversion I just described

was only to theism, pure and
simple, not Christianity.

I knew nothing of the
incarnation,

the God to whom I
surrendered was not human.

I had no belief in an after
life.

That to me, felt like a bribe.

My argument against God
was that the universe

was so cruel and unjust,

but where had I got this
notion of cruel and unjust?

I call a line crooked

because I have some
idea of a straight line.

What was I comparing the
universe with,

when I called it cruel and
unjust.

If the whole universe has no
meaning,

I should never have
known it has no meaning.

All of my reasonable mind was
convinced

that the universe cannot explain
itself,

that God is behind the universe,

that he has purposes.

And is to be obeyed
simply because he is God.

I suppose my religion was
like that of the Jews.

As soon as I became a theist,

I started attending my
parish church on Sunday.

College chapel during the week.

Not because I believed in
Christianity,

but because I thought one
should fly one's flag.

(congregation singing drearily)

Church was an unattractive
affair.

I like clergy as I like
bears, but I have no more wish

to be in church as to be in a
zoo.

Church to me meant ugly
architecture, bleed music,

bad poetry, hymns are
extremely disagreeable to me.

And the botheration of it
all, the crowds, the notices,

the perpetual organizing.

- Before our final prayer,
a quick announcement,

if you would like to join
Edith on the flower rota,

she's desperate for volunteers,

do please speak to her at the
back by the font afterwards.

Let us pray.

Lighten our darkness,
we beseech thee oh Lord

and by thy great mercy
defend us from all perils

and dangers of this night,

for the love of Thy only
son, our savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

(expectant music)

- My new conviction in a higher
being

did not exactly make me a
paid-up member

in the Church of England.

But now that I believed in God,

I wanted to know more of him,

from any source, pagan or
Christian.

The question was no longer
to find the one true religion

among many, but where
had the thing grown up.

Paganism was the childhood of
religion.

Where had it reached maturity?

As for the materialists,
their view was out of court.

If reason is only the
accidental result of atoms

colliding in skulls, I could see
no reason

to believe that one accident

should give the correct account
for all other accidents.

My allegiance was now
with the mass of humanity

who danced, sang and prayed,
worshiped.

There isn't really an infinite
variety

of religions you know.

To me, the only ones worth
considering

are Christianity and Hinduism.

Islam is only the greatest
of the Christian heresies.

Buddhism's only the greatest
of the Hindu heresies.

All that is best in Judaism and
Plato

survives in Christianity

and Hinduism bears no historical
claim.

That had been put into my head
by that hard-boiled atheist,

who said, "All that
mythology about a dying God

looks as if it really happened
once."

One day Tolkien and I took
a stroll on Addison's walk.

As we talked, I said.

- Tollers, I have, with
considerable resistance,

come to believe in God,
but not Christianity.

- Oh Jack.

- I cannot believe something
I do not understand.

How can the life and
death of someone else,

whoever he was, 2000 years ago,
help us in the here and now.

- When you meet a God
sacrificing
himself in a pagan story

like Dionysus, Balder, Osiris
or even in a fairy tale,

you like it very much and
are mysteriously moved by it.

Provided you meet it anywhere
except in the gospels.

Well the story of Christ is a
myth,

working on us in the
same way as other myths,

with one tremendous difference
in that it really happened.

- Suddenly a rush of wind
interrupted us, startling me.

So many leaves fell to the
ground I thought it was raining.

I held my breath.

- Come on, Jack. You're
too slow to catch a cold.

You know Dyson hates
sitting on those steps

waiting to be let in.

- I don't know if Tollers
remembered that moment.

I did. His words hit home.

No matter how unwilling,
I was beginning to move.

Tollers and I talked deep into
the night.

Hugo Dyson joined us.

- Beef. Sensational pie.

- You make a mess with that.

Now this stuff will put
hairs on your chest.

- Here she is.

Make space would you.

There we go.

- Look, I may be prepared to
accept Jesus

as a great moral teacher,

but I simply cannot accept
his claim to be God.

- Oh, come on Jack.

How could a mere man be
called a great moral teacher

and say the sort of things Jesus
said?

- Such as?

- That he always existed.

- That he was coming
again to judge the world.

- Such men are judged frauds,
lunatics.

- In spite of my resistance,

they convinced me that
nothing else in all literature

is just like the gospels.

Myths are like it in
one way with its stories

of the miraculous,
histories like it in another

with its attention to minute
details,

but nothing is simply like it.

And no person is like the person
depicted.

- I'm sure there are many people

who believe themselves to be
God.

Our hospitals are full of them.

- Oh, come on Jack be serious.

No great moral teacher
has ever made that claim

except Jesus, and you know it.

- And he went on and on and on.

- What do you mean?

- Well, claiming to forgive sins

and that he himself is the
injured party

in every transgression.

Look, in anyone else this
would be thought silly.

- Suppose you told me that
two of your colleagues

had lost you a top professorship

by telling lies about your
character.

And I replied "Freely forgive
them both."

Would you not think this sheer
lunacy?

- It would be sheer lunacy.

- Yet, even those who opposed
Jesus

admitted that he expressed
moral truth of depth and purity

full of wisdom and shrewdness.

- Wisdom and shrewdness.

You make him sound like Solomon
the great.

- On the contrary,

history repeatedly calls
him humble and meek.

- Not that you want to
notice that of course Jack.

Humility and meekness are the
last things one would ascribe

to someone who makes claims
worthy of being a megalomaniac.

- The Great Knock taught
me to shame inconsistency.

If Jesus' statements are false.

Christianity is of no
importance.

If true, it is of infinite
importance,

but one thing it cannot be
is moderately important.

- So what are you saying?

- Simply that either this man
was, and is, the son of God

or else he is a liar,
a lunatic or a fraud,

but all this patronizing
nonsense

about him being some great moral
teacher,

it's not an option to us,
nor was it intended to be.

- I felt a resistance to this

almost as strong as my
resistance to theism.

Every step from the
absolute to spirit to God

was a step toward the more
concrete.

And now to accept the
incarnation that God became man

was a further step in the same
direction.

Oh, this too was something
I had not wanted.

I remember very well when, but
hardly how,

the final step was taken.

I was being driven by my
brother Warnie to Whipsnade Zoo

in the sidecar of a
motorcycle one Sunday morning

in the autumn of 1931.

When we set out, I did not
believe

that Jesus Christ is the son of
God.

When we reached the zoo, I did,

I had not spent the journey
in thought, or great emotion.

It was more like a man
who, after a long sleep,

has become aware he is now
awake.

My conversion shed new
light on my search for joy.

The overwhelming longings
that emerged from "Phantastes"

and my brother's toy garden
were merely signposts

to what I truly desired.

They were not the thing itself.

I concluded that if I
find in myself a desire

that no experience in
this world could satisfy,

the most probable explanation,
I was made for another world.

At present we're on the
outside of that world,

the wrong side of the door.

We cannot mingle with
the splendors we see,

but all the leaves of the
New Testament are rustling

with the rumor that it
will not always be so.

One day, God willing, we shall
get in.

Meanwhile, the cross
comes before the crown

and tomorrow is another morning.

A cleft has opened in the
pitiless walls of this world,

and we have been invited to
follow our great captain inside.

Following him is of course
the essential point.

♪ In the bleak midwinter ♪

♪ Frosty wind made moan ♪

- That Christmas, I took the
short walk to my parish church.

That walk marked the end of one
journey

and the beginning of another.

♪ Snow had fallen ♪

♪ Snow on snow on snow ♪

♪ In the bleak midwinter ♪

- As I looked around, I thought
not only

of my own potential glory
hereafter,

but also that of my neighbor's
glory.

It is a serious thing to live
in a society of possible gods

and goddesses, to
remember that the dullest,

most uninteresting person
you meet may one day

be a creature that if you saw it
now,

you would be strongly tempted
to fall down and worship

or else a horror or a
corruption such as you now meet,

if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long, we are helping
each other

to one or the other of
these two destinations.

It is in the light of these
overwhelming possibilities

that I should now conduct all my
dealings.

There are no ordinary people.

I've never met a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures,
civilizations, these are mortal.

Their life is to ours as that of
a gnat.

It is immortals whom we
joke with, work with,

marry, snub, exploit.

The weight or burden of my
neighbors glory

should be laid daily on my back.

A load so heavy, only
humility can carry it.

And the backs of the proud will
be broken.

♪ What can I give him ♪

♪ Poor as I am ♪

♪ if I were a shepherd ♪

♪ I would give a lamb ♪

♪ if I were a wise man ♪

♪ I would do my part ♪

♪ Yet what I can I give him ♪

♪ Give him my heart ♪

- Christ our Passover
is sacrificed for us.

Therefore let us keep the feast.

(solemn music)

The body of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

- Unlike my first
communion, 17 years earlier.

I now believed.

(uplifting music)

- Okay. Thanks very much.

That's a cut there. Thank you.

Thank you Max.

- Thank you.

(people chattering)

(gentle music)