A Door in the Universe

I have been thinking for several days about three great men -- St. Paul, St. Augustine, and C.S. Lewis.  All three of these men were highly educated and great intellects --- and all three of them were both suddenly and gradually changed forever by an encounter with Jesus Christ. 

We might expect that when it comes to pre-eminently intellectual and rational men, God would send to them in some form or another brilliant logical "proofs" of His existence, intellectual arguments that would appeal to their minds.  We might expect a conversion through their "strengths," in other words -- the mode of operation with which they made sense of the world.

Our minds, no matter how brilliant, how rational, cannot conceive of God.  What we can know of Him must be revealed by Him, in a relationship of personal love and communion.  People argue that the word "God" is unknowable as to its reference -- and they are right; man cannot know God as he knows the universe, because God is not an object, a "noun" that can be named and defined.

That is why, as we can see by looking at these three men, God speaks first to the heart of man, and only later, His light shines in our hearts, illuminating our minds to understand what the heart knows intuitively.  C. S. Lewis, an avowed atheist despite all the intellectual and rational arguments of his good friend Tolkein, describes a moment when he was riding a double-decker bus in England.  Suddenly, he felt "a door in the universe" open to him.  (Nothing rational about this at all, by the way.)  He hesitated a moment, and then stepped through the door, becoming not yet a Christian, but no longer an atheist -- a theist. 

This moment for Lewis was nothing he could grasp with his intellect.  He could not wrap his mind around the experience, other than just to describe what happened to him.  Later, he reveals another moment when he was riding in the side-car of his brother's motorcycle.  He says that when he entered the side-car, he was a theist; by the time they had reached their destination, he was a Christian.  The transformation happened suddenly, without his understanding how or why -- it just happened.  Lewis would spend the rest of his life exploring with his great mind and intellectually trying to grasp the Christian experience.

The experience of St. Paul, so well-educated in the Hebrew faith and Scriptures, and that of Augustine, whose great intellect and passion for life led him to reject the church, are both very well- known experiences.  For both of them, it was not an "argument" for faith that converted them, but a moment of grace, when they simply stepped through Lewis' "door in the universe," and began to live a Christian life.  Both men spent the rest of their lives applying their understanding to the experience of that one moment.

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when He said, "Unless you are born again, you cannot even see the kingdom of heaven."  There are really two worlds -- the material world, the natural world which speaks to us of God and points the way to the other, the spiritual world, which He invites us to enter.  The choice is ours whether we will step through the door into the other world, into the world that men can neither see nor understand without the Holy Spirit.

Of course, Satan will always mimic God's world; he, too, invites us to plunge into the "spiritual" world of deceit, manipulation, fortune-telling, witchcraft, séances, Ouija boards, etc.  The difference in the two worlds is that we enter Satan's world as a means of power and control over the physical world -- "ye shall be as gods."  When we enter "the Door" that is Jesus Christ, the Door to His Father's world, we give up control, and surrender to the will of God for our lives.  Jesus said that whoever does not enter by the gate (His own body) is a liar and a thief, coming to steal and destroy.  When we step through the Door that is Jesus, we enter the kingdom of God, a kingdom that is invisible to the world at large.  Once we step into His world, we lose control and mastery, becoming like Him a servant to the world instead of trying to "name it" and control it.

None of these three men "lost" their great intellectual capacity when they stepped through the door that opened to them.  Rather, their natural gifts were perfected in the divine light and placed at the service of the their worlds.  God does not waste our natural gifts; when we place them at his disposal, He knows how to make them shine with greater brilliance.  I have learned so much from these men; I have drunk deeply from the waters of their intellects and understanding -- and I am grateful that all three of them chose to step through that "door in the universe."