“A Light Touch, A Tad of Humor”

Lewis’s Last Interview:  “A Light Touch, A Tad of Humor”

“God has shown us that he can use any instrument.  Balaam’s ass, you remember, preached a very effective sermon in the midst of his ‘hee-haws.’” – C. S. Lewis, The Final Interview, May 7, 1963[1] 

In my research this week in prep for my course at Gladstone’s Library, I discovered C.S. Lewis’ last known interview, on May 7, 1963 (six months before he died), conducted by Sherwood Eliot Wirt for Decision Magazine (published by the Billy Graham Association. 

I remember meeting young Sherwood n 1968 or 69. He was offering a writing workshop in Pasadena for young would-be writers like myself, and I remember paying the fee and attending his workshop on “How to Publish Your Book.”  I was 15 at the time hoping to write and publish my first book on “God and Flying Saucers.”  What a surprise this week to find his name attached to Lewis's final interview.

One of Sherwood’s questions to Lewis’s was about his use of subtle satire and light humor, which comes through in his writings.

Wirt: A light touch has been characteristic of your writings, even when you are dealing with heavy theological themes. Would you say there is a key to the cultivation of such an attitude?

Lewis: “I believe this is a matter of temperament. However, I was helped in achieving this attitude by my studies of the literary men of the Middle Ages, and by the writings of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton, for example, was not afraid to combine serious Christian themes with buffoonery. In the same way the miracle plays of the Middle Ages would deal with a sacred subject such as the nativity of Christ, yet would combine it with a farce.”

Wirt: Should Christian writers, then, in your opinion, attempt to be funny?

Lewis: “No. I think that forced jocularities on spiritual subjects are an abomination, and the attempts of some religious writers to be humorous are simply appalling. Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about.... God has shown us that he can use any instrument. Balaam’s ass, you remember, preached a very effective sermon in the midst of his ‘hee-haws.’”   [See Numbers 22:21-39]

[What I would have asked him] “So, Jack, what was Balaam’s ass’s sermon about?”

Lewis:  Donkey’s Delight! he would have answered.

Lewis wrote a poem about his personal identification with Balaam’s ass entitled “Donkey’s Delight”—which is also the title and theme of my Travel Blog (see my original post).

A light touch, a tad of satire, self-effacing humor is characteristic of Lewis’s writings about heavy matters: like sex and morality, heaven and, hell, angels and demons, and, of course, the End of the World.

In the spirit of Balaam’s ass, I offer one of Lewis’s light responses when an another interviewer asked him a heavy question in 1953 about the new development of the hydrogen bomb and a possible nuclear apocalypse:

“Civilizations since the 11^th century have been expecting the world to come suddenly and painfully to an immediate end….And anyhow, when the bomb falls there will always be just that split second in which one can say ‘Pooh!  You’re only a bomb.  I’m an immortal soul.’”

More seriously, “when the end is near, how shall we then live?”

Lewis said he agreed with William Morris: “…the answer is to simply to get on with the job—to mend the sails, or launch the boat, or gather firewood.”

I love his light touch on heavy matters.   #DonkeysDelight

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[1] “The Final Interview” with C.S. Lewis, Decision Magazine, May 7, 1963.