C.S. Lewis didn’t drift into faith like a leaf on a stream. He wrestled his way there—mind sharp, heart restless, a scholar and storyteller who refused to settle for easy answers. In Further Up and Further In, a play that brings his journey to life using his own words and ideas from his books, essays, and letters, we see him as a modern Jacob, grappling with the divine until dawn breaks (Genesis 32:24-30). The playwright weaves Lewis’s voice into the dialogue, sometimes quoting him directly, other times crafting lines that echo the spirit of his thoughts. An Oxford don turned reluctant believer, Lewis faced a world bristling with skepticism—war’s scars, science’s cold gaze, the ache of unanswered questions. Yet he emerged with a faith forged not in spite of reason, but through it, offering a map for anyone lost in the tension between doubt and belief.
This isn’t just his story; it’s ours. Today, when every headline of chaos or discovery seems to widen the chasm between us and God, Lewis’s path—vividly portrayed in the play—feels like a lifeline. He didn’t dodge the hard questions; he leaned into them, using logic, longing, and even pain as stepping stones. Along the way, voices of wisdom join his, their insights blending into the narrative like threads in a tapestry, deepening our understanding without pulling us from the flow. Together, they invite us to see our own struggles not as dead ends, but as doorways to something greater.
The Ache That Points Beyond
Lewis’s journey didn’t start with a sermon or a sacred text—it began with a pang. He called it longing, a sharp, sweet ache that beauty or memory could summon but never satisfy. As portrayed in Further Up and Further In, he muses: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” This line, drawn straight from his writings, reveals his logic: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.” If we yearn for something no earthly moment can fulfill, doesn’t that hint at a purpose woven into us, a destination beyond the horizon?
Picture him on stage—pausing mid-step, gazing past the lights as if chasing that elusive something. It’s a scene that mirrors our own quiet moments, when the world’s noise fades and we feel a pull we can’t name. One thinker captured it this way: “The soul’s innate yearning is a yearning for home, a place where we belong, where we are understood, where we are loved.” Another voice adds, “We’re homesick for a place we’ve never been in this life, a sign of our eternal nature.” Together, these reflections frame longing as a clue, a whisper of design in our restless hearts.
In a culture that races to fill every void with distraction, Lewis challenges us to linger with that ache. What if it’s not a burden to shrug off, but a thread to follow? The play’s early scenes—Lewis restless, searching—become an invitation: lean into the longing. It might just lead you somewhere true.
Reason’s Stand Against the Void
Lewis wasn’t content to feel his way forward; he demanded answers. Surrounded by Oxford’s sharpest minds, he took aim at the idea that reality is nothing but atoms bouncing in the dark. In the play, he cuts to the core with a line inspired by his work: “If the materialist view is true, our minds must be merely chance arrangements of atoms in skulls. But if that’s so, why trust them to tell us what’s true—including the truth of materialism?” It’s a trap that collapses under its own weight. If reason works, he argued, it can’t be an accident—it points to a mind behind it all.
The stage crackles with these debates—Lewis pacing, words flying like sparks. His logic finds an echo in the idea that “the mind or intelligence we possess is co-equal with eternity itself.” Our ability to think, to question, isn’t a fluke—it’s a spark of something divine. Another voice chimes in: “The very existence of order and intelligence in the universe rebukes the notion of mindless chaos.” Step back, and the world’s coherence—love, beauty, the laws of nature—starts to look less random, more like a signature.
For Lewis, this wasn’t abstract. It was personal. He’d seen war’s wreckage, felt loss’s sting, yet found in reason a lifeline pulling him past despair. In a time when faith can feel like a relic under science’s glare, he offers a hand: belief isn’t reason’s enemy—it’s its ally. The play’s intensity here—Lewis dismantling doubt with a surgeon’s precision—dares us to test our own assumptions. What if the mind we use to question God is itself a gift from Him?
Pain’s Unexpected Voice
Lewis’s faith wasn’t born in comfort. It was hammered out in grief—war’s shadow, a mother’s death, the silence that followed his prayers. Yet he didn’t turn from pain; he listened to it. As the playwright declares in Further Up and Further In, echoing Lewis' words: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Suffering, he believed, wasn’t proof against God—it was a call to wake up. He even flipped the question: “The real problem is not why some humble, pious people suffer, but why some do not.”
On stage, you see it—Lewis hunched, wrestling with loss, then lifting his head as if hearing something new. It’s a shift others have felt too. One voice reflects: “The road through struggle always passes through a garden of agony, but because of that, it refines rather than destroys.” Pain as a forge, not a grave. Another adds, “Adversity bends iron into steel, tempering the soul for something lasting.” These ideas weave into Lewis’s own, painting suffering as a strange gift—a chance to grow, to align with a larger story.
In a world quick to blame God for every tear, this feels radical. Yet the play makes it real—Lewis’s grief isn’t a dead end; it’s a doorway. An old hymn lingers here: “Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard? ’Tis not so; all is right.” Pain, then, might be less a wall and more a window. What if your hardest days are trying to tell you something—calling you to wrestle, like Lewis did, until you find the One on the other side?
Joy’s Fleeting Pull
Reason built Lewis’s bridge, but something softer helped him cross. He called it “Joy”—a piercing delight, half ache, half promise, sparked by a sunset or a line of poetry. In the play, he describes it with words rooted in his memoirs: “This intense, even painful desire—it feels like a delight, the pleasure called from the expectation that the desire will be fulfilled.” He reasoned: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Not escapism, but evidence.
The play catches these moments—Lewis still, eyes bright, as if glimpsing beyond the curtain. It’s a sensation others recognize: “The Spirit speaks in feelings we sense more than hear, a language of eternity.” Joy as a whisper from somewhere else. Another voice muses, “It comes as a pull toward something higher, a memory of what we once knew.” These threads tie to Lewis’s longing, suggesting that those fleeting stabs of beauty are invitations, nudging us past the visible.
In our rush to explain everything, Lewis slows us down. Don’t dismiss that pang when the stars align or a song hits deep—it’s a signal. The play’s quiet beats—Lewis lost in wonder—ask us to listen too. What if Joy is the heart’s way of saying there’s more to the story?
Faith as Reason’s Dawn
Lewis’s conversion wasn’t a blind plunge. It was a deliberate step, lit by logic’s glow. He wrote, and the play echoes: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” It’s a turning point on stage—hesitant, then sure, a surrender that feels like waking up. He didn’t ditch reason; he followed it until it met faith, a lens that made sense of the world.
This dance of mind and heart isn’t new. One counsel urges us to “seek learning by study and also by faith,” blending the two like roots and wings. Another elaborates: “Reason and revelation are twin pillars—neither stands alone; together, they hold up truth.” Lewis lived this, testing every doubt, praying through every question. A third voice adds, “Faith grows not by ignoring questions, but by seeking answers with both mind and heart.” It’s a path anyone can walk—slow, steady, honest.
The play’s climax—Lewis stepping into belief—feels less like a leap and more like arrival. In an age demanding proof, he whispers: faith can stand scrutiny. It’s not reason’s end, but its dawn.
A Story Just Begun
Lewis knew belief wasn’t the end. It was Chapter One. In Further Up and Further In, he dreams aloud with words from his fiction: “All their life in this world had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning the Great Story which no one on earth has read.” He stayed humble, aware the puzzle wasn’t complete. One reflection captures it: “We have enough pieces to know it’s a picture of beauty, but we wait for more to see the whole.”
He once said, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing… to find the place where all the beauty came from.” A poet echoes, “The journey home is long, but every step sings of the destination.” Life, then, is a road—faith falters, questions linger, yet each mile matters. The play’s final image—Lewis walking into shadow—feels open-ended, urging us to keep going too.
Wrestling Toward Home
Further Up and Further In gives us Lewis unfiltered—a seeker who met doubt with reason, pain with courage, longing with hope. Like Jacob, he wrestled and found blessing. Voices join him—yearning as a compass, mind as a mirror, pain as a teacher, Joy as a guide—blending into a chorus that speaks to us all. Your doubts? They’re not the end. They’re the arena. Step in, wrestle, and see where it leads. Lewis did—and it brought him home.
Resources and Quote Sources
Below is a list of the quotes used in this article, organized by their order of appearance. The playwright of Further Up and Further In draws heavily on C.S. Lewis’s own words from his various works, though some lines are adapted or inspired by his ideas to fit the dramatic context. For clarity, quotes directly from Lewis’s writings are noted, while those crafted for the play are marked as such. Additional quotes from other thinkers are also cited.
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“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1941), p. 26.
- Note: Used directly in Further Up and Further In to express Lewis’s view on longing.
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“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, Chapter 10.
- Note: Adapted in the play to support Lewis’s argument from desire.
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“The soul’s innate yearning is a yearning for home, a place where we belong, where we are understood, where we are loved.”
- Source: Neal A. Maxwell, The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book (1997), p. 158.
- Note: Complements Lewis’s reflections on longing.
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“We’re homesick for a place we’ve never been in this life, a sign of our eternal nature.”
- Source: Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps (2012), p. 12.
- Note: Echoes Lewis’s concept of a transcendent home.
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“If the materialist view is true, our minds must be merely chance arrangements of atoms in skulls. But if that’s so, why trust them to tell us what’s true—including the truth of materialism?”
- Source: Inspired by C.S. Lewis, Miracles (1947), Chapter 3.
- Note: Adapted for Further Up and Further In to reflect Lewis’s critique of materialism.
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“The mind or intelligence we possess is co-equal with eternity itself.”
- Source: Inspired by Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (1938), p. 353.
- Note: Aligns with Lewis’s view of the mind as evidence of design.
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“The very existence of order and intelligence in the universe rebukes the notion of mindless chaos.”
- Source: Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion (1989), p. 29.
- Note: Supports Lewis’s argument for a purposeful universe.
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“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), Chapter 6.
- Note: Featured in the play as Lewis reflects on suffering.
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“The real problem is not why some humble, pious people suffer, but why some do not.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), Chapter 6.
- Note: Used in the play to reframe the problem of pain.
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“The road through struggle always passes through a garden of agony, but because of that, it refines rather than destroys.”
- Source: Jeffrey R. Holland, Broken Things to Mend (2008), p. 23.
- Note: Resonates with Lewis’s view of pain as transformative.
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“Adversity bends iron into steel, tempering the soul for something lasting.”
- Source: Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Your Happily Ever After (2010), p. 15.
- Note: Complements Lewis’s metaphor of suffering as a forge.
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“Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard? ’Tis not so; all is right.”
- Source: William Clayton, “Come, Come, Ye Saints” (1846), hymn.
- Note: Reflects a perspective on suffering akin to Lewis’s.
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“This intense, even painful desire—it feels like a delight, the pleasure called from the expectation that the desire will be fulfilled.”
- Source: Inspired by C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), Chapter 1.
- Note: Adapted for the play to convey Lewis’s concept of Joy.
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“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, Chapter 10.
- Note: Used in the play as a key insight into Lewis’s faith.
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“The Spirit speaks in feelings we sense more than hear, a language of eternity.”
- Source: Russell M. Nelson, Revelation for Our Lives (2018), p. 9.
- Note: Echoes Lewis’s experience of Joy as spiritual.
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“It comes as a pull toward something higher, a memory of what we once knew.”
- Source: Sharon G. Larsen, Ensign (May 2002), p. 41.
- Note: Aligns with Lewis’s idea of Joy as a longing for eternity.
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“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry? (1944), p. 15.
- Note: Featured in the play to mark Lewis’s conversion.
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“Seek learning by study and also by faith.”
- Source: Doctrine and Covenants 88:118.
- Note: Reflects the balance of reason and faith in Lewis’s journey.
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“Reason and revelation are twin pillars—neither stands alone; together, they hold up truth.”
- Source: James E. Faust, Finding Light in a Dark World (1995), p. 22.
- Note: Supports Lewis’s integration of intellect and belief.
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“Faith grows not by ignoring questions, but by seeking answers with both mind and heart.”
- Source: Henry B. Eyring, To Draw Closer to God (1997), p. 58.
- Note: Resonates with Lewis’s approach to faith.
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“All their life in this world had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning the Great Story which no one on earth has read.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (1956), Chapter 16.
- Note: Adapted in the play to convey Lewis’s vision of life’s purpose.
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“We have enough pieces to know it’s a picture of beauty, but we wait for more to see the whole.”
- Source: Dallin H. Oaks, The Great Plan of Happiness (1993), p. 12.
- Note: Aligns with Lewis’s humility about life’s mysteries.
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“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing… to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
- Source: C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (1956), p. 74.
- Note: Reflects Lewis’s lifelong search for meaning.
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“The journey home is long, but every step sings of the destination.”
- Source: Carol Lynn Pearson, The Search (1980), p. 19.
- Note: Echoes Lewis’s view of life as a purposeful journey.
