Podcast Summary: C.S. Lewis on Christianity — Enjoyment and Contemplation

Podcast: Hillsdale College Podcast Network Superfeed
Episode Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Jeremiah Regan & Juan Davalos
Guest Lecturer: Dr. Michael Ward

Episode Overview

This episode delves into C.S. Lewis’s distinction between enjoyment and contemplation—a key theme that shapes not only his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, but also his wider approach to Christianity. The discussion traces how Lewis distinguishes between experiencing life “from the inside” versus analyzing it “from the outside,” and how this perspective explains both Lewis's understated account of his conversion and his broader theological vision.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Distinction: Enjoyment vs. Contemplation

• Enjoyment: Being immersed in an experience, participating in it fully from within.
• Contemplation: Standing outside and observing or analyzing the experience.

Illustrative Analogy:

• Lewis’s essay, Meditation in a Tool Shed, offers a vivid metaphor:
  • Looking at a beam of sunlight in a dark shed = contemplation.
  • Standing in the beam, seeing the world illuminated by it = enjoyment.

Quote (Dr. Ward, explaining Lewis):

“Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are very different experiences. Now looking along the beam is what Samuel Alexander had called enjoyment, and looking at the beam is what he had called contemplation.” (17:41)

2. Application in Christian Life

• Lewis argues both approaches are valid, but insists enjoyment is primary, especially in the Christian life.
• Christian spirituality is less about analyzing doctrine and more about being "in the beam" of participation—immersed in the reality of Christ.

Quote (Lewis, via Dr. Ward):

“Christ's Spirit is I above me and within me and below me and all about me. That's how Lewis understands the Christian's relationship with Christ's Spirit. It's immersive, it's to be enjoyed, it's to be participated in.” (22:26)

3. Surprised by Joy: The “Brief” Conversion

• Lewis’s autobiography offers only a terse two-page account of his actual Christian conversion—often criticized as disappointingly brief.
  • Theistic conversion (to belief in God) is described dramatically; Christian conversion is almost perfunctory.
• John Wayne (Lewis’s former student) critiques this, calling it “as lame and unconvincing as it could possibly be.” (07:32)

Key passage from Surprised by Joy (read aloud by Ward):

“I was driven to Whipsnade Zoo one sunny morning. When we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And when we reached the zoo, I did.” (12:25)
“...It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.” (12:58)

• Dr. Ward argues this brevity is intentional:
  • Deep conversion is “enjoyed, not contemplated.” Lewis couldn’t step outside to analyze it mid-experience.

Quote (Dr. Ward):

“The sinful personality which there undergoes conversion is undergoing a conversion which is principally enjoyed, not contemplated. Lewis remarks that when he came to a belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, there was nothing of him left over or outside the act.” (27:25)

4. The Literary and Spiritual Structure: Two Edens

• The book is “bookended” by Eden:
  • As a child, Lewis could contemplate a “toy garden.”
  • Post-conversion, he is “held by the garden”—no longer outside, but inside the experience.
• This reflects the move from contemplation to enjoyment, the heart of Lewis’s transformation.

Memorable Image:

“Eden is now a garden that holds him. He can step into this garden.” (33:45)

5. Lewis’s Reticence and Spiritual Modesty

• Lewis is reticent to analyze or dramatize the conversion itself—he “refuses to cast pearls before swine.”
• Instead, he crafts the narrative to draw the reader to join him, not just observe him.

Quote (Lewis, in The Weight of Glory):

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I'm almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you.” (36:19)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the importance of both approaches:

  “You need to look at things and contemplate about them, but you also need to… enjoy them.” — Juan Davalos (03:00)

• On “the most reluctant convert”:

  "I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." — C.S. Lewis (10:10)

• On the inadequacy of introspection:

  “When you interrupt a hope, or for that matter, a love or even a lust, and watch yourself hoping or loving or lusting, your introspection doesn't find nothing... it finds precisely what is left behind by the suspension of those activities.” — Dr. Ward (19:54)

• On the garden as symbol:

  “At the start of the book, remember, he had held a garden. Now the garden holds him. He has moved from the logic of contemplation to the logic of enjoyment.” — Dr. Ward (38:41)

• On spiritual knowledge:

  “There's no question of learning a subject, but of steeping ourselves in a personality, acquiring a new outlook and temper, breathing a new atmosphere.” — Dr. Ward referencing Lewis (23:56)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:41–03:13 — Introduction to enjoyment and contemplation; Lewis’s worldview as a unified system
• 03:50–07:32 — Surprised by Joy: Lewis’s spiritual memoir and its structure
• 10:10 — Dramatic account of theistic (not Christian) conversion
• 12:25 — The actual Christian conversion—“Whipsnade Zoo” passage
• 16:16–21:11 — The toolshed analogy: “looking along” vs. “looking at”
• 22:26–24:54 — Experiencing the Holy Spirit: participation over analysis
• 27:14–29:02 — The primacy of enjoyment in Christian experience
• 31:26–33:56 — Symbolism of Eden and “the garden that holds him”
• 36:19–38:41 — Literary reticence, spiritual modesty, “The Weight of Glory”
• 38:58–40:28 — The ultimate shift: from watching for joy to being immersed in it

Conclusion

This episode beautifully unpacks a core pillar of Lewis’s thought: that spiritual reality is ultimately participatory. We are summoned not just to analyze faith, but to enter it—to move from regarding the light “from outside” to stepping “into the beam,” where contemplation ceases and enjoyment begins. Lewis’s understated story of conversion is thus not a weakness, but rather a literary and spiritual necessity—a mirror of the very thing he sought to express: the immersion and transformation found only inside the truth.