C.S. Lewis And The Call To CreateSýnishorn

“What I owe to [the Inklings] is incalculable. Is there any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?” - C. S. Lewis

As we’ve seen modeled in the life of C. S. Lewis, reimagining our work as a response to the redemptive work of Christ changes our motivations for creating and the products we choose to create. As we’ll see today, viewing our work as a calling from God also changes how we create.

The Bible offers a tremendous amount of insight into how we as Christians should work: We should work with excellence, integrity, diligence, and graciousness. But what’s often overlooked is the need to work and create in community with other believers. We must surround ourselves with fellow Christians who can help “renew our minds” (Romans 12:2) with eternal perspective as we create.

Again, C. S. Lewis provides a model for what this looks like. During the 1930s and 1940s, Oxford was home to some of the world’s greatest Christian minds, including Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield, and most famously, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and his brother Warnie Lewis. This group of friends, known simply as the Inklings, shared a love of the Lord and literature, each of them following God’s call to create through their writings. But they did not create in isolation. For nearly two decades, the group met on a near-weekly basis to read aloud their latest writings, get feedback from the other members of the group, drink a pint of beer, and help renew each other’s minds with regards to their Christian faith.

Without constant communion with other believers to refresh their eternal perspectives, Tolkien may have never completed The Lord of the Rings and Lewis may have never finished The Chronicles of Narnia. Like these creators before us, we need regular communion with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to renew our minds and refresh the lenses through which we view the world as we work.

If our work is to feel like a vocation—a true calling on our lives—we must be willing to follow the example of C. S. Lewis and reimagine our work as service to God and others. When we do, we will find the redemptive work of the True Aslan, Jesus Christ, changing our motivations for work, the products we choose to create, and how we go about our work each day, in community with other Christ-followers..

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