The Light in Our EyesSample

MORE TO THE STORY

When I was in college, I traveled abroad to study creative writing and literature at Oxford University. It had been three years since I seriously attended church. I considered myself a post-Bible, post-religion Christian who was more into spirituality than Christianity.

During my first semester at Oxford, I took some tutorials about early children’s litera­ture, one of them focusing on British author C. S. Lewis. My tutor suggested I read several biographies of Lewis. For Lewis, formerly an atheist, coming to faith in Christ was less about understanding rigorous arguments, though there was some of that. It was more about understanding the way the Bible gave us space to dream. For Lewis, joy wasn’t a feeling. It was an “inconsolable longing” for a “far-off country” yet to come. Christianity was the only vision of life that explained and encouraged us to explore that joyful feeling.

Up until this point, Christianity, as I’d understood it, had closed the door to my deepest longings. But Lewis showed me how it’s atheism and other religions that kill our deep, long-forgotten dreams about love, freedom, and beauty. The Christian vision—the way he described it—swung the door open to the world of true love, true free­dom, and true beauty rather than shut it.

The Lamb of God—Jesus—rescued us from God’s judgment. But there’s more to the story. We’ve been invited out of slavery to sin and into something else: God’s dreams. The offer of Jesus’s free rescue is great news. But if we can’t answer the question “What’s He rescuing us for?” we don’t have a very compelling offer.

Christianity dares us to desire. It dares us to dream. This was new to me: What if Jesus, as Lewis noted, found our desires not too strong but too weak? What if Jesus wasn’t the enemy of my deepest, most profound dreams? What if Jesus came to restore them?

Jesus came that we might have life “and have it to the full” (John 10:10). I had not before associated abundance, joy, and life with Christian faith. I began to realize this was Jesus’s dream for each of us: That we might experience His beauty. That we might embody that beauty in a community. That we might extend that beauty to others.

How does viewing Christianity as an invitation for something rather than only from something change the way you live?