Trying to Make Sense of Everything as a Christian

The author engages in an experiment of trying to be purely objective about the Christian faith, which he has embraced for over thirty years. Halfway through the book his experiment leads him to an unforeseen realization. For the remainder of the book, he then engages in an experiment of trying to be purely persuasive.

The author engages in an experiment of trying to be purely objective about the Christian faith, which he has embraced for over thirty years. Halfway through the book his experiment leads him to an unforeseen realization. For the remainder of the book, he then engages in an experiment of trying to be purely persuasive. Two “ground rules” guided the author throughout this project. First, the writing was to be conducted in a series of one-hour sessions, as measured by a timer. Second, each session had to take up and carry on from whatever point the previous session had reached. From the onset, he did not know where this project would take him; but all along, he felt that was part of the adventure of it.

I am pleased that I was of a generation that could grow up under the influence of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. My mother included The Hobbit among the stories that she and our father read aloud to us children each evening. Then, behold, innocently enough she also followed the gentle encouragement at the end of the book: “If you are interested in Hobbits you will learn a lot more about them in The Lord of the Rings . . .” The first of those books had only recently been published, but she sleuthed it out, and we unwrapped it as a Christmas present. Then, when she and my father began to read, I too set out with the Fellowship on an adventure unfathomably beyond any I had imagined possible. I was in for a double astonishment, as it turned out; for one day, following my conversion to Christianity in my mid-twenties, I learned that Tolkien was of the faith! Not only that, but there was a sort of brotherhood of Christian writers – the Inklings – with whom he associated there in Oxford. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and one of their pre-Inkling forebears, G. K. Chesterton – these became and have remained among my closest spiritual kinsmen, their writings among those most profoundly affecting my life. In my own way, to the extent of my own abilities, I would like to pass on for others a continuance of this blessing.