Abstract truth tends to remain on the surface. Real transformation comes when we get concrete and personal. And I’m no artist, real or otherwise. But I am a teacher and a preacher. And I love to teach and preach. And reading Lewis on the danger of mistaking the means for the end challenges me precisely at this point. I know how easy it is for serving God to replace knowing God. And so here are four ways that I try to fight for joy and reality and God’s centrality in the face of my own love for teaching.

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” Whenever I teach my course on C.S. Lewis at Bethlehem College & Seminary, I always include his book The Great Divorce. I love the book because of the way it clarifies the nature of the Choice that confronts each of us every day.

In the book, the narrator rides a bus from a dreary, hellish town into heaven, where angels and saints converse with the condemned spirits, imploring them to turn from their sin and enter in. The damned ghosts are essentially exaggerated caricatures of us, designed to show us the temptations and snares that we face in this life. The ghosts are damned because “there is always something they prefer to joy — that is, to reality” (71). Lewis insists that there are innumerable forms of the Choice, some obvious, some not so much. But one of the most frightening — Lewis calls it “the subtlest of all snares” — is the temptation to mistake a means for the end.

Anyone who speaks or writes about God for a living is likely to feel this temptation keenly. Lewis himself faced it regularly in his ministry as an apologist. But before we explore how this temptation takes shape for preachers, teachers, and other communicators of God’s word, consider how Lewis illustrates it in The Great Divorce.

Two Famous Artists

Lewis introduces this temptation through his guide in The Great Divorce, George MacDonald. As MacDonald tells the narrator, there is an apologetics form — people who are “so interested in proving the existence of God that they come to care nothing for God Himself” (73). There is an evangelistic form — people who are “so occupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought for Christ.” There is a philanthropic form — people who organize charities and yet have lost all love for the poor. In each case, we mistake the means (apologetics, evangelism, generosity) for the end (desiring God, treasuring Christ, loving our neighbor).

But the book’s extended reflection on the danger of mistaking the means for the end comes through an interaction between two famous artists, one of them a ghost and one of them a heavenly spirit. Their conversation reveals characteristics of the “real artist” (who mistakes the means for the end) and of the “true artist” (who, by the grace of God, does not).

Real Artist

The “real” artist (in the worldly sense) sees the beautiful landscape and immediately wants to paint it. Once he’s had his (brief) look, he’s ready to get to the important work of demonstrating his talent. He’s reluctant to take the time to simply soak in the surroundings. When the Solid Spirit says, “At present your business is to see. Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed,” (84), the ghostly artist acquiesces with a dull voice. He thinks only about how quickly he’ll be allowed to take up his brush and paint.

“The true artist fundamentally loves the Thing that he tells.”

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What’s more, as a “real” artist, he’s interested in the country only for the sake of painting it (that is, he has mistaken the means for the end). He’s grown out of his initial love for his subject, the naive delight he took in what he painted when he first began. Now he’s interested in “paint for paint’s sake.” He has curved in on himself, descending from love of the Thing he tells, to love of his own telling, to love of himself as the teller. That is, he’s become interested primarily in his own personality and reputation.

He desires to meet and dwell among the distinguished people, the great and famous artists like Cézanne and Monet (85). In the end, he refuses to go to the Mountains out of concern for his reputation on earth.

TRUE ARTIST

The true artist, on the other hand, fundamentally loves the Thing that he tells. He loves to see and feast on the endless good that is in God. Light is the thing, his first love, and he loves painting only as a means of telling about light (84). And he never outgrows the simplicity of this first love. He gladly looks forward to drinking from the fountain of humility that makes him forget all proprietorship in his own works (85).

He is able to enjoy his own painting without pride or false modesty, because he has been truly humbled, and is therefore able to delight in the Glory that flows into everyone, and back from everyone. He cares little for his prominence and his reputation among posterity. He knows that he truly paints only for an audience of One, and his deepest delight is in the fact that he is “known, remembered, and recognized by the only Mind that can give a perfect judgment” (86).

Lessons for Teachers

Abstract truth tends to remain on the surface. Real transformation comes when we get concrete and personal. And I’m no artist, real or otherwise. But I am a teacher and a preacher. And I love to teach and preach. And reading Lewis on the danger of mistaking the means for the end challenges me precisely at this point. I know how easy it is for serving God to replace knowing God. And so here are four ways that I try to fight for joy and reality and God’s centrality in the face of my own love for teaching.

Remember God’s presence.

First, I regularly remind myself that I am always in God’s presence. As theologian John Webster put it, “We never talk about God behind his back.” It’s striking that the ghostly artist in The Great Divorce opens the conversation by taking the Lord’s name in vain.

“God” said the Ghost, glancing round the landscape.
“God what?” asked the Spirit.
“What do you mean, ‘God what?’” asked the Ghost.
“In our grammar God is a noun.”
“Oh — I see. I only meant ‘By Gum’ or something of the sort. I meant . . . well, all this. It’s . . . it’s . . . I should like to paint this.” (82–83

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