We do this thing at LeTourneau as we interview people for faculty positions – “Tell us about your faith journey.” Some call it giving your testimony. Many candidates branch off along two main paths: (1) I’ve always been Christian, since I was a small child – I can’t remember anything else; or (2) they relate a very specific moment – God appeared to me here, in this way, and I just knew, bang.
Not so for me. It was a gradual awakening – as slow as awakening from slumber after a lazy Sunday afternoon nap – when exactly are we awake, when asleep, and where is the changeover? Of course, in my spiritual awakening, there was little relaxation and a double portion of angst and self-flagellation/interrogation.
My story emanates from a time of personal and relational brokenness. Of coming to belief and faith in the midst of personal crisis in my late 30s. Tim Keller taught me to doubt my doubts. He articulated compelling answers to many of the modern questions that often keep people on the outside looking in. What is sin all about? Why do we suffer? Why did we need the sacrifice of Christ? He gave me the beginnings of the logic behind it all, from a relational posture that was just what I needed.
Keller did something else that was wonderful – he introduced me to C.S. Lewis. I am an engineer. Analytical. Most things are black and white. Technical.
Mere Christianity met me exactly where I was. The whole book moved me – there’s a reason I call myself a Keller/Lewis Christian if asked about my denomination. I encountered it when I was not yet a believer. Yet, in those weeks and months, I was beginning that process of waking up. It was like a bracing splash of crisp cold water, right to the face.
This post leans into a place where (for me) the technical and the faith blend in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Let me lay down three powerful quotes that grabbed me that first time and on my latest reread.
Quote 1: “The Law of Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are.”
How often either in righteousness or pride had I thought myself in the right, and another as someone who had wronged me greatly. And yet, what right is there, really? What moral ground did I have to stand on to think another so vile? I can be a bit of a judgmental person, which needs other parts of the gospel to completely root out, but this quote gives me great pause.
As an engineer, I think in specifications and standards. When we design the structural frame of a building, we don’t just build it however we feel like it. We have:
- Load standards (ASCE specifications that detail dead load, live load, snow, and wind)
- Material standards (ASTM requirements for different grades of steel)
- Code requirements that specify the strength and behavior of various members (AISC Steel Specifications)
- Safety factors (based on consequence of failure)
These aren’t arbitrary. They’re grounded in physics, in reality, in the way the universe actually works. Written by humans, they are trying to capture the reality behind it all.
Lewis was showing me that moral reasoning works the same way. When I argue that someone has wronged me, I’m appealing to a standard that exists outside both of us—just like when I calculate whether a beam will hold, I’m appealing to material properties and behavior that exist whether I believe in them or not.
Quote 2: “…this year, or this Month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people.”
This quote speaks directly to what has become one of my life verses – Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” I certainly can recognize that, as much as I’d like to be a good person, I have an awfully hard time being one.
In structural engineering, before we can get to the detailed calculations of capacity and demand, we must predict the fundamental behavior. If the actual behavior differs radically from what we’ve assumed (think, for example, about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was torn apart under a relatively light wind in a mode no engineer had considered), failure occurs. There’s the ideal (what the structure should do) and the reality (what it actually does under load). If there is a big difference between the ideal and the actual, that’s where failures happen.
Lewis was pointing to the same gap in human behavior. We know what we should do (the ideal), we consistently fail to do it (the reality), and that gap tells us something profound about human nature, and how the universe itself works. Lewis (and Paul) are exposing a flaw in one of our fundamental assumptions – that if we know what is right, we’ll do it. When we predict the behavior and run the experiment, the data never lines up.
Quote 3: “They know the Law of Nature; they break it.”
Right here. From the beginning, Lewis grabs on to me, won’t let me go. I am an analytical person – it all has to add up for me. This described my experience in an eerily exact way – “They know the law of nature; they break it.”
When we claim there is anything good in the world, where is there any room to make that stand except at the feet of God? For me this was convicting then and convicting now.
Any basic argument or choice between right and wrong hinges on this – there must actually be a right against which we judge. This is quite similar to how engineering works – we have plans, standards, and design criteria. With Lewis, it felt like I was being given a glimpse of the engineering drawings behind how things work.
The rest of Mere Christianity unpacks other portions of the code behind life. Ultimately, the Bible becomes our master written document, but others like Mere Christianity, The Reason for God, even some of the children’s books we’ve been examining along the way here, such as Mike Mulligan or Frog and Toad, can become supplementary documentation that helps with our approach to the whole.
Matter and energy. Cause and effect. Physical laws that can be measured and tested. And for engineering problems, that’s sufficient. But when I tried to apply that same framework to moral questions, it fell apart. If humans are just matter in motion, just atoms following physical laws, then “right” and “wrong” are just preferences—like vanilla vs. chocolate.
But life doesn’t really make sense that way. When someone lies to me, or worse yet, if I’ve lied to someone else, I don’t just prefer truthfulness—I believe lying is actually wrong. When I see injustice, or again, when I perceive myself to be a part of it, I don’t just dislike it—I believe it ought not to be. Lewis showed me that this “oughtness” can’t be explained by artifacts of the material world. You can describe what is (physics), but you can’t derive what ought to be from physical laws alone. The moral law points beyond nature to a moral lawgiver.
I can’t pinpoint the exact day I became a Christian—remember, it was a gradual awakening. But I can tell you that Lewis gave me the intellectual permission to consider faith seriously. Keller showed me that Christianity could answer my relational and emotional questions. Lewis showed me it could answer my analytical and logical questions. Together, they made belief possible for someone like me—someone who needed both heart and head engaged, who couldn’t separate technical rigor from spiritual commitment.
In the engineering programs I help steward, we’re forming t-shaped engineers—technical depth, relational breadth, Christ-centered purpose. But here’s what I’ve learned: you can’t build Christ-centered purpose on an intellectually shaky foundation. Sometimes I encounter a student who’s been told their whole life that science and faith are at odds. That rigorous thinking leads away from God. That belief requires checking your brain at the door. Lewis destroys that false dichotomy.
To wrap this one up, I’ll remind us of three points that we can share with others – students, friends, family – who might be in the process of ‘waking up.’ Maybe these are the crisp, cold water that is just what they need. First, when we argue that we’ve been wronged, we need to be reasoning from a place where right and wrong actually exist. This isn’t as easy as it first appears. Second, if we can get to the place where we agree that right and wrong are in fact actual things, can we see that we aren’t very good at actually doing the right ones? That we aren’t nearly as good as we wish we were, and as good as we wish others were? And finally, perhaps ask them what they think ought to be. Is that how it usually is? That might be an entry into a really productive discussion – a place to start uncovering the specifications of how we are made and what and who we are actually designed for.
