What I Learned from C.S. Lewis About Death
We will never view death as a reunion if we have never truly longed for that home.
“While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws; and when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”
— Reepicheep, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, you should really take the time. I have two favorites from the series: The Silver Chair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Of the two, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader stands above the rest for me.
This is partly because it offers one of the clearest allegorical pictures of salvation and the hope of heaven, and partly because the story arc itself is simply beautiful. In this book, Lewis paints death not as a grim separation from all that is familiar, but as a reunion with a home we’ve never actually known—a return to the true country of our souls.
I have to begin with a confession that I feel a little foolish writing on this topic. It’s like a childless bachelor writing about effective child-rearing. There’s no way for me to write about death experientially. I am still on this side of Paul’s “dark glass,” and I have yet to see clearly. All I can do is share what I’ve read in Scripture and offer the wisdom of those who have walked further along the path of faith.
The Comfort of the Promise
For the Christian, there is deep comfort in the promise of 2 Corinthians 5:8: “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
Sometimes it feels as though much of modern Western Christianity has traded the enduring hope of the Gospel for vinyl wall verses and marketable slogans, a kind of spiritual Xanax that soothes for a moment but leaves us emptier than before.
This “quick-fix” faith might make us feel peaceful for an instant, but it is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call cheap grace. It's comfort without transformation. True peace, the kind that can look death in the face and call it a homecoming, only comes from walking with Christ through life’s trials. It grows by learning to desire God more than comfort and by cultivating His presence day by day.
Longing for Home
The reason the Apostle Paul could face his own mortality with confidence was not that he took the idea of being “at home with the Lord” lightly. It was because he was already present with the Lord in his daily life. Paul’s life was one of continual communion, obedience, and surrender.
We will never view death as a reunion if we have never truly longed for that home. Like Reepicheep paddling ever eastward with his nose to the sunrise, the believer’s life is one long journey toward Aslan’s Country—toward the One who made us, redeemed us, and calls us home.
