A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

Passing from their time of rapid courtship and covert marriage into the third chapter—relating their time spent in Hawaii at the naval base during World War II, and in New England at Yale—the author focuses the narrative around the twin poles of events involving Davy that would be seen in hindsight as the first movement of God’s working in their lives to draw them toward Christianity. The first is the author’s vision of a shadow in the shape of a cross while on board a ship that passes over Davy on a passing boat. In thinking of Christianity’s worth, the author admits he is puzzled by the paradox of a seemingly simplistic and backward religion being embraced by some of the most intelligent and respectable people (people like T.S. Eliot, for instance, whose work the author quite loved). The image of Davy enshadowed by the cross sparked the immediate rejection of such a foolish religious point of view in the author’s mind that he nearly dismisses it out of hand.

The second locus of attention is the assault that Davy narrowly avoids during their studies at Yale. While having nothing to do with any kind of blame Davy might place on herself for the event, the experience nevertheless shakes Davy to the core and forces her to confront the reality of sin, evil, and darkness that is present in the human heart. This reflection pushes her to look into the depths of her own heart and to come away with an overwhelming sense of helplessness and desire for something that she couldn’t put a name to. The author notes how if they had known anything about Christianity at the time they would have recognized it as a moment of spiritual importance, but at the time it was a recognition that they simply needed to spend some time in the healing balm of the outdoors. Little did they know that they were soon to encounter at Oxford the very people who would help them begin to see their world in a whole new light, and assist them on the path to a religious conviction that would give them the language with which to speak about such an encounter with suffering and evil.

Chapter 4—appropriately entitled “Encounter with Light,” giving a name to their encounter with the Christian faith—relates the author’s encounter with, and conversion to, Christianity. Key in this experience of discovery and conversion is the figure of Lewis, and even more interesting is that Van and Davy’s first experience with Lewis’s writing is not with a more formal case for seeing the reasonableness of Christianity, but both encounter Lewis first in his fictional writing. Lewis was a professor of medieval literature and an author, and a substantial portion of his published works are fiction of some form or another. Significantly, both start their reading of Lewis (and Christianity in general) with works of fiction.

Davy begins by reading Screwtape Letters, Lewis’s fictional account of the correspondence between a demon-in-training and a mentor demon as they attempt to draw a particular man away from the Church and Christianity and down the path of apathy, self-absorption, and ultimately neglect of God and sin. Van begins his reading with Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, which tell a loosely related series of stories about a philologist by the name of Ransom who ends up encountering other rational species on other planets, and ultimately ends up in the middle of a cosmic, spiritual war between forces of good and evil.

Van and Davy discover that Lewis builds up these fictional worlds with the truth. Davy discovers the reality of spiritual forces working toward the destruction of human beings and sees in that a reflection of her own spiritual experiences of sin and suffering, with something that has gone wrong in the world. For his part, Van is confronted by the claim that perhaps Christianity is not so parochial after all and that maybe it’s big enough to fit into, and even encompass, the whole of the cosmos in some mysterious and hidden way. Both feel an immediate kinship with Lewis and his frame of reference, and as they dive more and more into discovering what Christianity teaches and has to offer, they fall more in love with Lewis’s writing.

This providential encounter with Lewis’s writing at a pivotal point in their life, while living in the same city as the man, pushes Van to write him letters to seek answers to his questions. This initial outreach leads to a lifelong friendship that will sustain the author through the tragedy yet to come in his own life and will also be a comfort to Lewis himself in his later years when he deals with the tragic death of his wife. Their search for the ultimate answers to questions they had long held seemed to be emerging within the claims of Christianity, and it is an exhilarating and frightening experience. They were now contemplating The Ability to Change and Grow Within a Relationship.

At this point, Davy and Van’s experience of what believing the Christian message could mean begins to diverge. The author admits that at this point, the interest and thrill are more intellectual than anything else, a realization of finally coming to know the truth about things. For Davy, however, the interest is more an emotional drive to find ultimate meaning for life and, along with it, to receive consolation and security—and ultimately forgiveness—in an uncertain world. In the end, Davy ends up leaping first into belief after becoming convinced that the Christian message was a message not just of goodness and beauty but also of truth.

Van cannot bring himself to leap so quickly, noting that their encounter with Christ and the Christian faith was the only thing that had thus far breached the walls of their Shining Barrier. In retrospect, this was never in doubt since the Shining Barrier was meant to protect the bond and relationship in which there was only room for two. Now that God had become part of the equation, the barrier would inevitably need to be transformed, resulting in the short period of resentment and frustration that Van experiences before his conviction also draws him into the arms of the Church.