The Choice - The Gap

Thoughts of Sheldon Vanauken written to C S Lewis when he realized he could not reject Jesus.   They are from Vanauken’s book A Severe Mercy. He battled whether to believe or not, whether he had the courage to fling himself across the gap towards Jesus, recognizing that indeed there was a gap between himself and Christ.

“I choose to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost – in Christ, my lord and my God.  Christianity has the ring, the feel of unique truth.  Of essential truth.  By it, life is made full instead of empty, meaningful instead of meaningless.  Cosmos becomes beautiful at the Centre, instead of chillingly ugly beneath the lovely pathos of spring.  But the emptiness, the meaninglessness, and the ugliness can only be seen, I think, when one has glimpsed the fullness, the meaning and the beauty.  It is when heaven and hell have both been glimpsed that going back is impossible.  But to go on seemed impossible, also.  A glimpse is not a vision.  A choice was necessary:  and there is no certainty.  One can only choose a side.  So I – I now choose my side:  I choose beauty; I choose what I love.  But choosing to believe is believing.  It’s all I can do: choose.  I confess my doubts and ask my Lord Christ to enter my life.  I do not know God is, but I do say:  Be it unto me according to Thy will.  I do not affirm that I am without doubt, I do but ask for help, having chosen, to overcome it.  I do but say: Lord, I believe – help Thou mine unbelief.”

 
The Gap - Vanauken's sonnet about his choice.

Did Jesus live?  And did he really say
The burning words that banish mortal fear?
And are they true? Just this is central, here
The Church must stand or fall.  It’s Christ we weigh.

All else is off the point: the Flood, the Day
Of Eden, or the Virgin Birth – Have done!
The Question is, did God send us the Son
Incarnate crying Love!  Love is the Way!

Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap.  Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground, and worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe.