A Journey Toward the Light - Scene 1

From the testimony of Van and Davy Vanauken, Chapter IV, Encounter the Light, from their book, A Severe Mercy....

....We were welcomed to Oxford by one Lew Salter and his pretty wife, Mary Ann.

Lew, a brilliant theoretical physicist, was in my college. He and Mary Ann were, also, we discovered later, keen Christians. Through them we met, almost at once, their English friends Peter and Bee Campion--Bee, tall and swift, impatient of nonsense; Peter, just out of the Royal Navy, pipe-smoking, nice grin, bright blue eyes. Peter was a physicist, too. At the same time we met another friend of theirs, Thad March, lanky, witty, intelligent, who was reading English.

These were our first friends, close friends. More to the point, perhaps, all five were keen, deeply committed Christians.

But we liked them so much that we forgave them for it. We began, hardly knowing we were doing it, to revise our opinions of Christians.

Our fundamental assumption, which we had been pleased to regard as intelligent insight, had been that all Christians were necessarily stuffy, hide-bound, or stupid---people to keep our distance from. We had kept our distance so successfully, indeed, that we didn't know anything about Christians.

Now the assumption soundlessly collapsed. The sheer quality of the Christians we met at Oxford shattered our stereotype and thenceforward a reference in a book or conversation to someone
as being a Christian called up an entirely new image. Moreover, the astonishing fact sank home: our own contemporaries could be at highly intelligent, civilized, witty, fun to be with--and Christian...

We, then, were not Christians. Our friends were. But we liked them anyhow.

More of their journey...see Scene 2.