Lewis talks about the difference between looking at something and looking along something as he starts off with an illustration picturing a dark toolshed with a small streak of light coming from a crack on the door. If you’re looking at the light from the side, it’s dusty light in a dark shed, but if you’re looking through the light, you’ll be looking at the trees and the birds outside the shed. The question is: which one of the two perspectives can is seeing this sunbeam more accurately? Concerning this question, Lewis challenges us to be humble in how we view our world and what we perceive to be true.
Lewis says that in our current world today people tend to value the view of looking at things far over the view of looking along things. Although it is true that we are often deceived when we are inside the actual experience, we cannot devalue the truths we can obtain through experience. Lewis uses pain as an example of something that we can only explain once we have experienced it. Lewis says that one cannot have a perfectly objective view of just looking at things. He says, “You can step outside one experience only by stepping inside another.”
Lewis concludes that both way of looking at things is necessary, and not one way of looking is superior to the other. He says, “… we must start with no prejudice for or against either kind of looking.” Which view is more accurate will depend on each situation. They can be both correct in different ways, or they both can be wrong. In the end Lewis says, “We just have to find out.”
Lewis states that we have to be humble in order to obtain more accurate truths. Once we admit and are aware of our ignorance, only then we will be able to start opening new ways of looking at things. We cannot arrogantly state that what we have is the absolute truth. We must ask ourselves how we are looking at things and if they are truly accurate. However, there is no need to be troubled by these uncertainties, because there is a definite truth that surpasses all of our reality. Just as the sun is the uttermost truth and base of both views in the toolshed, God is the one who surpasses our uttermost reality.
I like your concluding thought a lot, Josh. It is both humbling and comforting to know that God is above everything we know or think we know. I also like how you addressed the modern tendency to only look at rather than along a situation. I think it's important to emphasize how we do that and therefore have an incomplete understanding.
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