Why Myths Matter

C.S. Lewis & the power of myth

C.S. Lewis was an author, scholar, and theologian — but above all, he was a man who cared deeply about myth. At a time when intellectual seriousness often meant rejecting the world of fantasy, Lewis was an outspoken advocate of mythic stories and their ability to convey meaning that rational explanations cannot fully express.

Lewis lived in a century shaped by scientific materialism, where the role of the imagination was sidelined. But despite this — or perhaps, because of it — he came to see imagination as a fundamental component of wisdom and understanding.

He believed that without myth, the modern mind becomes starved of wonder, morality, and hope.

His belief came from his own personal experience. As a child, Lewis had been stirred by stories and legends in ways that traditional religion could never match. It was only when he came to see Christianity as the fulfillment of the ancient stories he loved that he finally resolved a tension that had lived in him for years.

Today, we explore C.S. Lewis’ ideas about the power of myth. We first look at his personal experience, and then his beliefs about mythic stories themselves — why children need them, why adults need them, and how they convey otherwise indescribable eternal truths…

---

Reminder: this is a teaser of our members-only deep dives.

To support our mission and get our premium content every weekend, upgrade to a paid subscription below for a few dollars per month. You’ll get:

• Full-length, deep-dive articles every Saturday

• Members-only podcasts and exclusive interviews

• The entire archive of great literature, art, and philosophy breakdowns

---

Fulfillment of the Heroic & Divine

Lewis grew up surrounded by books and was drawn to myth from an early age. Norse legends in particular left a lasting impact on him, and he often described the sharp longing he felt when reading about figures like Balder and Siegfried — a sense of heroic tragedy lingered with him long after the stories ended.

In contrast, his early encounters with Christianity felt dry and uninspired. The faith was taught to him as a list of doctrines and duties, and the sense of wonder he had experienced in myth was absent.

But in his early thirties, all this began to change. Through long conversations with his friends like J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis came to see that myth and Christianity were not opposed. In fact, he began to believe that the Gospel story was the fulfillment of what all other myths had been pointing toward. It carried the same emotional and imaginative weight, but unlike the old stories, it had really happened.

This realization impacted his entire way of seeing the world. The landscape of his imagination changed as the stories that once stirred him as a boy began to point toward something more permanent. He started to recognize a continuity between the longing he felt for the divine and heroic in ancient myth, and the fulfillment of that longing in the story of Christ.

Lewis wrote that Christianity worked "on the whole man." It addressed not only the intellect, but the imagination, the memory, the heart. For him, the conversion to Christianity was not the abandonment of myth, but the arrival at the only myth that was real.

It gave new life to his imagination, and a new purpose to his writing…

Why Children Need Myths

Lewis believed that stories serve to shape a child's moral imagination, long before they are capable of understanding abstract moral principles. Through myth, children encounter courage, treachery, sacrifice, forgiveness, and more, all in a way that speaks directly to their developing instincts and emotions.

This is one of the main reasons he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. In the series, Lewis introduces young readers to a world where moral action matters. Edmund, for example, betrays his siblings — and suffers for it. Lucy trusts what she has seen, even when others do not. Aslan chooses to die in place of another, knowing that it will mean both agony and transformation.

None of these episodes are framed as lessons. Instead, they are stories lived out within a fully realized world. As the young reader walks alongside the characters, he or she absorbs the weight of their decisions and sees how their actions affect their growth.

Interestingly, however, Lewis didn't like to characterize his work as allegory. Instead, he described it as a "supposal": an imaginative scenario in which the Son of God might appear in another world, in another form. This gave him room to explore deep theological truths through symbol and story, without turning them into moralizing lessons.

But perhaps most importantly, Lewis refused to simplify the reality of suffering. The world of Narnia includes fear, temptation, loss, and even death. Lewis trusted that children could handle these themes, and that they were in fact essential to a child’s development. A world without danger, he believed, is a world where growth is impossible.

By allowing children to face these challenges from the safe distance of story, myth prepares children for life’s difficulties. Because for Lewis, myth was not an escape from reality — it was a preparation for it:

Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

But Lewis didn’t believe that myths were only for children. In fact, he believed they were even more important for adults, and his reason why is quite unexpected.

For adults face a different kind of danger, a much more silent and insidious kind, which only myths can protect us from — by reawakening us profoundly…