A note to Sheldon Vanauken on whether he should study theology From C.S. Lewis.

St. Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I should have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one form the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’: scared things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology would do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

Published letters as a genre, is still underrated.

Lewis, C.S.. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis. Harper One, Toller Fratrum, New York, 2008.