I like sunlight. Any type of light, for that matter. But sunlight in particular.

A fascinating idea can be found in a simple sunbeam. Two very different authors have noticed it: C.S. Lewis, and Richard Dawkins.

In the last chapter of The God Delusion, Dawkins makes much of the glorious freedom of seeing the world stripped bare by science.“Let me paint one final picture, to convey the power of science to open the mind and satisfy the psyche” he writes. “Our eyes see the world through a narrow slit in the electromagnetic spectrum”, which Dawkins likens to the slit in a burka:

The one inch window of visible light is derisorily tiny compared with the miles and miles of black cloth representing the invisible part of the spectrum… What science does for us is to widen the window. It opens it up so wide that the imprisoning black garment drops away almost completely, exposing our senses to airy and exhilarating freedom.

Science, he says, is more than enough of a replacement for the ‘gap’ left when God is removed. In fact, without God we are freed to lay naked the wonders of the world: more glorious by far.

C. S. Lewis would disagree.

“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”

C.S. Lewis

Though drawing from a similar observation about light, Lewis takes a step back. To understand, we need to step back with him. In all that Dawkins said, both the narrow window of the burka and the wide window of science, we are looking at the world. Looking at the beam, if you like. But “looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”

“The sunbeams of blessing in our lives are bright in and of themselves. They also give light to the ground where we walk. But there is a higher purpose for these blessings. God means for us to do more than stand outside and admire them for what they are. Even more, he means for us to walk into them and see the sun from which they come. If the beams are beautiful, the sun is even more beautiful. God’s aim is not that we merely admire his gifts, but, even more, his glory.”

John Piper

Dawkins is right: it is a glorious thing to behold the wonders of our world. But to only look at the world is to miss the greater delight. To separate from them their still more beautiful source is to miss out profoundly.

Is the world any less beautiful when we acknowledge God as its creator? No, here is where Dawkins shows his myopia: It is far, far more so.

I like sunlight. So then, how much more do I love the sun!