After the infirmary quiets, the Matron permits Lewis a short escorted visit to the chapel before evening duties resume. The attendant accompanies him, while Parsley remains under her direct medical care.
The Matron
You will go directly there and return directly here. The attendant will remain with you, and you are still confined under observation.
The attendant leads Lewis through the stone corridors into the chapel. Evening light lies across the ordered rows of seats, where hymnbooks wait beneath the silent authority of expectation.
Smewgy is already at the front, arranging hymnbooks with exacting care. His grey head and large spectacles remain turned toward the page until the footsteps reach him.
Smewgy
Good evening, gentlemen. Do you intend to attend the service, Lewis, or merely to observe it? The distinction may prove more important than the seating plan.
The attendant waits discreetly by the chapel door. Between the prescribed prayers, the numbered seats, and Smewgy’s measured courtesy, private uncertainty acquires the shape of a public question.
Smewgy
Forms inherited from others can carry a boy toward belief, or merely teach him how belief is expected to look. Which possibility brings you here?
✓ Quest Accepted
Establish whether the chapel permits honest questioning of inherited belief
“I answer Smewgy honestly about my doubts”
FAILURE (Fair Theology, rolled -2)
C. S. Lewis
I have doubts, sir. I cannot honestly say that I believe, though I cannot honestly say that I disbelieve. I do not know what follows from that uncertainty.
The answer leaves the chapel no clearer. Smewgy closes one hymnbook with precise fingers, while the attendant remains by the door and listens without appearing to listen.
Smewgy
You have stated uncertainty, Lewis, but not examined it. Doubt may be honest, yet honesty alone does not make an argument sound.
Smewgy
He has offered sincerity where theology requires distinctions. If pressed carelessly, I shall teach him only to conceal himself more neatly.
Smewgy gestures toward the nearest pew rather than the altar. The invitation is courteous, but it changes the encounter from confession to examination, with Lewis expected to defend a position he has not formed.
Smewgy
Sit, gentlemen. We shall not manufacture belief, nor praise confusion merely because it is candid. Tell me one reason for your doubt, and no more until that reason has been tested.
The attendant shifts his stance at the door, ready to escort Lewis back directly afterward. Smewgy waits beside the orderly pews, having made repetition impossible without first supplying an actual reason.
“I give Smewgy one reason for doubt”
SUCCESS (Fair Theology, rolled +1)
C. S. Lewis
One reason for my doubt, sir, is the suffering of the innocent. If God is good and powerful, I cannot see why children should endure cruelty without deserving it.
Smewgy remains beside the pew, his spectacles catching the chapel’s evening light. The attendant watches from the door, while the quiet gives Lewis’s question an unusual weight.
Smewgy
That is a serious reason, gentlemen. You do not deny God; you question whether suffering is compatible with divine goodness and power.
Smewgy
He has not offered a fashionable objection. He has placed moral experience against theology, where a careless answer would be an insult.
Smewgy
We must distinguish what suffering proves from what it merely makes difficult to understand. It may challenge a belief in providence, but it does not by itself establish that no good purpose can exist beyond our sight.
He opens the hymnbook again but does not direct Lewis to read. His courtesy leaves the question intact, neither dismissing the misery Lewis names nor allowing it to become a conclusion by force of feeling.
Smewgy
You have given one reason, and given it precisely. We may now examine whether the existence of suffering disproves God, or only disproves certain ideas about what goodness must look like.
Quest Complete
Establish whether the chapel permits honest questioning of inherited belief
Skill Upgrade: Theology Fair→Good