"Thank you for your letter which I have read with great interest and much sympathy. I think you have allowed yourself to be impressed more than is necessary by C.S. Lewis. The whole idea of throwing your life away blindly as an imagined service to Christ is a form of glorifying masochism and of self-abasement before power. It is the same pattern as that of the Russians who made confessions of guilt when prosecuted by Stalin. It is an essentially oriental attitude which Christianity took over when it attributed to God the moral defects of cruel despots. You would be doing a completely wrong act if you abandoned your children in order to practise some spectacular self-sacrifice in a distant country. You should try to bear in mind that there is no reason to believe in Christian doctrines and that much of the Christian ethic is unworthy of self-respecting people. You will find this sort of thing said at greater length in my recent book Why I Am Not a Christian. I have every wish to bring you comfort and reassurance, and I should be glad to know whether you make progress in this direction."