In a talk on C.S. Lewis, John Piper shared that both Tolkien and Lewis believed that the chord stories strike with the depths of our being are a clue that there is a true story.
Notice especially the bold.
One decisive influence was J. R. R. Tolkein, author of The Lord of the Rings. He argued like this, as Lewis did for the rest of his life: When this Joy—this stab of inconsolable longing—is awakened by certain powerful “myths” or “stories,” it is evidence that behind these myths there is a true Myth, a true Story that really exists, and that the reason the Joy is desirable and inconsolable is that it’s not the real thing. The True Myth, the Real Joy is the original shout, so to speak, and the stories and myths of human making are only echoes.
Tolkein pressed the analogous truth for Christianity. And Lewis did the same years later: “A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread: he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating, and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.” In other words, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Read the rest of Piper’s talk here.
See also, Without A Dark Introduction, There Are No Fairy Tales, C.S. Lewis posts
What a great quote.