Narnia: More Than a Fantasy

The shape of Clives Staples Lewis' early life was full of ups and downs. His mother died before he was ten leaving him and his brother alone for hours in a large house in their imaginary worlds of Animal-Land and India. Their imaginations were fueled by the memory of loss and a home rich with books which they read widely. At ten he began attending boarding and preparatory schools where innocence died and he was led into atheism. In the following years, apart from the daily pursuit of study and discourse, of strengthening his atheistic world view, another pursuit awoke. Like a hidden stream, not satisfied with the former, characterized by the imagination of his youth, he began reading mythologies and a longing for an elusive joy.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is an allegory of his Lewis' personal odyssey of the far-off country for which he longed. This story pictures his road from atheism to faith.

Lucy is first to discover the wardrobe and venture into and return from this new world, but Peter, Susan and Edmund are reluctant to believe her tell of the land of Narnia.

"Madness, you mean?" said the Professor quite coolly. "Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad...Logic!" said the professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth..." 1

In a similar observation of prejudice against Christ Himself, C.S. Lewis writes, "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." 2

Much more, this is a story of redemption -- of payment of a life for freedom from bondage of another. The story of Edmund, his treachery, his captivity to the white witch, of Aslan's being sacrificed in his place is an allegory to the greater reality that occurred in a place called Jerusalem many years ago.

As the White Witch affirms: "You have a traitor there Aslan...Have you forgotten the deep magic? The Deep magic engraved on the stone table, engraved upon the scepter of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill."

Aslan with sorrow goes to the table, the place of execution, his great royal head drooped so that his nose nearly touched the grass. "Presently, he stumbled and gave a low moan." After being bound by a cruel mob, he was thickly surrounded "by the whole mob of creatures kicking him, hitting him, spitting on him, jeering at him" The climax of the story is observed by Lucy and Susan as they hear the witches final words, "Despair and die", after which they hid their eyes from the cruel stroke of the stone knife.

But the following morning, "shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself." "There is a magic deeper still which she did not know. When a willing victim was killed in a traitor's stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backward."

As a young man Lewis had stated, "A young atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully" and admitted that he had no more been searching for God than a mouse would search for a cat. Yet in the Trinity Term of 1929 he wrote, "That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me...I gave in, and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England". 3

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was dedicated to Lucy Barfield, his goddaughter, for whom he wished to give the best of gifts, and perhaps to ward off the influences that led him at a young age into atheism and the loss of innocence.

"Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"

1.Lewis, C.S., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, New Yord, HarperCollins Publishers, 1978
2.Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, New York, Macmillan, 1952
3.Lewis, C.S., Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd 1955

Diversity: A Perspective on the World's Wisdom

The voice of wisdom or truth through the ages to a person who rejects God is an interesting and tragic study. The wisdom of the world denies an infinite God; they believe He has no voice, He is silent, He is dead. But every culture cannot live as thought there were no voice. The voice that speaks the 'truth' to our culture is now no longer from the poet or the artist, but now from diversity.

They say or imply that the most important characteristic of a person is their diversity, their difference from others. If you are different, then your "point of view" has authority as you speak out of your diversity. The television shows that give platform to every strange and bizarre world view and behavior feeds this philosophy. The divorced man who left wife and children to be "united" with another man is applauded because he now 'knows' the special needs and wisdom of the homosexual community. At my work we are given "diversity training". This voice has many "saving benefits", but from the perspective of our organization they are ultimately interested in this "wisdom" for protecting the organization from lawsuits brought about by discrimination and hopefully to bring about an atmosphere that is friendly towards workers who are, frankly, diverse; leading to more productivity. But the underlying message is that the worth of an individual is measured by the contribution they make to the organization because of their diversity. So when we judge what God himself condemns, we are speaking against what has become the "voice of god".

Recently the news has been filled with commentary on Supreme Court nominees. Concerning the recent appointment of Samuel Alito, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says his appointment would narrow the high court's view, making it less diverse. An October 31, 2005 CNN article quotes Reid : "This appointment ignores the value of diverse backgrounds and perspectives on the Supreme Court. The president has chosen a man to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, one of only two women on the court. For the third time, he has declined to make history by nominating the first Hispanic to the court."

Proverbs teaches that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. It implies that finite man acknowledges the voice of the infinite God. He comes to learn what is good and evil and meaningful not based on the relative and changing opinions of his peers, but primarily from an infinite reference point -- God. What God calls good is regarded as good. Without this infinite standard there is no wisdom.

But the wisdom of the world denies an infinite God, that he has no voice. They hold that nature is a closed system of causes. The wisdom of the world exists in a tension. In silencing God from their universe, their purpose and existence becomes meaningless, they are reduced to machines. Therefore, the modern philosophies of man, in recoiling from this meaninglessness, in searching for universal meaning to the particulars of their world, is ever in search of a 'voice' of truth. This 'voice' is not necessarily a person, in the past it was a voice that would emerge from the various arts, and can be understood as variations of pantheism. Post-modern philosophy is always some form of pantheism. The pantheism of today has its voice in diversity.

1 Cor. 2:6-7 (ESV)

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.