This year I sat down and read The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time as an adult. Memories of my mum reading at the breakfast table flooded back, but as I was re-reading, I didn’t merely relive long-forgotten stories. I also encountered gospel lessons which had eluded me as a child.
C. S. Lewis saw “imagination as a truth-bearing faculty”; he sought to illuminate what is by writing about what is not.[1] Narnia is (literally) worlds apart from our own lives, yet through this otherworldly reality Lewis communicates glorious gospel truths. Just as our world sings of God’s eternal power when we pause to listen (Rom 1:20), so too, in Lewis’s novels, do the words and actions of talking animals.
What follows are seven choice theological pickings from my recent re-read—one from each book.
The King Knows Our Grief
In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory witnesses the dawn of Narnia, breathed into life by the divine Lion, Aslan. But his hope that Aslan might heal his mother shrivels as he remembers he is responsible for bringing evil into this new world. With his head lowered to the Lion’s paws, he blurts:
“But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” … in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.
“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great.” (131–132)
King Aslan knows Digory’s grief; God knows ours. The all-powerful King places our tears in his bottle (Ps 56:8). The Resurrection and the Life weeps in the face of death (Jn 11:33–35). And the Sovereign Maker condescends to take on human flesh to one day wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev 21:4). Until then, he calls us to lay our anxieties at his feet—just like Digory (1 Pet 5:7). For (wonder of wonders) our King knows our grief.
Jesus Is Liar, Lunatic or Lord
When Lucy tells her siblings she’s sipped tea with a faun in a snow-laden forest in a far-away land she found by travelling through a wardrobe (in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) it seems a little far-fetched. Even after Edmund has discovered Narnia’s existence, he keeps it to himself, and Peter and Susan, worried there’s something wrong with their younger sister, tell the Professor. His response surprises them: “how do you know … that your sister’s story is not true?” (54).
Lucy’s adventure so closely resembles the stuff of fiction that her siblings don’t consider the possibility it could be real. Presented with an otherworldly reality, they immediately seek a worldly explanation.
In a similar vein, we might find the story of a miracle-working, crucified and resurrected Nazarene a little far-fetched. Perhaps, we think, there’s some other explanation. But in our bid to avoid weighing a seemingly impossible possibility, we find ourselves joining Peter and Susan’s folly. What the Professor says next is almost verbatim what Lewis writes elsewhere about Jesus’ claims to divinity:
“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. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.” (56)
With Jesus there are likewise only three possibilities: Jesus is liar, lunatic, or Lord. “[L]et us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher”, Lewis writes in Mere Christianity. “He has not left that open to us”.[2]
We’ve Only Lost Our Self-Conceit
The Horse and His Boy tells the story of Bree, who, since being kidnapped as a foal, has longed to return to his home country of Narnia. “For Narnia and the North” (22) has been his refrain as he has doggedly travelled with his fellow companions, yearning for the land where “an hour’s life there is better than a thousand years in Calormen” (17). However, as he continues the long journey home, he begins to doubt whether he is fit to enter.
When he reaches the border, he stops moving forward altogether.
How can I ever show my face among the free Horses of Narnia?—I who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin! (119)
We are not too dissimilar to this talking horse. As pilgrims on this long journey home, we long for that heavenly land where one day is better than a thousand elsewhere (Ps 84:10). But doubts intrude and our footsteps slow: how can I ever show my face among the saints?—I who failed or doubted or sinned in such a grievous way!
Perhaps, like Bree, we need to hear the Hermit’s words in our despondency: “my good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit” (120).
Our entry into our heavenly land was never dependent on us. Our God has saved us; he will bring us safely home (Php 1:6). So when we are weighed down and discouraged by our sin or doubts, we can take heart. It is not our heavenly country we have lost grasp of, but only our self-conceit; we are not so deserving as we think. Remember Jesus’ promise: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (Jn 6:37), and plod on.
Help Is On the Way
Living on Earth, it seems to Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy only a short while ago that they sat on the thrones of prosperous Narnia. But for its inhabitants, the stories of old have long been forgotten. Under the reign of evil King Miraz, the talking animals of Narnia have been driven deep into the woods. When the eponymous Prince Caspian joins them, fleeing for his life, they plan a war to restore Narnia—a battle they cannot win alone.
Their situation soon worsens. Trapped and wounded, they hold council and Nikabrik the Black Dwarf snarls:
no help has come … are you still asking us to hang our hopes on Aslan and King Peter and all the rest of it? (143)
While we may not snarl in unbelief, we often ask that same question of Jesus: where is he? We might plead with God for help, but as time passes—our situation unchanging, our prayers unanswered and God nowhere tangibly present—our despair grows. The stories of what God has done in human history, in the lives of others and ourselves—most chiefly on the cross—fade into old wives’ tales.
But contrast this with the faith of Trufflehunter:
I stand by Aslan. Have patience, like us beasts. The help will come. It may even now be at the door. (141)
Trufflehunter cannot see yet believes (Jn 20:29). How can he be confident in the face of such mounting odds? He remembers: “I tell you … we don’t forget … I’m a badger, what’s more, and we hold on” (65, 149). When almost everyone has forgotten the stories of old, Trufflehunter remembers. Thoughts of Aslan fuel his hope—indeed, though Trufflehunter cannot see it, the reader knows Aslan has been coming to his aid all along; that Peter and Edmund, even now, stand outside the door.
So it is for us. If we are to hold on to the hope set before us—even when help seems so long in coming—we must remember. Remember our Father need not feel present for him to be near; we need not see his plan for him to remain sovereign. Our hope will be vindicated. Help is on the way.
It Was Never Really About Aslan
In the final pages of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy and Edmund sob as Aslan reveals they will never return to Narnia (188). It is not so much the magical land for which they grieve, but that they will be separated from Aslan forever in their own world.
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” (188)
Lewis has written elsewhere how Aslan typifies Jesus. Here, it is as though he presses his pen so deeply into the page that his own pleading voice emerges: reader, there is one in our world who is realer than Aslan ever was. One who has revealed himself as the Lion and the Lamb (187, Rev 5:5–6); who has entered our story to spill his blood and reconcile us to himself. Know him.
We Are Easily Distracted by Small Things
When Jill and Eustace are given the task to find the missing Prince Rilian (the son of King Caspian) in The Silver Chair, Aslan gives Jill four signs to follow. In a mountaintop encounter echoing Exodus 19–31, Aslan is quite clear:
remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. (27)
At first, Jill diligently recites the signs because she knows “nothing else matters” (27). But her resolve falters, and when her companion Puddleglum later refers to them, she tells him to “shut up” (83). How did she become indifferent and then opposed toward Aslan’s instructions?
It wasn’t because giants were planning to eat her and her friends for their Autumn Feast. It wasn’t because she was at the mercy of a hundred Earthmen armed with three-pronged spears. It wasn’t even because a woman turned into a serpent and tried to suffocate the prince (that all happens later). It was because when she was wet and tired and cold, a beautiful woman mentioned a nearby castle, and “they could think about nothing but beds and baths and hot meals” (76).
Often it is not evil or weighty matters which cause us to forget God’s instructions. It’s feeling peckish and procrastinating. One more chore instead of reading his word. Responding to notifications but not those present. Longer showers yet rushing nighttime prayer. A warm bed.
Christian, make no mistake: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim 4:4). But take heed: we are easily distracted by small things.
We’re Waiting for the Real World
In the final book in the series, Narnia has been destroyed; every person to ever visit Narnia (bar Susan) has died in a train crash; and Lewis tells us, “they all lived happily ever after” (172). This is the paradox at the centre of The Last Battle. For every other beloved character in every other fairy tale, death does not equate with triumph. But it is not so with The Chronicles of Narnia. And it is not so with the “Great Story” (172) which Aslan and the children echo.
Realer than Narnia’s end, our death looms over us. Though we may ignore or overlook it, it cannot be escaped. Yet for the Christian death is gain because we will come face to face with Life himself (Php 1:21). Lewis is pointing us to the scriptural truth that “happily-ever-after” life is found in a person: “Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life”; “and this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life” (1 Jn 5:20 2:25). It’s why Aslan calls Narnia and England “shadowlands” (171). With Eternal Life to come, we’re waiting for the real world.
[1] Hooper, Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950-1963, p. 1523. For more, see Piper’s Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully: The Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C. S. Lewis.
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins, p. 52
